Old Enough to Forget

In May of 1981 I was given a pile of Christian records ... okay maybe not a pile, but it felt like a lot. I don't remember all of the titles but I do remember How the West was One by 2nd Chapter of Acts. This was my introduction to Phil Keaggy and his playing melted my brain. One of the vocalists in the band was a skinny young kid who sounded like a boy when he spoke and had a huge voice. It seemed inevitable that he'd release a solo album at some point. That point came in 1979 when Toward Eternity  was released, according to Mr. Ward's website he was 18 when he recorded the album, which is sort of mind boggling. I probably got it in 1982 when I was 19, and the most ambitious song I'd written to that point was "49 Rats Eating Beer-sausage." I remember reading the credits as I listened to the songs, and was really excited to see Phil's name listed on most of the tracks. The album opens with a one two punch that still makes me grin like an idiot. This is di...

I bought this album for my dad because it was supposed to be a "jazz" album. I thought he'd like it ... maybe he did, maybe he didn't. He did though keep it, and recently when my mum was packing up her place to move she asked me to go through the records and I should take anything I wanted. Years earlier when dad was still alive he'd let me pillage his collection and I "borrowed" quite a few classics from early Ray Charles to Harry Belafonte and those albums would be lost on my watch. So I went through again and picked out a bunch of stuff, mostly stuff I'd given him over the years and a few old gospel albums that looked interesting. It's kind of weird listening to More Than a Feeling now after all this time and recognizing bits and pieces of songs I'd not heard in decades. I don't think I played this more than a few times back in the early '80s but not heard it since. What drew me to the band were the players. I'd seen guitarist...