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| IN THE VOLUME OF THE BOOK by 2nd Chapter of Acts (1975) Myrrh - MSA 6542 |
"One, two, three, and..."
The first voice we hear on this brilliant album actually belongs to Michael Omartian, then a session keyboardist and arranger and artist in his own right. Omartian would soon be a highly successful and sought-after producer. Here on ITVOTB, he was counting off the string section on the album's opening track, Start Every Day With a Smile.
Start Every Day... was hardly typical of an album opener. For starters, it's classical music. The track employs an actual string section, conducted by Omartian, and little else in the way of instrumentation. Clocking in at just fifty-four seconds, at first listen it seems like a pleasant little poem that Annie Herring might've married with a lilting melody on a slow Tuesday. Short though it may be, it's a song that sticks in your head and leaves you wanting more. Just as it is finding its way into our hearts and our psyches, it ends and slams into Yaweh, a hard rock song that explores the names of God and serves as the perfect vehicle for young Matthew Ward's already considerable vocal talent.
Start Every Day With a Smile and Yaweh were a powerful and effective one-two punch that got In the Volume of the Book off to an amazing start.
The Wards were a large Catholic family from the upper Midwest. Annie, one of 9 children, left the harsh winters and mundane lifestyle of North Dakota for the bright lights and sunshine of California. There, she met a popular radio DJ named Buck Herring. The two became an on-again-off-again item.
Long story short, Buck found Jesus and then made sure that Annie did as well. The two subsequently experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit and became immersed in what God was doing in California during the early days of what later came to be known as the Jesus Movement.
The rest of the Ward family had relocated to the Golden State as well. Then tragedy struck. When Annie's parents died within a short time of each other, two of her younger siblings - Nelly and Matthew - were taken in by Buck and Annie.
Well, Buck transitioned from DJ to recording engineer and bought Annie an old, upright piano for $50. Annie began to play the piano by ear (or "by heart" as she says) and started writing songs that were prompted by the Holy Spirit. She called herself a "song receiver" instead of a songwriter. So Annie was downloading songs, and Matthew and Nelly started singing with Annie when they would come home from school in the afternoons. One thing led to another...and the 2nd Chapter of Acts was born.
The group's 1974 debut album, With Footnotes, was an instant classic and will be explored later on this list. A year later, In the Volume of the Book was released by Myrrh Records.
CCM author and historian Mark Allan Powell calls the 2nd Chapter of Acts "one of the Jesus movement's greatest treasures" and says In the Volume of the Book is the group's "second masterpiece." The album title comes from a passage of Scripture in the book of Psalms:
These words of Scripture are found both on the album's back cover as well as the inner lyric sleeve (along with a humorous visual depiction of the Amplified Version of the Bible - with headphones plugged into the Word of God).
The harmonies...oh my goodness. After all, they were siblings, and that definitely came into play. But add to that a charismatic focus on the anointing of the Holy Spirit and, well...it's no wonder secular groups just couldn't quite compare. One reviewer for CCM magazine said that listening to the 2nd Chapter was "like hearing the angels themselves."
They were pioneers, but were unaware that they were pioneering anything at the time. They were unconventional, sometimes running afoul of expected norms from concert promoters and magazine publishers. They were just doing whatever God told them to do. Literally.
The aforementioned Start Every Day With a Smile begins the album with simple lyrics that sound almost like something Annie Herring might say to another person during a conversation:
That's it. A lot of Annie's lyrics were like that. Very poetic, veering off in unexpected directions, but expressing spiritual ideas and saying things in a totally different way, with a fresh vision. I recently bought a devotional book that she wrote. She writes books the same way she wrote songs. Full of wonder and mystery, and sometimes you are not always sure exactly what she means, but your spirit understands (if that makes any sense).
