I couldn’t resist teasing Melissa about hitting the high notes of “Joyful, Joyful” while eight months pregnant but she was a good sport about it, laughingly saying, “This album is my favorite thing we’ve done together. We’d been doing a record a year for a while, but people wanted a hymns project and we did as well. This just seemed like the right time to do it.”
Avalon members Greg and Janna Long and Jody McBrayer grew up as pastors’ kids, but Melissa did not. “I didn’t grow up singing hymns,” she shares. “I grew up in a Christian home but my church was more into contemporary music. The rest of the band would joke with me during concerts when a hymn was coming up, I’d peek my head out and say ”I don’t know the words,” she says laughingly. “But this was neat for me to now fully realize how amazing these songs are and have the chance to reintroduce them to my own generation. There’s so much depth to these words. I’m amazed as I realize all that these writers are saying, and all the emphasis is on the Lord, instead of us. Like “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” or “It Is Well.” Listen to all that they’re saying: no matter what we’re going through our challenge is to realize that our comfort and our joy doesn’t come from circumstances but from God alone. Who says that anymore?”
I asked Melissa about the details of how the group came up with the albums’ outstanding arrangements. “More than any other project we worked on this one together as a group. Producer Brown Bannister is the mastermind, of course, but this time we all wanted to put our two cents in. Janna and the others have known and loved these hymns for so long they wanted to put a new touch to them. They wanted to bring a contemporary touch without getting away from the message and I think we found a great compromise.”
Avalon has been touring with the Women of Faith conferences for the past two years, leading worship. “We realized that the women of those conferences are our core audience. Sometimes they seem to run the gamut from 12 to 80,” she laughs, “but for the most part our radio listener, as they’re called, is a mom, between 30-40, spending time in her car with lots of kids. And they might not listen to Christian radio or know who Avalon is, but the WOF conference is a great way to introduce our music to them, and it’s a great way for us to minister effectively because we’re reaching our core audience.” Before we hang up, Melissa mentions one more benefit of the Avalon/WOF connection. “It’s nice for Janna and I,” she laughs, “who have been up on stage while pregnant. We can be honest about what we’re going through, and not have to explain it to the men!”
Being real on stage. Always a good idea, right? To read the Suite Review of Avalon and their “Faith: A Hymns Collection, releasing October 17th, click here.
