#43 THE PAT TERRY GROUP by the Pat Terry Group (1975)

THE PAT TERRY GROUP by the Pat Terry Group (1975)
Myrrh - MSA 6550

Pat Terry is a guitarist, a singer, and a recording artist. 

But he is first and foremost a songwriter. 

“I was so busy writing songs back during the Seventies,” Pat said recently. “I wrote songs every day. I wrote songs when I was on the bus, and by the time we got home, I would always have a bunch of new songs that I wrote while we were traveling. It came as natural as breathing to me. Part of my creative journey back in those days was just to write and write and write. I wrote lots of songs…” 

In November of 2016, the Pat Terry Group’s lead singer and principal songwriter was kind enough to share his thoughts with me concerning the band’s early days and his memories of making this album, their debut. It’s a record that holds a special place in the hearts of a lot of people.

Atlanta was not exactly known as a hotbed of Jesus Movement activity in the early 70s, so I was curious as to how three Georgia boys ended up on Myrrh Records. 

“We came to the attention of Myrrh because one of their regional sales reps became aware of what we were doing,” Pat recalled, “and he came out to hear us play several times and got excited about it and he went back to the home office which at that time was in Waco, Texas, and he told the label, 'You know, there's some guys in Atlanta that are doing some really cool things that I think the label needs to hear.' So he kind of introduced us to people at Myrrh Records and Billy Ray Hearn was the head of A&R at that time and we kind of hit it off with Billy Ray.”

Billy Ray Hearn

Billy Ray Hearn. He passed from this life in 2015 but not before leaving a legacy that will long be remembered. He launched the Myrrh and Sparrow record labels and guided the ministries and careers of dozens of artists, including Petra, Randy Matthews, Honeytree, Barry McGuire, the 2nd Chapter of Acts, Keith Green, Steve Taylor and many more. For more on Billy Ray, you can read our tribute here. Upon Hearn’s death, Frank Breeden, a past president of the Gospel Music Association said, “If Christian music of any style or genre has touched your life in the last forty years, you can thank Billy Ray Hearn.” 

So having Mr. Hearn on board was probably a good thing for the Pat Terry Group. “Yeah, we liked him a lot and he seemed to like us, so we signed a deal to make some records,” Pat said. “I was really excited about that because I wanted to be able to take our music further than just what we were doing regionally in the South. I hoped that we would be able to travel all over the country and play.” At this point, Pat acknowledged some of the changes that have taken place in the way music is shared and promoted these days, and why a “record deal” was vitally important to up-and-coming bands in previous decades. “You know, at that time it was pre-internet and people didn't have the means to promote what they did worldwide with just the click of a mouse. If you didn't have a record label that had an organizational structure that could actually promote your records all over the country, then the chances of you doing that were really minuscule. So we started making albums for Word Records.”

Once the ink was dry on the contract, it was decided that the group’s debut album would be self-titled and would be produced by Hearn himself (along with the group). Billy Ray wanted to record the album in Nashville. The young Mr. Terry disagreed.  

“I was kind of stupid back then,” Pat laughs. “I didn't really realize how much great music came out of Nashville. I loved a lot of country music, but I didn't feel like what we were doing was that strongly rooted in country, so when Billy Ray suggested that we record in Nashville we really resisted that. I remember Billy Ray telling me, 'Look, Pat, the studios and some of the musicians in Nashville are some of the best in the world. I don't know why you wouldn't want to record there.' So I tried to explain to him that we were wanting to connect with an audience of people who loved music that didn't necessarily come out of Nashville; it came out of LA and New York, places like that. And frankly, we had some studios in Atlanta that were making a specific brand of southern rock music that I connected with musically. I felt like that was probably closer to the kinds of things that we wanted to do.” 

Atlanta Rhythm Section at Studio One

One of those studios was located in an industrial court in Doraville, Georgia and became the birthplace for albums by the Atlanta Rhythm Section, .38 Special, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Journey, and the Outlaws. It was known as Studio One.

