The Gaithers: A Strong Team In Gospel Music

The songwriting profession can boast many successful partnerships – Rodgers and Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin, Livingston and Evans, Bacharach and David. But when it comes to writing gospel music, Bill and Gloria Gaither’s partnership has spawned some of the genre’s most classic tunes.

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Between them they’ve written nearly 500 songs and recorded more than 30 albums. As members of the Bill Gaither Trio, they won Grammys in 1973 and 1975 for Besty Inspirational Performance. Their album, Alleluia! A Praise Gathering for Believer , was the first Christian album to be certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.

“Because He Lives” won Gospel Song of the Year in 1974, and in 1977 Bill was awarded the Gospel Music Association’s Award of Merit for his contributions to the industry. Bill has won the Dove Award for Songwriter of the Year eight times and was inducted into the GMA Hall of Fame in 1982. Gloria won the Dove Award for Song of the Year in 1985 for “Upon This Rock” and was Songwriter of the Year in 1986.

Additionally, they’ve written six musicals that are performed in churches all over the country, and Gloria has authored six books. They perform concert tours throughout the country with singer Gary McSpadden as the Bill Gaither Trio and Bill and Gary also perform with Michael English and Jimmy Murray as the Gaither vocal Band.

Not bad for two school teachers from Alexandria, Indiana who met at a nearby high school and went on to become celebrated members of the music community, yet remain in the Indiana community where their careers began.

Bill confesses he had always had an interest in music, but had become an English teacher to earn a secure living. On the first day of his new job at the high school from which he’d graduated, he met a substitute French teacher also on her first day at work.

“I didn’t marry her because she’s a lyricist,” Bill said. “I married her because I love her. And the lyrics started coming along when I’d start writing and I was in a hole. I could write so much, then I’d say ‘honey come finish this.’ And the earlier songs were like that, things I’d get started with a chorus or something, she’d finish. Then as things started going along she started doing more of it and it just gradually evolved.”

“I don’t even know if we could remember the first song we wrote together,” Gloria said. “Probably nobody remembers the first songs they wrote together. A lot of our earlier songs were what we call forgettable songs.

“I never actually thought about being a lyricist when I was growing up,” Gloria continued. “But I’d always written things, poetry and prose. I grew up in a home of words. My mother was a writer and my father was a minister so he wrote sermons and things. So I grew up around words and always wanted to be a writer, but I never would have thought of being a lyricist. I’m glad that it’s happened because it’s been a real stimulating kind of writing because you get to write all different kinds of music.

“And I guess that brings me to the fact that the only thing that makes writing gospel music different is the message. The musical styles we work with are all different kinds of musical styles. That’s what makes it fun. You have a lot of variety as a lyricist.”

The Gaithers say their songs begin as seeds planted by the people in their lives and the evens surrounding them.

“Bill’s the musician and I’m the lyricist and I think we both come up with ideas out of our life and questions and needs and other people’s needs and what we sense in the culture around us and in our own hearts,” Gloria said. “A lot of people ask which comes first, the music or the lyrics and our answer is always the idea.”

Bill says he and Gloria are not the 9-5, in the office and at the desk type of songwriters.

“We usually wait until we have some ideas that keep building up and something that we feel we really want to say. And then we make time to do it,” he commented. “Sometimes it comes spontaneously, but most of the time it comes after we’ve had a chance to live with it for a while. As we said, we really start from an idea basis. And you can’t write until you’ve got ideas, so it would be very tough for me to go in every morning and say at 9 o’clock today I’m gonna write something. I know there are writers that do that, but it would be tough for me to do.”

Gloria concurred.

“I think by the time an idea really gets a hold of you and you live with it for a while, it forces you to make time for it’s verse, but to just go in and say I’m gonna make a song happen today, that’s not been a plan that’s worked for us.”

In addition to writing together they also collaborate with other gospel songsmiths such as Michael W. Smith, Donny McGuire, Billy Smiley, J.D. Miller and Bill George.

“At this stage, the lyrics I think we feel still are best done by Gloria,” Bill said. “But I feel better co-writing on the music, maybe because I’ve been doing it for 25 years and I just enjoy the young input.”

There are many types of gospel music being written these days and some people are opposed to Christian rock combining religious lyrics with rock and roll rhythms. The Gaithers are in favor of the variety heard in Christian music today.

“At this point some of the music with the stronger muscle is taking a message to the street, the electronic sound that can be taken from contemporary music,” Bill said. “Music is a vehicle that we use to take ideas to as many people as we can get the ideas to.”

One of the benefits gospel songwriters enjoy is the opportunity to relate their ideas in a variety of venues. Gospel music isn’t restricted to albums and concert tours. Good Christian songs become an integral part of many church worship services and religious activities.

