It's amazing what can happen in one week. On Friday, Jan. 12, the
furniture was cleared out of a back office in Vineyard Boise's main
building. Exactly a week later, the room was a functioning 40-track
recording studio.
"It's kind of the fruit of who we are,"
said worship pastor Casey Corum. "This church has recorded worship
songs for a number of years, and we wanted to be able to do those
types of projects more often and more easily."
As
Casey explained the purpose of the studio, engineer Scott Pergande was
busy testing levels for its first project, a Why We Worship album for Vineyard
Music Group (VMG). "Prayer" will feature three worship leaders
from around the U.S., and Casey is producing several songs with
worship leader Jessica Ketola from the Vineyard
in Vancouver, Wash.
Casey also is playing guitar on the
project, and Vineyard Boise's Rex Bledsoe is playing bass. Vineyard
Music Group brought in Davin McLaird from Seattle to play drums and
Kelly Carpenter from Kennewick, Wash., to play piano and organ.
Passionate,
intimate worship has been a focus of the Vineyard since the movement
began in the early 1980s.
"When we are consumed with adoration
and worship for the Creator, we are becoming the men and women to whom
God wants to entrust his kingdom," Vineyard founder John Wimber wrote
in Witnesses for a Powerful Christ. "God is stirring,
stimulating, marking, touching, blessing, healing and calling a people
to himself, and he is forming and preparing them to be a kingdom of
people who will worship and reign."
With this vision in mind, Wimber and
other Vineyard pioneers formed a music label to capture the praises of
the movement. Today there are about a
thousand songs in Vineyard Music Group's collection.
During the past five years, worship
pastor Casey Corum and other musicians from Vineyard Boise have played
an increasing role in the movement's worship recordings. Two albums
from the Touching the Father's Heart series were recorded live at
Vineyard Boise: I
Love Your Ways (TFH #35, 1998) and Offering
of Love (TFH #41, 1999). Boise musicians also played on Winds
of Worship #13, Live
from Seattle.
To record these projects, Vineyard
Music Group had to travel hundreds of miles with thousands of dollars
in gear. Now that Vineyard Boise has its own equipment, recording live
worship here will be far less expensive and much more convenient. And,
Casey adds, it will happen more often.
In November, children's pastor Bud
Reberry recorded Songs of the Rockin' V. The album will be
mixed in the new studio and is scheduled to be released in the spring.
Another Vineyard Boise worship recording is tentatively scheduled for
the fall.
The studio has already been booked for
several independent recordings by local Christian musicians. The
projects that have been lined up so far will provide more than enough
revenue to cover the remodeling and equipment costs as well as Scott's
salary, Casey said.
As the "Prayer" recording shows, the
new studio also is likely to strengthen
Vineyard Boise's connection with Vineyard
Music Group.
VMG producer Joe Randeen first pitched
the project to Casey last fall, and plans were finalized in November.
Casey's first step was to choose the
band. Then he and Jessica began to consider what songs to record.
"We just kind of dialogued back and
forth, making different lists, and we narrowed it down that way,"
Jessica explained.
They
settled on six songs:
"We were basically shooting for
congregational songs. And since there are three producers and three
worship leaders on the album, we were looking for songs that would fit
together," Casey said. "Obviously, they needed to relate to the theme
of prayer. But in one sense, you could say that every worship song is
a prayer, because they all speak to God."
This weekend was the first time the
group gathered to work on the album. Now that the initial tracks have
been laid down, Casey and Scott will take a listen and decide what
needs to be fixed or added.
After recording the final tracks and
mixing the songs, the work done in Boise will be shipped to VMG's
studio in Anaheim for final mixing and mastering. "Prayer" is set to
be released later this year.