“So we ended up recording at Studio One which is where the Atlanta Rhythm Section made all of their records,” Pat said. “A lot of great southern rock records were made at Studio One. The fellow that did a lot of the engineering was available to help us make our record, so Billy Ray decided he would come and help us do it there.”

Now, Studio One might’ve been famous for some great music, but it apparently wasn’t much to look at. Pat laughs as he recalls Billy Ray Hearn’s initial impressions: “I remember Billy Ray telling me, 'Man when I got there and I saw that place I kind of freaked out and I thought oh no, what have I gotten myself into?' I mean, if you went to the bathroom, you had to flush the commode by taking a bucket of water and pouring it into the back of the toilet and flushing it that way. It's like it was broken forever and no one fixed it.”

The guys had to work around the studio’s main recording schedule, but they managed to get it done. “Atlanta Rhythm Section was recording there at night,” Pat recalls, “so they were there all night long and they didn't leave until 9 in the morning and we would come rolling in around 10, and the engineer who had been up all night recording them had just grabbed 30 minutes of sleep and then he was back in the studio with us. I think Billy was really afraid that this was not going to be a very professional situation in which to work. But recording at Studio One was just a whole different level of recording than I had ever done before, and it turned out great.” 

[Sadly, Studio One closed its doors in 1989. Today, the space is occupied by a non-related business and is used as a warehouse.]

Hearn was a visionary. He had a huge heart to reach young people with a musical language that they loved and understood. But he wasn’t necessarily a great producer. He sort of became a producer on a lot of the early Myrrh albums by default. “Billy Ray came from a church music background,” Pat Terry explained. “He didn't know very much about pop or rock music, and whatever folk music he knew about was kind of filtered through the church youth musicals of the late 60s and early 70s. And they were kind of folk-music oriented so I think Billy Ray kind of thought about contemporary music in that way. But frankly, he liked our songs and he basically let us do what we wanted to do.” 

Overall, Pat was pleased with Hearn’s approach. “I had real specific ideas about how I wanted things to sound,” he said. “Billy Ray brought this sense of a little bigger production value, which basically meant that he wanted some strings and some orchestration on this album. Looking back now, when I listen to it I feel like it's a little more ‘middle-of-the-road’ sounding than I would probably do today. But we had some really great arrangers. Bergen White, who had done great records for a long time, arranged strings for us and it was a thrill to kind of hear something different on the songs that I'd written. So it was a great experience.”

Let’s delve into the album. 

The musical and lyrical tone for the Pat Terry Group was basically established right off the bat on the first song on Side One on this debut album. Gospel Music was a light, acoustic toe-tapper with intelligent lyrics, pleasing vocal harmonies, and intricate guitar work. “Music really had always been the way that I looked at my life, you know, and it's how I interpreted what I saw around me,” Pat told me. “So this song was just kind of a way of saying I've listened to all kinds of music…now I really want to hear some 'Good News music' which is what so much of the music that we made in that era, and a lot of the other groups of that era, it was the kind of music that was being done. So I wrote this song to kind of express that.”

I’ve been listening to the music for a long, long time

Some of it made me happy

Some of it made me cry

I’ve been waiting for some music to set my poor soul free

So sing some Gospel music to me 

Oh, I love you 

I gave My life to save you 

I rose to make you just like Me 

And if you’re near Me 

I’m sure you’ll hear it clearly 

The strains of someone’s Gospel melody

“There's some intricate guitar stuff which was harmony parts that Sonny and I were playing,” Pat pointed out. “Sonny was a big part of what our group sounded like because he was and is such a great guitarist and he kind of brought that level of playing into the group and challenged me to be better. So in a lot of our songs we worked up little harmony parts to be playing together.” 

While some groups improvised a great deal, Pat says that he and his bandmates remained fairly disciplined in a live setting. “If you heard us play several nights in a row you might start to notice that it wasn't just that I was playing rhythm and Sonny was playing lead and Randy was on bass; but the things we were playing were really arrangements. And we played them the same every single time that we played them because they were parts that had been written into these songs. We came up with all kinds of little small, subtle things that made up our sound, I guess. Gospel Music is a good example of that.”

