Music Notes | New project for Cheri Keaggy
Dove Award-winning singer/songwriter Cheri Keaggy has released her ninth album, No Longer My Own.
The songwriter said the project, which she also produced, brought tears to her own father.
“After he had a chance to give it a good listen, he called me,” Keaggy said. “He said, ‘You wouldn’t have been able to write these songs if you hadn’t gone through the things you’ve been through.’ He went on to say, ‘This is your best one yet.’ It touched me that it moved him so deeply.”
Keaggy said she believes this project might be her most bold recording to date.
“Brokenness humbles you and makes you more sensitive to the world around you and, perhaps, even more in tune with the Father’s heart,” she said.
One of the most poignant songs on the album is her newly penned, “Be My Sabbath,” which serves as a desperate cry for God’s restorative power and refueling. Keaggy wrote the song after experiencing the sheer elation of reaching her goal on the Kickstarter campaign that funded the CD, and the unanticipated physical and spiritual burnout that followed.
“The hectic pace of life, work, and ministry simply caught up with me, and the usual things I did to find renewal wouldn’t work,” she said. “I was stuck.”
Waller title single featured in ‘War Room’
John Waller, former frontman for the band According to John, has released his most recent solo project, Crazy Faith, with its title track featured in the new movie “War Room.”
The video for the title single had already received more than 20,000 views by the time the album—his first in four years—had released.
The movie, created by Alex and Stephen Kendrick, the award-winning creators of Fireproof, Courageous and Facing the Giants, was released on Aug. 28. Waller, a Georgia native, was at the movie’s Atlanta premiere and walked the red carpet with the Kendrick brothers.
“I knew when I heard ‘Crazy Faith’ it would be the perfect song for ‘War Room’ and would inspire people all over the nation,” said Alex Kendrick.
“Crazy Faith” is not the first Kendrick-Waller pairing. The title track of his second solo project “While I’m Waiting” also landed a spot in the Kendrick hit “Fireproof.”
In addition to “Crazy Faith,” the album also features “I Know My God” and “The Orphan Song,” as well as live bonus tracks of “While I’m Waiting” and “As For Me And My House.”
Tree 63 release long-awaited album
South African rock band Tree63 emerges from its seven-year studio hiatus on Sept. 11 with the release of its new album, Land.
The project follows a series of reunion events last year in South Africa and a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year.
The project features “The Storm,” which the band released as part of its Kickstarter campaign. Vocalist and guitarist John Ellis calls the anthem an honest look at man’s need for something bigger than himself as the lyrics capture a man treading water while crying out to God after being swept overboard.
“My own recent experience leads me to the realization that even though we believe we will reach our destination across the hazardous sea God asks us to cross, it won’t be an easy voyage, and often we arrive shipwrecked and battered,” Ellis said. “The guarantee, however, is that we at least arrive.”
Other songs on the album, “Ship” and “Standing on It,” continue with the stormy sea theme, creating what Ellis called “a kind of Jonah-like deliverance tale.”
