The funky debut album of LISA BEVILL has found a big following Stateside. But Lisa isn't some bubbling teenie aglow with dreams of pop stardom but a music biz wise head. Jan Willem Vink asked the questions.

Lisa Bevill

For those still recalling that rather gruesome earlier age of contemporary Christian music when Sheila Walsh was able to be passed off as 'new wave' and when pop-gospel always seemed at least a decade behind TODAY'S relevant trends, Lisa Bevill will seem a revelation.

Here is a pop-gospel singer whose sound and style could fall neatly into this week's Top 40 radio formats, her 'My Freedom' being an exhilarating blend of pop-hook know how and high-tech trickery, with many of the tracks geared towards the funky demands of the dance floor. Yet despite her baby face and 'My Freedom' being Lisa's debut album, Lisa has been in the music biz 11 years and has clocked up considerable experience as a session singer. Now with a go-ahead record company, Brown Bannister's Vireo Records, behind her, Lisa is pursuing a mission to speak truth to America's youth. For the lyrics of 'My Freedom' are particularly geared towards a teenage mindset.

"I definitely feel that the issues I faced as a teenager have drastically changed in regards to what they face today," says Lisa. "The issues are still the same but so much more pressure. The things that I faced were peer pressure to hang with a certain group of friends, to dress a certain way. I never really faced a lot of drug pressure or sexual pressure, even though I saw it all around me, I never hung around with any group of people for whom that was the issue. Plus I was painfully shy in high school, so that had a lot to do with what I didn't get into. But in college, that was a whole different ball game. Because I lived in the dormitory and was away from mom and dad, I definitely was curious about some things, like everyone else. And I experimented with some things, even knowing what I was doing was wrong and I knew better. It seems like the teens have heard that the things they are involved in are wrong, they just don't care. I don't know if the parents are just lazy about discipline or what, but somebody needs to crack the whip. Everyone seems spoiled about life and that anything goes nowadays. That's why we have to get into their world and figure out what we can do to turn them around. And one way I think we can do that is through the power of music, music means everything to them because it's powerful to them."

Lisa grew up in a Christian home. Her childhood was overshadowed with tragedy. "My mother got cancer when I was 12 years old," recalls Lisa. "I remember my dad sitting my brother and I down and telling us this and I asked 'Is she going to die?' My father said 'She might, we don't know.' Well, that was the beginning of my world falling apart. All of my security was ripped out from under my feet. My father was already sick, he had surgery every year for about 12 years for rheumatoid arthritis - that was very crippling. So our family was already living with that. My father finally died when I was 19, in our home, in my arms, very suddenly. It totally changed my life. My mother got better and then worse as the years went by and finally died three weeks after my wedding, from lymphoma, a cancer that attacks the lymph node system in the whole body."

The tragedy played havoc with Lisa's Christian life. "I felt that the church let me down in a way by not talking to me about my mother and father and what our family was going through. I'm not blaming the church, because I honestly don't think they knew to ask, or that anything was possibly wrong. I just needed someone neutral to come into my life and tell me everything was going to be alright and just to listen to how I was feeling and how I was being affected. I took on a lot as a 12 year old. Some 12 year olds might have really been unable to take it. But I did have the Lord on my side, I really did feel a sense of strength. At the time I was too spiritually immature to know what it was, but it was there. I didn't leave the church because I still believed in God. I didn't know what was happening, but I learned that God wasn't to blame for what was happening. But I do think that I was very weak at that time in my life and if, just if, someone had come along and pursued me into a cult, a different lifestyle, whatever, I think I really would've been tempted. Because at that moment in my life, I really needed someone to pay attention to me and to take me under their wing. I thank God I was raised in a Christian home and was never exposed to that. I just wished someone in the church had reached out to me. There was plenty of reaching done to my parents, but not to my brother or my sisters, or me. What changed for me three years ago, now almost four years ago, is reading a book called 'This Present Darkness' and also seeing a movie called 'Gods Of The New Age'. I had never really been taught about spiritual warfare before and realising that opened up my eyes, BIG TIME!! I finally knew how to do battle with Satan and what weaknesses he had been using my whole life to bring me down. This realisation has greatly affected me and definitely influences everything I'm about in this career. I don't want Satan to tell the same lies to other precious teens that I believed not so long ago. I'm determined to make a difference, Lord willing."

Lisa clearly takes her role as a communicator to teenagers seriously. "I want to talk to the teens about the issues they want to talk about. And right now the issues I feel are most important to them are sex, having a boy/girlfriend, who they hang with, etc. Most of the decision-making in their lives is hormonal. I know, I've been there, it hasn't changed that much. I think they need to hear about the pitfalls about sex, always having a boy/girlfriend, being thin, and the list goes on, from someone who still feels very much like 17 and who doesn't feel embarrassed to talk about them. They desperately need to see vulnerability amongst the people who talk to them, if they see that, they will listen and believe they are real. They want to believe that what they are feeling are valid feelings, which they are. We've all heard 'you'll grow out of it', etc. But for them right then and there it's life shattering and we need to remember that. Their feelings are very fragile and nowadays anything can send a kid over the edge."

After leaving high school Lisa began pursuing a career in music. It was only gradually that the breaks came. "A solo-career was something that I had pursued early on in my career in the pop market. Nothing really happened at the time so I continued to pursue the radio/TV commercial business, along with other session work, such as background vocals on other various artists' records. I had put the solo career on the back burner for a while until it felt right to me. Then in 1989 I seriously started thinking about the solo-career again to try it one last time before I decided that was it, and that's when I was reintroduced to Brown Bannister. At the time he was starting to formulate his company, Vireo, with Sparrow Records. Even though at the time I was still interested in pursuing a pop career, the Lord quickly directed me to the Christian music field and showed me that the kind of music I had been wanting to do forever, He was going to let happen in Christian music. And it is, finally."

Although none of Lisa's own songs are on 'My Freedom' she is a gifted songwriter. "Even though I wrote several songs that didn't make this record, hopefully they will be on the next one or somewhere down the line; I had a lot of creative control. I can't sing something I don't believe in or can't relate to. And Brown Bannister, Chris Harris and Mark Heimermann (Lisa's producers) were very sensitive to that fact. We've all known each other for a long time so that made it easy to talk about the issues in each song before recording them and what they meant for all of us."

'My Freedom' has been a highly successful debut album with several songs getting major US Christian radio play. "Things have gone great since the release of 'My Freedom', we've gotten great response from everyone. The teens especially loved it because they felt it was music that was meant for them, which it was. My future plans are to do another record, which we are starting on now, at least we are looking for material. We do have plans for crossover, we are trying to get interest in secular labels for distribution. We definitely have several crossover songs and I feel they will in God's time. I want to go into the world and teach all nations and I believe this is the way the Lord intends for us to do it, through music, Thank the Lord that Jesus didn't sit in the temple his whole life!"