Copious Notes

Israel Houghton played an abbreviated set at Ichthus. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Israel Houghton noted from the stage at Ichthus Saturday night that his set had to be cut short due to time constraints. Somewhere in the late afternoon Saturday, the event fell well behind schedule.

Darkness, which had fallen during the second to last act on Thursday and Friday nights, was descending as Quest Community Church pastor Pete Hise was wraping up his keynote address, and headliner Delirious didn’t hit the stage until 11:22 p.m., more than a full hour after the hand’s scheduled start time.

Before Delirious’ set, fans near the front of the stage amused themselves chanting, “We love Jesus, yes we do. We love Jesus, how about you?” over a barrier that divides the amphitheater in front of the stage.

Delirious frontman Martin Smith during the megaphone portion of Solid Rock.

“It’s late,” Delirious frontman, Martin Smith yelled as the natily-attired band took the stage, “but we’re up for it if you are.”

With an approving cheer, Delirious plowed into its final Kentucky concert with classics such as Rain Down and Majesty.

As Saturday turned into Sunday, Smith was reading scripture in the midst of performing History Maker, which may be good, because a lot of the people in the amphitheater probably won’t be making services this morning.

A pair of backup singers with the 16-member Ascenxion Band. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

TobyMac wasn’t booked for this year’s Ichthus Festival, but around the time the Ascenxion Band took the stage Saturday afternoon, the festival started feeling like Diverse City, the idyllic community Toby named his band and one of his albums after.

Christian music and guitar legend Phil Keaggy performed with Ascenxion.

This year’s Ascenxion Band put 16 musicians on stage, and only two of them were white, one being guitar legend Phil Keaggy.

That and the very gospel, funk-flavored set Ascenxion delivered didn’t seem to bother the mostly white audience that grooved along to familiar and unfamiliar music, including the Bob Marley classic Exodus.

Ascenxion leader Shake Anderson even went into the crowd once, saying he wanted to meet his people as he walked along the center thrust aisle shaking hands.

That flavor continued after worship when Israel Houghton took the stage with his band New Breed. Houghton talked with us last week about breaking down barriers and getting people over any idea Christian music or people should be segregated. He talked about the quote that says Sunday morning is the most segregtaed time of the week and noted maybe churches are starting to move away from that. Maybe Christian Music Festivals are too.

Israel Houghton and New Breed make an Ichthus debut Saturday.

Click the play button to hear our interview with Israel Houghton:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Israel Houghton has heard the criticism over the years.

“When I moved to Nashville, I basically had people saying, ‘You’re too black for this, you’re too white for that, pick a style,” Houghton says. “And I remember saying, ‘What happens when we get to heaven? What section are we planning on being in?’”

It was a purposefully rhetorical, idiotic question, Houghton says.

Over six albums and more than a decade, Israel & New Breed have energized and sometimes puzzled Christian music fans with a mix of styles from traditional gospel to world music to rock ‘n’ roll, with lots of other elements thrown in. It’s a mashup that has won Houghton critical acclaim as well as Grammys and Dove Awards.

But it sometimes left the core audience, the church, a bit puzzled.

“So much of it is at our core,” Houghton says, “so much of it is rooted in ignorance, and a lot of it just has to do with stereotypes and skin tones, and we’ve always done church this way so we should keep doing it this way.

“Worship, in its nature, ought to be encompassing, it ought to be multicultural, and it ought to have the ability to tear walls down. Finally, thanks be to God, we’re finally seeing where that is becoming less and less and less of an issue.”

And Houghton is venturing into new territory, including the Ichthus Festival, where he and New Breed will play Saturday night.

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Israel Houghton's new album is a solo effort.

Review: Israel Houghton, The Power of One

Few Christian pop artists have as many styles at their disposal as Israel Houghton. His music usually comes in a modern gospel style, but he also has funk, hip hop, ballads, a world sound and even a punky side to work with.