Next up is a ballad called Forget There Was a Yesterday. This is one where Bergen White’s strings come into play. It also features a striking melody that complements the song’s message beautifully.

Every now and then I think about the used to be

The things I thought, the things I did, the things I couldn’t see

But now’s the time to lay aside the things of days gone by

The Word of God is sounding sweet to me

If by one, death reigned victorious

Then by One in life we’ll rule

By His name the walls of shame will surely crumble

By His grace we’ll walk in freedom

By His love we’ll walk in truth

We’ll forget there ever was a yesterday

“It’s the whole idea of turning your back on your old life…repenting, which is to turn away from sin and walk in a new direction,” Pat explains. “When I listen to any of this old music, one thing that I do still like about it is that I felt very free in writing melodies. As years went on, especially as I wrote in Nashville for other artists to record, melody became a narrower pursuit. It wasn't that melody wasn't important, but when you’re writing songs for other people to record, something real rangy, something really ambitious…sometimes it's hard to find someone that can sing it, or would want to sing it, especially in a genre that I worked in for years -- country music. There's a certain simplicity in that genre that actually undergirds and makes your lyrics stronger. I loved writing that way for years and years, but in the early years of the Pat Terry Group, I had no idea that I just couldn't write anything that I wanted to write in any way. And I was the one that was going to be singing it, so if I could sing it as I wrote it, it was going to work out absolutely fine! Forget There Was a Yesterday has a really nice melody, a fairly ambitious melody.

Pat flexes his rock vocal muscles a bit on You’d Be There, a song with a gentle southern rock vibe. It appears to be a message to an unbelieving friend and features hints of steel guitar and perhaps a mandolin or banjo. 

We could hear drums on Gospel Music, but the drums are much more noticeable on this track. One thing that made the Pat Terry Group unusual is that they never had a drummer as an official member. “Mike Huey was our drummer on this record,” Pat offered. “We didn't have a drummer that traveled with us live. Partly because our stuff was written so that these songs could be performed with just an acoustic guitar. They didn't need a full band to really work. Traveling another member with a bigger set-up and sound was a problem back then. Because we didn't have great sound systems, micing drums and balancing all that so that people could actually hear the song -- that was always my thing. I wanted people to hear the lyric when we played. And when you had loud drums and a full band blasting through a less-than-optimal sound system, most of the time you just lost the lyrics. And you were always playing in big church auditoriums that sounded terrible -- lots of echo and stuff. So we never felt like we had to have a drummer to get across what we wanted to do musically.” 

Pat hesitantly acknowledged that attitudes and assumptions in the Church also played a part in his decision to forego drums. 

“Yeah, the other thing, too, is that in that era, having a drummer automatically created a tension between more conservative churches and us. That wasn't really a reason not to have a drummer, but I can't say that it didn't play into our decision. We didn't like the idea of having to come in and people already being on the defensive because you had this loud drummer and they associated that with rock and roll music which a lot of churches back in those days were really afraid of. So it was another mountain we didn't want to have to climb every time we played somewhere.” 

If he had it to do all over again, would the Pat Terry Group have a fourth member? 

“Looking back these days, I think that was a lousy reason not to have a drummer. And it was only part of our reason, but it did play in there. These days, if I wanted to put a band together, I would definitely have a drummer,” Pat says, smiling, “and it'd be nice and loud.”

Holding On was another softer tune that still holds a soft spot with the songwriter. “That was another song that I loved the melody and the sentiment of the song,” Pat says, “that in all the things that we think are important, and that we chase after in our lives, the things our culture tells us are worthy of our attention, that all that stuff is temporary and eventually falls away. But God is steady and you can always depend on Him. His character will never change. He's always holding on. That's kind of what I was thinking about when I wrote that.” 

Photographs
Movie stars
Everything from autographs to racing cars
Values change
But only God keeps holding on

Pocketbooks
Filled to the brim
But everything I own will still belong to Him

My grip is weak

But only God keeps holding on

Break the bond that binds you

Can the world give you what you need?

