Reviewed by Trevor Kirk

Mitch was, you may recall, a close friend of Rich Mullins, and was travelling with him along Interstate 39 that Friday evening in September 1997, when they were involved in the car accident that took Rich’s life. This 11-track album contains three songs that Rich and Mitch wrote together (including “My Deliverer”, which appeared on ‘The Jesus Record’), production credits are given to Rich and Ragamuffin and This Train member Mark Robertson, Jordan Richter of This Train did the engineering, and Jimmy A took the sleeve photos. With all that experience and talent involved, one expects a top class product, which is what you get; it’s only to be expected that Mitch should at times sound uncannily like his late friend and teacher, and the opening track “Here And Now” is a case in point. As for “My Deliverer”, it gets a moody soundscape treatment, with grungy guitars and edgy vocals, totally different from the orchestra and kiddie choir anthem arrangement on ‘The Jesus Record’, and if truth be told, Mitch gets closer to the feel of Rich’s ‘Jesus Demo’ than did Rick & Co. Overall, there’s plenty of the mood of otherworldliness that is an inevitable result of losing someone close; “One Of These Days” is a case in point – “Maybe someday soon I’ll leave the world behind, when my weary soul learns that it has the wings to fly; and with a million angels I’ll sail across the sky into His arms of love…” In my humble opinion, the memory and legacy of Rich Mullins would be best served by forgetting about reissues and recycling of existing stuff, and encouraging Mitch and The Ragamuffins to move forward with new material, because this album proves that Mitch is capable of carrying on where Rich left off.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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