Saturday, September 06, 2008
Singing to high heaven: Green Ridge Presbyterian Church
A bluegrass-gospel band will entertain at a church picnic. [ Send us your religion news: Your Community, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, VA 24010 or e-mail yourcommunity@roanoke.com ]
Photo courtesy of Jackie Adams
Green Ridge Presbyterian Church booked Richmond-based ChurchYard Grass to play their annual picnic in hopes of expanding the church's average attendance. Members Mike Sharp (from left), Tracy Pendleton, Kenny Epps, Donnie Warthan and Don Fussell played last March at the Gospel Chicken House in Montpelier.
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About two years ago, when members of the Green Ridge Presbyterian Church were planning for the congregation's 50th anniversary, they thought they would do something special.
Let's get a band, someone said.
Oh, my cousin plays the banjo in a bluegrass band, someone else replied.
"It was just the band of a relative from one of our members, so I really didn't know what to expect," the Rev. Pattie Sewell said. "But then they came down ... and everybody just loved them."
The church, on 7640 Alpine Road in Roanoke County, booked ChurchYard Grass, a Richmond-based group known in the mid-Atlantic's church and county fair bluegrass circuit. For this year's annual picnic, members of the church booked the group again, hoping the appeal of its bluegrass gospel songs will help add more people to their average attendance of about 50 people.
Playing their bluegrass gospel, ChurchYard Grass could attract any bluegrass listener -- their songs share the genre's signature soaring vocals, virtuoso dobro picking and evoke images of green piney hills. The chief difference between them other gospel bluegrass bands and secular artists with a broader reach -- such as Ralph Stanley, for example -- is the religious inclination of their songs.
Recurring themes in their songs -- with titles including "When the Book of Life Is Read" and "Power in the Blood" -- the lyrics explore themes of salvation and living life in the light of Jesus.
"Our greatest joy is to know that we have ministered to someone through gospel bluegrass," the band says on its Web site. And at least once, one man told them that their songs inspired him to return to his local church.
A truck driver from the Richmond area begrudgingly played one of the group's discs in his rig after his wife brought it back from a concert, said Tracy Pendleton, the band's banjo player.
The man, an alcoholic, later told the band that he stopped drinking that day.
"And I was shocked. Tears started coming from his eyes, and mine started swelling up," Pendleton said. "If that's the only person I reached through this band, I'm a satisfied person."
Pendleton and the other members of the group -- guitarist Kenny Epps, bassist Donnie Warthan, bassist Don Fussell, and dobroist Mike Sharp -- have been longtime friends. Four of the members formed the group in 1994 after friendly impromptu sessions at the Fort Lee Baptist Church in Richmond.
Since then, they've played to audiences of more than 1,000 people with gospel bluegrass mainstays such as the Lewis Family of Georgia and the Easter Brothers from North Carolina.
"The last time we played [at the Green Ridge Presbyterian Church], they made us feel like we were longtime friends," Pendleton said. "You have that great side benefit of making so many friends just because you go play for them."