Break the bond that binds you

Are you certain you'll be really free?

Little girls

In Sunday dress

Daddy's golfin', always tryin' to do his best

Hearts can stray

But only God keeps holding on

Holding On features some fine classical guitar work, performed on Pat’s Gibson C-1 guitar.

I Can’t Wait wrapped Side One of the album. It was more than a standout track…author Mark Allan Powell called it "a literal anthem of the Jesus Movement, a jubilant and jangly canticle of anticipation."  

“Yeah, that was a song that became very popular in our concerts and I think a lot of people associate that song with our group,” Pat admits. “It was written to be played at a Bible study that I attended in the Atlanta area. Every Tuesday night we played at this Bible study, and the atmosphere was like a retreat kind of vibe, you know? All the kids came into this basement and then they sat in the floor and we sat on stools and played music and there was a lot of sing-along type things that were like camp songs almost. And that's the way I always thought of this song. I thought of this as a campfire song. We played a lot of different kinds of concerts, and we played a lot of retreats, for youth retreats and things. This song was always the one that got pulled out sitting around campfires at retreats, singing songs.” 

Just as the lightning comes from the East

And flashes even to the West

So shall the coming of the Son of Man be

Put on your Sunday best

I can’t wait to see Jesus

In His glory, as He bursts from the sky

I can’t wait to be held in His arms

And see the glimmer in His eye

I can’t wait to hear trumpets

‘Cause I know what they mean when they sound

I can’t wait to cast off my burdens

And feel my feet leave the ground

Tell me how it’s gonna be

Read it from the Bible again

I can’t wait to see Jesus

‘Cause Jesus is coming again

“There was a huge emphasis in those days on the return of Christ and so I thought a lot about that, especially in that era,” Pat said. “And I'm still looking for Him to come again.”

Anyone playing “contemporary” music in churches in the Seventies had their fair share of encounters with well-meaning but misguided pastors, deacons and elders. Pat Terry was no exception: “One interesting thing -- the last verse of that song says I can't wait to see heaven / and to walk those streets of gold / I can't wait to check into my mansion / and get my sleeping bag unrolled. It was very common that when we played that song in churches, that a pastor or deacon or someone would pull me aside afterward and sometimes jokingly (but sometimes not so jokingly) say, 'You know, Pat, there's not going to be sleeping bags in heaven.' And it became very serious real quick. They were basically trying to encourage me to be careful with my theology. But my thought was, Hey, you know, how do you know there's not sleeping bags in heaven? Maybe there is! Just because Scripture hasn't mentioned it doesn't mean that there might not be! Anyway, there was something about that third verse that seemed to capture people's attention every time we played it.”

Before examining Side Two of The Pat Terry Group, let’s take a step back. How did Pat Terry end up a Christian in the first place?

“I became a Christian in 1970,” Pat says. “I was raised in the church and I had always been very cognizant of Christ, but I'd never really experienced anything personally until around 1970. Some friends of mine came by my house and invited me to go to a youth rally, kind of an evangelistic meeting that the church was having and so I went and for three nights in a row, I listened to three different guys speak about having a personal relationship with Christ. And it was just a gripping thing for me. You know, I'd never heard anyone talk about knowing Christ in a personal way. So the last night I responded to the invitation and really gave my life to Christ. I went home that night and I remember laying in bed and feeling different -- just feeling like something had literally changed inside of me. From that point on I started hanging out more with Christian friends and people who could help me start to grow in my faith.”

Pat had always been musical, so it was natural that he would end up using his gifts and talents to express the joy of his walk with the Lord.

