A daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts, and entertainment, produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from November 2014 – March 2020. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists.
Will Wadsworth and Alissa Bird are members of an unlikely music group from the Northeaster Los Angeles neighborhood of Eagle Rock. The Eagle Rock Gospel Singers have a new album, "Heavenly Fire," which blends many different types of classic American music genres.
The group got started in 2010 when Wadsworth's love of gospel music brought some friends together for casual collaborations.
"We started having parties," Wadsworth says. "We were friends, musicians, singers — many of them from a church that I was going to. We just had these people together and sang old gospel tunes."
Wadsworth and Bird met with The Frame's John Horn to discuss the formation of their group and their new album.
Talk a little bit about your religious upbringing. Alissa, did you grow up in a church? Were music and spirituals important to you as you came of age?
AB: Well, I definitely grew up in the Christian church, but I was never as familiar with this type of music until recently. So, it has been really fun to learn much more about this genre and revisit it through the music that we're making now.
WW: It's pretty much agnostic for the most part in my family. I can tell you that I've always had a deep respect for gospel music because I felt like I was listening to people [who] meant every single word that they were saying and were giving their entire bodies to the singing and the playing of this music.
Your music is not traditional gospel. There is a little bit of slide guitar. I don't even know how I would categorize it.
WW: I feel like the place where we're coming from, I guess to use a metaphor, it's sort of a river where all of these forms of American music kind of met. You have African American gospel, you have white Appalachian folk-country music, R&B and blues. We're trying to kind of echo what we love about that stuff.
Gospel is traditionally thought of in historical terms as being composed of African American singers. You are a largely Caucasian band. How did you guys wrestle or discuss the idea that you don't look like a traditional gospel group?
WW: I think it's a common misconception that gospel music is primarily an African American tradition. There are The Louvin Brothers. There are people in the Appalachian bluegrass tradition. Then you have the amazing African American artists, Sister Rosetta and Mahalia Jackson.
There is a whole list of people on both sides and I think that if you listen to a lot of the melodies and the nuances, you're going to see that they're often a marriage between these styles. These things met in many places. I think they influence each other in some respects.
You guys are signed to an indie label but you're in the middle of running a crowdfunding campaign to get enough money to tour. Is that the nature of being on an indie label or of the music you're doing? Why did you go out and raise money to get your show on the road?
AB: This is our first major tour. That has a lot to do with it. So we are just beginning to accumulate the things we need — a van, lodging and food. So I think that's because this is such a new experience for us.
WW: We're all taking unpaid leaves of absence from our jobs. We want to be able to do this again. We want to be able to record another album.
What is your day job?
WW: I am a 8th grade English teacher.
AB: I am also an English teacher. Hence the reason we're both able to come [here] in the afternoon. We're on summer break [laughs].
That means your lyrics are going to be grammatically perfect?
WW: [Laughs] Maybe.
The Eagle Rock Gospel Singers perform at The Echo on Thursday, August 13.