Houghton has usually used this palette for worship music, but his latest effort, The Power of One, is more of a straight pop effort, and one of the best listens in quite a while for the genre.

There is a lot on this effort that stands alone: the worshipful I Receive, gospel basic Everywhere That I Go, soulful Sing (Redemption’s Song) with Delirious’ Martin Smith,   overpowering You Found Me with Tobymac and the conscience prodding The Power of One (Change the World).

That last track is probably most illustrative of this disc’s headline: Israel Houghton’s solo album. With songs such as the social justice rallying cry of the title track, this is more of a personal than universal statement, which is what we are used to hearing from Israel Houghton and New Breed. There is also the greater flexibility of an artist who does not need to check his vision with anyone else. So we get moments like Houghton swinging out of Sing into the brassy soul of Better to Believe, or the album gearing down to the groove of U R Loved.

On full display is the universal appeal of Houghton’s music. You may not like everthing he does, but most listeners should be able to find something. Still it all comes across as uniquely Houghton. He’s been called a chamelon, but you always recognize his form.

Other new releases: After several months of fairly tepid Tuesdays, this week gave us new tunes not only from Mr. Houghton, but also Mandisa’s Freedom — which we will review next week — and a new farewell concert effort from Delirious, My Soul Sings, which reminds us why we’ll miss these guys.

Delirious frontman Martin Smith in India in January. A visit to India inspired the CompassionArt project.

Click play to hear our interview with Martin Smith, in which he talks about CompassionArt, India and the end of Delirious.

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Over its last couple of albums, Delirious has become increasingly vocal about poverty and disease around the world.

One of the British band’s most recent worship anthems, Our God Reigns, pricked listeners and singers consciousnesses with the idea that the cost of an order of Chinese take-out food could cover the cost of medicine for an impoverished victim of AIDS.

“I remember going to India for the first time and being completely shocked, like being hit over the head with a baseball bat,” says Martin Smith, the group’s leader singer and songwriter. “I realized that people lived on the same planet as me with completely nothing. That set a massive thing off in me, feeling like I couldn’t just get on a plane and do nothing. I had to make a personal response.

“That was the beginning of Delirious trying to find new things to say, and react to what was going on inside of us.”

That reaction has come to fruition on a much larger scale, in a new multi-artist project called CompassionArt.

The new album, released Jan. 27, features 14 songs by 19 of the biggest names in contemporary Christian music, including Michael W. Smith, Amy Grant, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Israel Houghton and Tobymac.

All of the artists involved waived all of their fees, including songwriting and royalties, so the proceeds from the album and its companion book will all go to CompassionArt and the 16 international charities it has selected.

“All of the people involved in the project had been talking for the past few years about how it is not enough for us to just do our thing and write songs and that sort of stuff,” Smith says. “We started to see it as our responsibility to be a voice.

“We thought, what would happen if all of us got into a room and started writing songs together, and that’s what happened in January ‘07 in Scotland.”

Smith says getting all the songwriters together was far easier than he expected.

“Now the challenge is sustaining it,” Smith says.

The singer says the measure of success for this project will be a bit different than, “selling loads of records. It would be when we see lives changed on the ground. When we see people that haven’t got water, suddenly have clean water, when we see people that enough food and become part of a sustainable community and have anti-retroviral drugs and malaria meds. That would be an incredible thing to happen from this project. That would be extraordinary.”

Smith will be making CompassionArt the focus of his attention, as Delirious is splitting up after final shows this year, ending in November.

“It’s a sad time, but also happy in looking forward to new opportunities,” Smith says. And CompassionArt is, “The thing we wake up thinking about every morning.”

Our Idol lands a deal: American Idol season six artist Phil Stacey, who has been writing the American Idol blog for LexGo.com, has landed a recording deal with Provident/Reunion Records. Stacey was born in Richmond and was raised in Fairfield, Ohio. He released his first album on Lyric Street Records in 2008. He is now working with producer Brown Bannister on his Provident debut, which is slated for late Summer 2009 release.