“I had played in rock and roll bands all through my school years,” Pat recalls. “When I was 12 years old the Beatles played on Ed Sullivan and that became my focus from that point on, really. I just wanted to play guitar and wanted to be in a band! So all through middle school and high school I played in bands and it was kind of a natural thing for me to continue with music after I became a Christian. It never occurred to me that I should stop doing that. I started writing songs that I hoped could kind of convey to people what had happened in my life as a result of my trusting Christ. My church let me play at their coffeehouse and I started getting invitations from different youth groups in our area to come and sing at their churches. Churches at that time were somewhat skeptical of any music that wasn't necessarily hymns or songs specifically written as 'gospel songs' and that kind of thing. My background, of course, was singer-songwriters of the 70s -- James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and people like that -- so my songs didn't sound like hymns, they sounded more like pop songs.” 

Needless to say, Pat met with some resistance in those early days. “There were plenty of times when I would play at churches and I would get pulled aside by an elder or deacon or someone who felt the need to explain to me that what I was doing was ‘outside of God's will’ and ‘dangerous’ and all that kind of thing.” 

That bothered him. 

“I struggled with some of that,” Pat admits. “But it never stopped me from -- all I was doing was trying to express myself, and I didn't see that as anything bad. So it was actually a great experience going around in those really early days and just playing for church groups. I wanted to reach people with the Gospel. And I think it meant something to me and a lot of kids my age that we were developing this language of our own to share our faith, so I think that was an important part of that time.”

The Jesus Movement had been in full swing out on the West Coast and the effects were being felt as far south as Atlanta. “During that era, there was what I feel was a genuine revival in churches among young people,” Pat remembers. “A lot of kids were finding their faith in a very vital way like they never had before. Thousands and thousands of kids were coming to Christ all over the country. It was an exciting time. Unlike today, the emphasis wasn't on culture wars and things like that. The emphasis was on finding forgiveness in Christ and sharing that with your friends. So it was a great time.”

So how did Pat hook up with his bandmates?

“The Pat Terry Group got together probably around 1973,” Pat says. “Sonny Lallerstedt and Randy Bugg were playing with a band called Dove which was part of an evangelistic team that traveled out of Oklahoma. But whenever they were home we would get together and play just for fun. I'd gotten involved in a Bible Study in our area that later became known as Metro Bible Study. It met in the basement of some good friends' house, and so I was playing there every week and I invited Sonny and Randy to come over and play with me at that sometimes. So the more we did that, the more natural it felt to be playing together. They finally came off the road with Dove and we started playing together full-time after that.” 

And the name? “We called it the Pat Terry Group, quite frankly, only because I had already been playing so much around our area, people kind of knew me and knew what I was doing, and it just seemed like it made sense to keep that momentum going,” Pat explained. “But we functioned as a group. We tried as much as possible to function very democratically. There were three votes in the group and if we were going to decide to do something, there had to be at least two people that wanted to do it, and the third guy needed to feel good enough about going along with the other two that we had a decision. And that's pretty much how we ran the group for years and years.” 

Side Two of The Pat Terry Group began with another classic: That’s the Way.

“That's the Way was a song that I wrote for our bass player Randy Bugg and his bride Brenda,” said Pat. “It was sung for them on their wedding day. I've heard about this song from so many people through the years. It's been amazing to me how many people seem to have had that song sung at their wedding. When I go out and play live now, occasionally I'll pull that song out and play it, if, for no other reason, people will come up to me before the concert and they'll say, 'Hey, are you going to do That's the Way? Because we had that song sung at our wedding.' And it means something to people. And that, in turn, means something to me. You know, that's what songwriters want to have happen. You want whatever song that you write to, at a certain point, stop being your song and start being someone else's song. So this is one of those songs where that certainly happened. It still thrills me today when I hear that someone had it sung at their wedding.

With this ring

I thee wed

And I give to you my life

Mine is yours

Yours is mine

And we can live that way forever

With this kiss

We will seal

That we now are man and wife

Two in one

One in two

That’s the way it’s got to be

With this love

We can live

We can’t keep it to ourselves

He is mine

And He is yours

And we can spend our lives in telling

I give my heart

I give my soul

I give you all my worldly goods

Two in one

One in two

That’s the way it’s got to be

I will cling to you

You will cling to me

And in the shadow of the cross

We’ll live on bended knee

With this prayer

I commit

That we both become as one

He in us

And we in Him

Saying vows to one another

Holding fast

Til the day we see the Son

Two in one

One in two

That’s the way it’s got to be

There was an amazing amount of wisdom expressed in that song, especially considering Pat’s youth and lack of matrimonial experience (!) at the time. During the intervening years, marriage has been severely devalued and even redefined. But That’s the Way remains a beautiful description and poignant fleshing out of God’s design for marriage as described in Genesis chapter 2. 