“It’s really one thing to hear a professional singer with a lot of good studio production do a song,” Bill said. “But it’s quite another thing just to hear regular people in some little church somewhere with an upright piano singing the same song. Or hearing the same song dome by a 100 voice choir, but somehow, somewhere it reaches regular people where they can sing it and it becomes part of their lives. That’s quite exciting.”

In addition to the individual tunes the Gaithers have written, they’ve also woven their songs into musicals. Then Came the Morning, Alleluia! A Praise Gathering for Believers, We Are So Blessed and Kids Under Construction are among the six musicals they’ve written.

“We have a new Easter musical that we’re very excited about,” Gloria enthused. “It’s called In the Garden and it’s a story about redemption as told stretched across three gardens which are Eden, Gethsemane and the Garden of the Tomb. It will be performed in churches all over the country this Easter.

“We only write musicals when we have big ideas and we’ve only written two Easter works in our 25 years of writing. This is the second and we’re very excited about it.”

Gloria says writing musicals is different and presents a unique challenge for a songwriter.

“A musical, if it lives up to what it ought to be, I believe it should be a big idea, a breakthrough, a brand new insight of some kind. And then you create or find the pieces that best communicate that idea.

“In our case we had a couple of songs that had come out of our thinking, but then what happens is you have to create the rest because there can be no wasted time. You can’t just include songs in the hopes of having them in a musical. We create the musicals so that the 50 minutes you have to work with is as powerful a 50 minutes as there can possibly be. You have to focus and not write about everything under the sun, but write what the musical is about.”

Churches interested in producing any of the Gaithers’ musicals can obtain more information from the Gaithers offices in Alexandria, IN. The Gaither operation there includes a sales and marketing company, a recording studio, a production and management division, a promotions agency and an administrative, licensing and publishing division.

What advice to Bill and Gloria have for other creative minds, in small towns or big cities, who aspire to write Christian music?

“I think I would tell them to go slowly and don’t try to make it happen overnight, especially in our field,” Bill said. “Artists don’t happen overnight and good songs don’t happen overnight. Good things take time. And I think I would tell them don’t get their monthly living expenses up so high that their monthly expenses are dictating their art and ministry, that they’re writing when they don’t have anything new to say, just to pay bills.”

When asked to define the difference between a good song and a great song, Bill responded, “I think it has to start with a unique idea, even though it may be an age old truth, you are looking at it through a new window at least and expressing it in a different way. I think you have to start with that.

“Then secondly, I think the title or hook, and I don’t like that word, but it’s the only word we have to work with, the hook has to suggest more than the words say. And that’s the power of poetry. And third, I think it has to be musically in a setting that that is special that it fits and is different.”

“And I think for anything to be great it has to be universal,” Gloria added. “I think that one of the things you look for in a great song is something that really triggers a nerve, something we all feel, something that makes us happy, sad, or answers all our questions. It has to relate.

“I guess Bill and I have spent our lives working with the question, ‘so what?’ I mean there are a lot of true statements and a lot of true Biblical statements. There are a lot of true ideas, I think a song or any kind of piece has to answer the question, ‘so what, what does it have to do with me? Does it make me any better? What has this got to do with me tomorrow morning when I’m raisin my kids or living with Bill or whatever I’m doing’. I think a great song has to do it musically and verbally in a way that captivates us.”

Bill and Gloria also acknowledge that in the field of gospel songwriting they also have the added responsibility of being Biblically correct.

“With message sort of writing, especially the kinds of things that deal with theological concepts, I think there’s an added responsibility of being true to the word,” Gloria said. “So maybe there’s more research involved. I mean it’s one thing to have an idea that you say there needs to be a song that says such and such a thing. Then I think there is a time when we’ve taken up to a year to write a song, researching to make sure that it’s theologically sound, that it’s Biblical, that it’s stateable. Maybe we end up saying this isn’t an idea we can write a song about. Maybe we should write a book about this. Maybe it’s didactic.

“In a secular song sometimes I think if you just say it well then you have lived out you’re responsibility to that idea. When it has the added dimension of being Biblical or a theological idea, in addition to being a responsible poet, you need also for your research to be solid. You have to do your homework before you actually find the word.”

Bill agreed and added, “I think most people write out of their heart and their experiences, and most Christian writers down through the years have always felt they should take the age old gospel and put in terms their generation understands. In all fairness, probably most of the ideas that we have written had been 100 maybe 200 years ago, and in fact the truth came out of the Bible. Solomon says nothing is new under the sun.

“But I think for a Christian writer, each generation of writers feel as though there are songs that exist, but not songs that exist quite the way they want to say whatever it is. I don’t know if it’s any more of a motivation than for a secular writer, but for us it’s a very high motivation, the fact that we feel we’ve discovered some truths that have been very meaningful to us and we want to share this with other people.”

 

 

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