Tony Cummings meets up with one of the great voices of CCM, RUSS TAFF.

Amy Grant once told me about the tendency of gospel performance making singers into some kind of spiritual prostitute, where you are constantly seeking some blessing or word from the Lord so that you could instantly share it from the stage. Did you feel like that?

"My whole life I've felt that way. Studying the Bible does increase your relationship with God, but you're studying the Bible to get something to get up and tell people. I just don't think it is supposed to be that way. In fact, in the States, especially in the Christian culture, the whole orientation is 'what's God saying to you these days?' Followed by 'and what's God wanting you to tell us?' In fact I got one of those even when I was in Finland just a couple of days ago. God hasn't told me nothing to tell you people, you know. I do good just to get out of bed and try to talk to Him through the day and live without messing up too bad. That's just kinda where I'm at - learning all over again why I am a Christian, why He died, and my part in this."

What effect did your father have on your spiritual life?

"Of course Dad was one of the most major influences in my life with God and everything else. I don't like to talk about this a lot, but he was an alcoholic. So you grew up watching him with a double life because he would preach and then they would throw us out of the church because he was drunk. He'd get drunk, and I'm 13 years old and I'd say 'Wait a minute...I never see him because he's working for you people, he has a problem and you throw him out...' It's something he's battled with a long time. The older I got the more I'd begin to understand. But I didn't want to understand. I wanted to hold on to what I'd been taught because that's what gave me meaning, that's what gave me purpose. I got out of bed in the morning and I knew who I was and I was afraid to look somewhere else for who I was and to let all this stuff go. But I had to, 'cause it was choking me, it was absolutely choking me. And I got very angry at God, very angry at church. But I've begun to see that God didn't do this to me, people did."

Since the spiritual shake up in your life you've gained something of a reputation as a man who is slightly bucking the safe world of gospel music.

"I have such strong feelings and I watch my mouth, especially in the States because everybody's been saying for the last three years, 'What's wrong with Russ, what's wrong with Russ anyway? He's not doing the same thing he used to do'."

You mean jumping through the hoops?

"Oh yeah, and saying what everybody wants you to say. It's like a very dear friend of mine, John Hiatt. Four years ago I was asking him 'John, what's an artist? I don't even know what an artist is.' I have been taught and trained to write and sing and do certain things. When you sit down to write a song it's 'what do they want to hear?' And that's the way I was raised. And then 'John, help me. Tell me what an artist is, tell me what a performer is, cause all I know how to do is get up there and do what I've always done. And now I can't do that any more. I can't get my little spiritual five points here and get up and do my concerts.' So I stopped. A lot of promoters stopped using me. They wanted what I'd always said. Because if you doubt who you are then you cause me to doubt who I am because we've all been saying the same things and so if you have a question and you verbalise it scares everybody."

But after the Imperials, after 'Walls Of Glass' and 'Medals' you came back. Different maybe, but you came back with 'Russ Taff' - in my book an awesome album. How did that happen?

"I was pretty well ready to walk away from all of it, everything. Just say 'I'm going to hang it up because this isn't good, what's happening to me isn't good, and what I'm doing to those people isn't good, because I'm doing to them the same thing that was done to me.' I felt that until I had something different to say I'm not going to say anything. Word was saying 'We need a record, we need a record' and I was going 'I have nothing to say.' But when I heard Michael Bean's song, 'I Still Believe' I just started crying. A friend of mine had brought me this record by the Call and said 'Listen to this song'. It's so believable, 'cause if I could have sat down and penned a song at that moment that's exactly what I would have written, 'cause I sat there in the bathroom of the hotel for an hour and cried and listened to this song over and over: 'through the pain, through the grief, through the heartache, through the tears, I still believe.' And I found that I did, though not the way I used to. So I went in the studio and began working on the 'Russ Taff album. Today I've got to the point where my relationship with God is very personal. I don't want to get up on stage and fly in front of everybody. But I feel today, I feel like a little kid with Him, I'm not this man of great faith and power that they built me up to be. The easiest thing for me to have done is to have followed all my peers and moved on into television and moved into all of that stuff, had my following, had my flock... Maybe that's why my Dad drank, maybe he couldn't deal with it either, I don't know. He's doing good today though, he's doing real good. You just reach a collapse, you fall on your face and then you say 'where do I go?' and I think that's where He wants us. I really do."

How close were you to finishing completely with the Christian music scene?

"I remember finishing up a tour when I felt I had nothing to say. It was like 'I wanna go home' but you have a contract and if I don't show up I get sued. So I go and I play and it amazed me how God would minister to me while I was on the platform. I wasn't ministering to the masses, I was standing up there singing my songs and if I had
something to say I would say it, but I didn't have my five scriptures and all that. I remember several old songs that I would do when I would feel His presence when I would sing them. And I'd think like 'where's this coming from?' But there was enough truth in the things I sang that it would minister to me. I wasn't used to that, I was used to give and give and give. I'd never stood in my concerts just like everybody else out there just saying 'I need you, I need your help, I need your strength' because I was supposed to be the one up there giving it. And all of a sudden as I got off the pedestal He began to slowly talk to me. But see I went through a phase of about six months where I couldn't even read the Bible because as I opened the Bible to read all I could hear were sermons. I'd read a Scripture and I knew four sermons from that one Scripture. A friend of mine told me one time 'Just read the red. Don't read anything else, just read the red.' So I'd take Matthew and just start reading the words of Jesus. And after a little bit it began to be real fresh to me, something that he said and all of a sudden I didn't hear all those old sermons anymore. And then he and I started a really unique relationship that I'd never had in my entire life before, to where he's God and I'm just a little guy down here and I write songs and I play songs. I'm home a lot these days."

The 'Russ Taff and 'The Way Home' albums have an amazing honesty and freshness about them.

"I've been fortunate...Let me just say, I'm 36 but I feel 16, like for the first time I'm starting to take control of me, starting to take control of my music, I'm starting to take control of what I want to say and how I want to say it. The last couple of records have been the stepping stones, like okay, no more games, no more playing the part. I'll write what's real whether it sells or not. Like this last record, the company gave me a lot of money to make a record and it was just my band and we were in a little place outside of Nashville and just moved in. We would cut basic tracks and we had time and money to overdub and then if we start losing it let's start over, they said 'this ain't working' and we had a lot of time and energy. The Way Home' was the first one I had control of, that was just me, and my guitar player that we've been playing together for 16 years. I had a friend tell me that, when I first went solo he said it would take three or four records before you start homing in on who you are and what you are. Like when I was with the Imperials. We were on the road 280 days a year and Michael Omartian would do everything. We'd fly in, spend eight days and put the vocals on and take off. So my first solo record I'd never been from beginning to end. It was like such an education.