“It's a fun, up-tempo song,” Pat says of the next track, When I Go Passing On. “It's talking about looking forward to what it's going to be like when we pass on and we're face to face with Jesus, the joy of that.”

Musically, this one has an almost Southern Gospel feel and features Chris Walski on piano. Pat also managed to drop a Smyrna reference into the lyrics. “We played that one every single night, no matter where we played,” Pat said.

When the Lord Comes Back was another highlight of this album. It was definitely the closest thing to rock and roll on this record, and when the guys played it live, it sometimes made people a little uptight. “This one was a little more rock-oriented,” Pat recalls. “Sonny played his Gibson Les Paul on this one for a little edgier guitar sound. It was when we did this kind of stuff that we kind of felt whatever tension there was out there about more aggressive-sounding music in the church. This was one of the songs that you could always sense that kids really liked it and adults got a little more nervous. When you listen to the music that's done in church today, you can't even dream that something this tame and not particularly edgy by today's standards (by any means) was ever questioned. But it was. It was a different time.”

Lyrically, this song always brings a smile. “It was playful,” Pat says. “It wasn't real heavy on theology; it was more about thinking imaginatively about what would happen when the Lord comes back, and so it's fun. Occasionally I pull this one out and play it live just because I think for folks who were around in that era, it kind of takes them back a little bit and I enjoy remembering some of that, too.”

The way that things are goin’

How long can it last

The food’s so high that I can’t afford it

My car’s runnin’ out of gas

It won’t be long now

He’s coming back now

Uh-huh, when the Lord comes back we won’t need no gas no more

Money’s getting tighter

Sin is on the rise

USA, what can I say

You’re actin’ too big for your size

But He’ll be back soon

It won’t be long now

Uh-huh, when the Lord comes back you won’t act so big no more

It won’t be too big for the common man

We’ll all be the same in Jerusalem

If one’s got the bread and one’s got the wine we’ll share it

We’ll smile as we pass walkin’ down the street

Shakin’ the gold dust off our feet

Jesus will be King and on bended knee we’ll declare it

(Yes we will)

May be months or minutes

Who can say how long

The Lord may come before I sing the last line of this song

Won’t that be nice now

He’s coming back now

Yes, and when the Lord comes back we won’t need this song no more

I asked Pat about how the recording process has changed over the years. “These days, so much of recording has to do with programming,” he said, “and most of the time things are recorded to a click track which means that it's locked into the tempo fairly rigidly. But back when we made this record, that was not the way recordings were done. The drummer helped find and set the tempo and then he was the person that kept you in line rhythmically. You played pretty much just like you were performing live. I would play guitar and usually sing a scratch vocal which means that it wasn't the final vocal, it was just something we would use to play along with so that we captured a real performance of the song. But then I would come back and we would get rid of that vocal and the guitar that I was playing when I sang that scratch vocal, we would get rid of that, and I would re-cut that guitar in a more controlled way without any vocals going on so that the engineer captured a good performance of just that guitar that he could control in the mix. And then I would go back and do vocals. I don't think of myself as a great singer by any means, but I’ve kind of learned over the years that I sing better and I capture the spirit of a song better when I can play guitar and sing at the same time. So these days when I record I generally record my vocal and my guitar at the same time (depending on the song). It helps me capture things with a little more emotion and kind of get inside the song. But back then we recorded as a band and everyone was playing at the same time - the drummer, bass player, and guitarists.” 

