Graham Kendrick: Recording his old classics for a new generation

Friday 21st May 2010

GRAHAM KENDRICK's 'The Very Best Of Graham Kendrick: Knowing You Jesus' album is released this month. Clem Jackson spoke to Graham about the project.

Graham Kendrick
Graham Kendrick

With 66 songs in the CCLI top 500, Graham Kendrick has established himself as the foremost Christian songwriter of the last three decades. A new album from him is always something to be anticipated - although one might think there's not too much to get excited about with his latest release. After all, a 'Greatest Hits' album usually means a collection of previously released tracks, culled from a number of albums over the years. But in this case you'd be wrong. Of the 28 tracks on his new double album 'The Very Best Of Graham Kendrick: Knowing You Jesus' 23 are brand-new recordings, produced by Nathan Nockels and Dan Wheeler and featuring duets with the likes of Matt Redman, Darlene Zschech, Paul Baloche, Martin Smith and also Nicki Rogers. Many listeners will be amazed by the freshness of such well-loved standards as "Shine, Jesus, Shine", "Meekness And Majesty" and "We Believe" to name but three.

Greatest Hits albums are a little like Lifetime Achievement awards, in that they can seem a bit of a double-edged sword - as though that's all there is to give. So when I caught up with Graham Kendrick recently I asked him why he had decided to release a 'Greatest Hits' album now.

Graham: Well I've been thinking about it for a long time now but other projects always seem to have priority; I was keen to do the Christmas album 'Dreaming Of A Holy Night' for example. But in a sense I am also driven by the new, the creative and writing new stuff, so that always tended to get priority. I was talking about doing this with Jonathan Brown before Fierce! became part of Kingsway and that transition delayed things a bit. But with all that Kingsway can bring to the project my feeling is that actually now is the right time.

Clem: How do you go about selecting just 28-30 songs from your vast repertoire for an album such as this one?

Graham: It's very difficult [laughter], and there are a lot more songs I would have loved to have had on the album. But I think we tended not to look just at the most popular songs, but those we felt had the most life in them in terms of the future. I want people to use songs, so I'm more interested in how presenting an older song in a fresh way might give it a new lease of life. All of these songs are about facilitating people's worship so for me the priority was to look at how can we present a song so that people would say 'yes I can use this in my church next Sunday'.

Clem: How do you go about bringing the freshness to these well-loved songs but still keep them recognisable and accessible?

Graham: One thing is to find somebody who comes to it afresh and that means going to the new generation. I think Kingsway made a great choice with Nathan Nockels, the young American producer who has worked with Matt Redman, Tim Hughes and others, who can listen with fresh ears. Nathan has done exactly that. I'm amazed at how well he has done it with these songs and I'm very, very pleased with what he has done. But he also respects where the song has come from and hasn't just 'dressed it up in clothes which don't quite fit'. You listen to the songs and they sound very fresh but they don't seem uncomfortable in their 'new clothes' as it were.

The other guy who made a big contribution to the album, particularly on the more acoustic tracks, is Dan Wheeler. I've done quite a lot of work with Dan over the years; he's helped me with demos for new songs. We gave him the job of producing some of the more acoustic tracks and I think he's done an excellent job.

Clem: There are some 'tweaks' in many of these songs (melody lines, timing, etc). How difficult is it for you to work with new arrangements of songs you have sung for many years?

Graham: It's not too difficult. I am going through the process now with my regular musicians of learning the new arrangements and that's an investment of time. But for them too it's refreshing the songs - it's just a simple matter of re-learning. You mentioned 'tweaks' and changes and there's a little bit of re-harmonisation. One of the songs, "Such Love", I re-harmonised myself. I sat down and I thought 'how would I re-harmonise it after all these years' and fairly quickly I came up with some chord variations which I think work very well. So I was particularly pleased to have made that contribution myself.

Obviously the public will give their own verdict but I actually think that this is an album which is not just interesting because it is old songs done in a new way, but because musically it is very interesting, very listenable to, with tracks you can listen to time and time again, just because there is musical interest there as well as the essential song itself.

Clem: What tips would you give to someone who wants to develop their songwriting skills?

Graham Kendrick: Recording his old classics for a new generation

Graham: If you are talking about writing for praise and worship, well I think it has to be developed within the worshipping community of the church. Songs should ideally flow out of the life of the church, expressing something of the journey everyone is on together. But songs also need to be tested out, proven within that context, an authentic expression of the whole body and not just one individual. It's fine for individuals to write songs expressing their individual feelings and thoughts, but when it is songs that are being put into the mouth of the whole church community, I think it is really important that they are developed within that.

The other thing I'd say is to test your songs with people who have the necessary skills to critique them musically, and from the point of view of content and theology. And don't be scared to edit and re-write. We often expect songwriting to have an instant flow, and in some cases the first idea that flows out is how it should stay but I think that in the more substantial songs (in terms of number of verses for example) it is important to work at the craft of songwriting and to just make the song the very best that it can be.

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Reader Comments

Posted by dean in notingham @ 07:01 on Feb 4 2011

Is this rerecorded and mixed versions of Graham's older songs - if so I've waited for this for years



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