Yaweh is the only song on the record that is not at least co-written by someone named Herring or Ward. Jesse Cosio wrote this song, a hard-rocking gem that allowed young Matthew Ward's incredible voice and Phil Keaggy's considerable guitar prowess to really shine. The group's debut album also contained a hard rock track that featured Matthew, but reviewer Mark Allan Powell says, "Yaweh does The Devil's Lost Again bit one better."
I suppose I should mention at this point that Matthew Ward (still a teenager at the time of this recording) always possessed not only an amazing vocal range, but also an other-worldly level of vocal control. This was decades before vocal "runs" became ubiquitous in pop music. Matthew's ability to improvise and sing crazy runs with an amazing degree of control was, well, just a joy to listen to - from the earliest days of the 2nd Chapter, through his CCM solo albums, as well as his foray into worship music...and still to this day. [By the way, I'm no Old Testament scholar...but a lot of people spell the name of this song, which is also a name for God, Y-a-h-w-e-h. In fact, I think the Bible itself uses that spelling, as well as the ITVOTB lyric sheet. But the album cover and songbook sheet music spell it Y-a-w-e-h. I just thought that was interesting.]
The next two songs on the album use the imagery of nature, weather and seasons to express a deep longing for God's abiding presence. Something Tells Me is a ballad with a fairly complex arrangement. When the trio sings, "Something tells me it's time to go..." at the end of the song, they hold the note in perfect, unwavering 3-part harmony for what feels like a very long time while the band continues to run through its chord changes. This was long before the days of Pro Tools, digital recording tricks and autotune, folks. In other words, these three could sing. In an interview with Brian Mason, Matthew Ward revealed that The Grey Song was the only song the group ever recorded perfectly, from beginning to end. "We didn't have to fix anything," Matthew said. "All three of us. It almost had a kind of country-ish vibe to it. It's a cool song."
"I always enjoyed that tune because it came so easy, I guess," Ward said with a smile. "I love things that aren't hard!"
A soft Fender Rhodes (don't you miss those?) signals the start of a testimony anthem called Now That I Belong To You. This one goes through different musical movements, with instrumentals that sound for all the world like they have a horn section involved. Come to think of it, Yaweh also seemed to have horns. As does Hey, Whatcha Say. But there are no horns listed in the album's credits! My guess would be that the "horns" I'm hearing were actually supplied by synthesizers. Perhaps?
Next up, it's a Scripture song solo from young Matthew. He and keyboardist Richard Souther co-wrote the music for this one, titled Ps. 63. Souther was the pianist for A Band Called David, a group of spiritually like-minded musicians from the church that Acts attended - Jack Hayford's Church On The Way. Thus began a tradition of sorts - Matthew and Richard teaming up to write a Scripture song from the Psalms. In addition to Psalm 63 on this record, the two also collaborated on Psalm 61 for a live album in 1977 called How the West Was One, and Psalm 93 for the studio album Mansion Builder in 1978. Souther would go on to become a successful instrumentalist and songwriter, under both the names Richard Souther and Douglas Trowbridge.
"Annie the Poet" shines again on Prince Song, a very popular track that borrows language and imagery from classic fairy tales...
[By the way, Annie the Poet is a name that Michael Omartian gave to Annie Herring in a song on his 1976 album, Adam Again.]
And so ends Side One of In the Volume of the Book.
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| Buck Herring |
ITVOTB was of course produced and engineered by Buck Herring (as were, I believe, every 2nd Chapter of Acts album ever recorded). It would seem that Buck's right-hand man on this project was the multi-talented Michael Omartian - or Omar, as Buck calls him. Omartian arranged the songs and played keyboards (Aarpvark synthesizer/organ/piano) and percussion. "Michael gave of himself to us beyond measure," Buck Herring told Brian Mason in a 2022 interview for YouTube. "There wouldn't be enough money in the world for me to pay Michael for his contributions to the 2nd Chapter of Acts and to our music ministry over the years. Our relationship with Michael goes a hundred miles deep, a hundred miles wide, and a hundred miles high."