Next up was a song that Pat’s not so fond of. “Tell Them What I’ve Done was one of those songs that was written in a voice as if God was speaking to you. Frankly, I have mixed feelings about some of that kind of stuff today. I think it can be presumptuous to think you can speak in the Lord's voice as to what He might be saying. Obviously, you're on safe ground a lot of times when you're using Scripture or something because that's God's Word to us, but this song is not quite that based in Scripture. It’s just how I imagine that maybe God would want to say to us. And I'm not sure that's always a great approach for writers to take. I think maybe it's best if we stick sometimes to how we feel about something and don't try to always put it upon the Lord that our feelings are the same as the way God feels about things because that's not always true, obviously. I don't dislike the song, but it's just a different kind of thing that these days I probably wouldn't write something quite like that.”

Lyrical misgivings aside, it’s a charming, bouncy acoustic number with another great melody line and some smooth harmonies.

The Pat Terry Group ends with yet another gem – a poignant and meaningful ballad titled Meet Me Here. 

“I always liked to end albums with something kind of reflective, that makes people sit and think a bit,” Pat reveals. “My church was First Baptist Church of Smyrna, Georgia, and back in those days, if you wanted to go to your church in the middle of the day, the front doors were unlocked and people didn't worry about someone coming in and vandalizing the church or stealing things or anything like that. It was a part of the church's ministry to have an open door policy. And anytime you wanted to come in and go into the sanctuary and pray or think or study or whatever you wanted to do, that was part of the reason your church was there with open doors. So I used to go up to my church sometimes when no one else was there, in the middle of the week. And I loved playing the piano because the piano there was so much better than the one I had at home. So I would play the piano and I would think about things and I would pray and I would write songs. Meet Me Here comes directly out of that experience of wanting God to meet me in a quiet space and speak to my heart and it's a somewhat confessional song, admitting that I come up short often. And I need God to meet me where I am because I don't know how to bring myself up to His level. That's what the grace of God is all about. He meets us where we are and accepts us based not on how well we do our religion but on the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I still love this song and I play it live often. There's strings on this, and it's a nice arrangement. It's something that I still think very warmly about. I still love this song.”

So do I. And for many of the same reasons. When my family was on the road in full-time evangelistic ministry, we would minister at a different church in a different city every week. We were in thirty-five states and three countries over the course of seven years, constantly seeing new places and meeting new people. In some ways, it was a very exciting way to spend my teen years, sharing Jesus with different audiences every Sunday morning and four or five nights a week. But it could be lonely. We were always around people, meeting new folks all the time…but never putting down roots. Relationships were temporary…our travel home constantly being moved and relocated to another state or another town…all of it gave our lives this sort of transient quality that just wasn’t the way normal people lived. Usually, our bus (or travel trailer) was parked right next to the churches where we ministered. So I would often go into the church sanctuary late at night…after the service was over and everyone had gone home. Usually, in those days, the piano would have a small light so that the church pianist could better see her hymnal or sheet music. I would go to the piano and turn on just that small lamp, leaving the rest of the sanctuary dark…and I would begin to play and sing Meet Me Here. And the Lord would do just that. Tears would inevitably begin to flow as God made Himself real to the teen-aged me in a very comforting way. That song will always be meaningful to me as a result of those special moments.

Organ stopped its playing

Everyone’s gone home

But I’m here

Wishing that some way we could meet

Preacher stopped his preaching

Somehow it goes on

In my heart

Somehow I feel so incomplete

Pews and aisles so empty

Still You seem so near

And I cry 

Hoping that some way I might know You

Choir stopped its singing

Somehow I still hear

And the tears are blinding the eyes that need You

You and me all alone in Your house

Don’t know how to say it

I guess that I’ll just play it

By ear

I asked Pat about the response they received from this, their first official album. “It was a great response,” he said. “The people that liked our group obviously responded well to it and really liked it. The record label liked it very much - it was in keeping with what they wanted to accomplish to bring a more contemporary sound out to the Christian audiences. By the standards of that day, the sales figures were probably average. I think it might've sold between 15,000 and 20,000 copies which at that time was not too bad. As the years went on the sales of Christian records got bigger and probably the biggest, you know, by the time we got to around 1976 or 1977, the biggest-selling Christian albums were by people like B.J. Thomas and Evie and some of those kinds of artists. Their albums were selling 50,000 records and to Christian music professionals, that was a lot of records. These days it's not. But in those days, for a Christian record to sell 50,000 copies was huge. Our records never sold that many, but back then records were mainly an opportunity for us to share our music with people and we were glad to be able to have something that we could make available to people after the shows and it helped us finance being on the road.