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| Michael Omartian & wife Stormie |
Buck Herring's music industry connections paid off as he brought in top-notch studio "cats" and session players who had already played with - or went on to play with - some of the biggest names in mainstream entertainment. In addition to the aforementioned Phil Keaggy on lead guitar, Herring brought in drummer David Kemper (Glen Campbell, Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John and more); bassist Emory Gordon, Jr. (Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, John Denver and more); bassist David Hungate (Boz Skaggs, Dolly Parton, member of Toto); guitarist Jay Graydon (Joe Cocker, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and more); guitarist Larry Rolando (Seals and Crofts, Vicki Lawrence, Art Garfunkel); organist Danny Timms (Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, Bonnie Raitt, Los Lobos and more); and bassist Michael Been (who went on to form The Call). Annie Herring also played some piano and percussion on ITVOTB.
On the group's debut album, cover photos were used sparingly. Not so on In the Volume of the Book. There were lots of pics - two photos blended one over the other on the front, and seven pictures on the back cover. The photography credit went to Joel Strasser.
Side two begins with a beautiful worship song that has stood the test of time. Morning Comes When You Call is a reverent plea for God's presence...a tender yet powerful acknowledgement of our need for Him:
I need You here beside me
Here again, we see the theme of days, seasons and nature...
Borrowed Time is a quirky little tune, a little different from the rest of the album. To me, it's sort of a companion piece to Good News from the first album, With Footnotes. Good News was a heavier rock song, but it was highly evangelistic and aimed to share Jesus with people "out there" who were distracted by TV, war and killing. Well, Borrowed Time is also an evangelistic song that aims to share Jesus with a dark and despairing world of people who are worried about what tomorrow may bring and concerned with what they're going to eat, how much money to borrow and all the bills they have to pay. Annie says they're not living on Eastern or Pacific, but on borrowed time.
If I could only share one song with a person who'd never heard the 2nd Chapter, you know, as a good representation of the group's work...I could do a lot worse than Last Day of My Life. It checks a lot of boxes. The close, smooth, sibling harmony...Matthew's rock and roll pipes...incredible dynamics and passionate lyrical poetry. By the way, Last Day... is also a highly evangelistic song, making it and Borrowed Time a powerful one-two punch for the listener who's on the fence about this Jesus guy.
The rhythmic, uptempo Hey, Whatcha Say is a simple song, lyrically. It's all about seeing, hearing and feeling God. Here in the YouTube age, there's no shortage of videos from reformed cessationists who are apparently very upset that people actually believe that they a) literally hear God speak to them and b) feel His presence during worship or just as they go through their daily lives. Well, the members of the 2nd Chapter of Acts have never shied away for an instant from their belief in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They attended an Assembly of God church for a while during the early days of their Christian walk in California, then transitioned to Pastor Jack Hayford's Church on the Way, a well-known Pentecostal/Charismatic fellowship. They have recounted miracles and supernatural acts of God in books and numerous interviews, without apology. They really meant it when they sang to the Lord:
Hey, Whatcha Say gives Phil Keaggy a chance to deliver a couple of blistering electric lead solos. And he does not disappoint.
Phil shines again (for lack of a better word) in Keep On Shinin'. In a 2022 interview with Brian Mason, Buck Herring tells a pretty amazing story regarding Keaggy's recording experience during the making of In the Volume of the Book.
"The first day, Omar was doing the arrangements," Herring recalled. "I had set everything up, the music stands and mics, all that stuff. They started running down the first song and Phil was just kind of sitting there, just looking at his music stand. And I thought, 'Oh, no. I've embarrassed him because he doesn't read music.' He got up, put his guitar down and came into the control room. He plopped himself down on the couch in front of the console and he said, 'I'll do my parts later.' So we recorded all of the tracks, and Phil hadn't played yet on any of them."