“You know, people have a tendency to think that when you're writing songs and making records, going out and playing concerts, that you're making lots of money,” Pat smiles. “Believe me, nobody was making any money back then. We were barely getting by. We were putting gas in our bus and when we finished a tour we might each get a few hundred dollars, and we were living on that for a while until we hit the road again.”

Pat Terry says one of his biggest frustrations is that no Pat Terry Group albums have ever been re-released in digital form: “People write me all the time and say, ‘Hey why don't you release these albums?’ Well, I don't own these records. This particular record is owned by Word Records, Inc. And at this point, that company has been sold several times through the years. There's no one working there who was there back in the era when these were made, and it's just off people's radar. I do think it's kind of sad that the music of that era, which was important for laying a groundwork for a certain kind of music that the church embraced, that, if for no other reason, just for historical reasons, that some of that music hasn't been re-released. And that there's not some interest from the labels that own it, of keeping these catalogs at least available for people to have. I mean, every genre of music, whether it's country or rock or folk or pop -- every genre of music puts a certain value on the early stuff that they have in their catalogs, that documents the artists of that era, what they were doing, and how it fit culturally into what was going on in the country at that time. The Christian labels have not put much emphasis on that. Some things have been re-released which I'm glad to see, but there's not been a big emphasis on putting this stuff out and helping people to know where the roots are, where a lot of this music that ended up being called Christian music started. So, here's hoping that down the road that can happen. I've explored ways to try to get our stuff re-released and I haven't been successful yet. But who knows, down the road...”

How did Pat and the guys feel about this debut record? “We liked it,” Pat says. “We'd done our very best to record the best album we possibly could. We’d given it 100%. Certainly, it was a good representation of what the Pat Terry Group sounded like and what we were about back in that era.”

Early 80s

The album was a starting point for Pat, Sonny, and Randy. They would go on to record several more albums together, records that sold more copies and opened many doors for them. Pat would write songs that would be recorded by bigger “stars” like Evie, B.J. Thomas, and the Gaither Vocal Band, establishing him as a sought-after songwriter. The guys would eventually build their own studio and record their own albums, taking more control over their music and their message. Then they, like many other “first wave” artists, become disillusioned with the business that CCM had become, leading them to dissolve the band and go in different directions. Pat released a trio of Christian rock albums as a solo artist before earning a living as a country songwriter in that town that he didn’t want to record in back in 1974 – Nashville. Artists like Travis Tritt, Alan Jackson, Tanya Tucker, the Oak Ridge Boys, Confederate Railroad, and Kenny Chesnee have all recorded Pat Terry songs. 

Yes, Pat Terry is a songwriter. 

In his Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, author Mark Allan Powell writes, "Terry appears to have had a natural gift for songwriting and from the start was able to craft tunes with melodies and structures appropriate to the lyrics," adding, "The Pat Terry Group albums succeed if only on the strength of the songs themselves." 

A songwriter is defined as “an individual who writes the lyrics, melodies and chord progressions for songs.” But it really goes much deeper than that. A songwriter creates memories…lays down markers and takes you back to milestones in your life…gives you a vehicle to express deep feelings and emotions. 

This debut record was more than a jumping off point for the Pat Terry Group; the record itself is remembered fondly for songs that would become long-term favorites…cultural markers for the Jesus People…audio artifacts from an era that seems happier, simpler, purer as we look back. 

L-R: Pat Terry, Randy Bugg, Sonny Lallerstedt

Billy Ray Hearn said it well on the album's liner notes. "These are the Pat Terry Group's songs," he wrote. "As soon as you hear them they'll be yours."