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| Phil Keaggy |
Buck continues: "In my producing career, I always abhorred electric guitar overdubs because I'm not a musician, I could not tell them what to play; it was always a process of elimination. What do you hear? I hear this. I don't like that. And you would just keep going until you eventually landed on something you both liked. But I had to depend on them to really contribute because I couldn't guide them all that much. So now we had finished all of the tracks for In the Volume of the Book, and we had scratch vocals on everything. So it came time to do the electric guitar overdubs. I had no idea what was going to happen. I had never worked with Phil before. And a few days prior I had embarrassed him but putting him out there with all of these studio guys and exposing the fact that he couldn't read music. But sitting on the couch, listening while we laid down all the tracks, he had memorized all of them. There are thirteen songs on In the Volume of the Book. One take. One take on every single song on the album for guitar. There was only one internal punch on the whole album and that was in the middle of the guitar solo for Keep On Shining. Everything else was one take on the whole album. That was it."
Buck described it as, "The most amazing one take of my entire recording career."
Fittingly, Keep On Shinin' carries on the nature theme as Annie writes about morning, night, daybreak, and light, relating all of it, of course, to the closeness she desires with the Lord.
ITVOTB wraps with I Can't Get Near You, a passionate song sung from the Lord to us. This one seems to be a solo by Annie. Ascribing words and thoughts to God in a song is sometimes a tricky thing...but here, it just works...
After the group's 1974 debut With Footnotes took Christendom by storm, if ever there was a time for a so-called sophomore jinx, this was it. But it didn't happen. True, there was no Easter Song on this album. But there's only been one of those ever. And there wasn't a Which Way the Wind Blows on this record (although Morning Comes When You Call comes close). But taken collectively, as a project, this record is a beautifully recorded statement of continuing faith in 1975 by the 2nd Chapter of Acts. Oh - and it rocks. There was no drop-off. If anything, the relatively small group of folks known as Jesus freaks who were aware of this album in 1975 were not only thrilled with this record, but extremely excited about what the future held, based on this record. And they should have been. The group's output across the rest of the 1970s was prolific.
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| 2nd Chapter of Acts with Barry McGuire |
That same year, the 2nd Chapter hit the road with Barry McGuire, and a multi-disc, landmark live album was the result. The next year they took a C.S. Lewis book and turned it into a musical (though it was held up for a time due to copyright claims). In 1977, they hit the road with Phil Keaggy and another classic live set was released. After a move to Sparrow Records, the classic Mansion Builder LP was released in '78. And don't forget their involvement in musicals like Firewind and The Witness.
The music styles and clothing styles changed somewhat in the eighties. But the 2nd Chapter rolled on, seeing lives changed and set free by the power of God - which was indeed their primary goal in all of this. They relocated to Texas along with their friend Keith Green and some other ministries, and later to Colorado. But as the business side of the music business began to take center stage, the 2nd Chapter grew less and less enchanted with what had come to be known as Contemporary Christian Music. They were sometimes viewed as being difficult by magazine publishers and festival promoters, because they wouldn't just go along and play the game. They always had a higher calling.
By 1988 the group members felt God telling them that this chapter was drawing to a close. Time to come off the road and focus on family. Annie and Matthew also pursued solo ministries. We (I'll just go ahead and speak for everybody) were sad to see the group go, but oh so thankful for the rich legacy of music and ministry that they had left for us - music that continues to minister to this very day. They were originals. There's never been a group like them before or since.
The focus of the 2nd Chapter of Acts was always...What do You want, Lord? What do You want from us? What would You have us say and share and do? Looking back, you might say that the foundational verse for this album remained front and center for the members of the 2nd Chapter throughout their time of ministry together...
Great write up Scott. Look forward to the finish
ReplyDeleteI wish everyone could experience being at one of their concerts live. No drop off in vocal quality from the studio, and the Holy Spirit filled the place. Great job capturing the essence of this album and their ministry.
ReplyDeleteThank you for another great write-up, Scott. This album was so powerful musically and spiritually and, for me at least, it still holds up 49 years later.
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