Fun-tastic!

had another rare opportunity to see a gospel music concert in my city this past Saturday.

Now in Fresno, California, one doesn't get the chance to see much southern-styled gospel music in person that often. So...since this was one of those rare occasions, I went to the Calvary Church of the Nazarene in nearby Clovis to see a now traditional western gospel music event....the 17th annual gospel music Funtastic.

The event began as a place for the gospel artists out here to gather and sing someplace en route to the Western Gospel Music Association's annual get-together in Southern California. And since Fresno is already the home of the Great Western Southern Gospel Fan Festival in April, this seemed to be a logical adjunct to that event.

Some of our region's better artists were there. I suppose the main attraction was the Herb Henry Family from Modesto, artists that I have effusively praised in this corner of the Web for some time. Herb is a good friend, and I feel that his family group, consisting of Herb, his wife, and their three children(two grown daughters and a grown son)is as good a mixed group as there is in this country.

I have always felt sort of paternal toward Herb's group...for we played thir songs on our KMJ radio show since they first began singing. I have literally seen(and heard)this group grow up and mature...and even though they were a little ragged in the beginning, they stayed with it and are now a quite accomplished, professional singing group.

And their opening set was everything it could have been...if not more!

They sang several of the songs they have recently recorded, and Herb has become quite the emcee, segueing from song to song expertly and with dispatch. The Clovis crowd loved them, as they do at the GWSGFF every year. They make it a tough task for any group to follow them, and as Lee Roy Abernathy used to characterize it, they are making more and more artists "live hard".

But the other groups I saw, the California Melody Boys, the Golden State Quartet, and the Jim Davis family, followed the HHF, and each was impressive in their own way....especially the Jim Davis family, who I saw for the first time just after the GWSGFF in Riverdale at their home church, when they opened for the Liberty Quartet.

I wrote here about that concert at the time...and I remain amazed at how good the JDF is. They appear with their own band(actually, a bass guitar, a drummer, and Jim at the piano)and their own songs(Jim is the writer of the Gold City hit, "Preach The Word"), and a folksy enthusiasm that is infectious.

Because I work early Sunday mornings, I had to leave at intermission, so I didn't get to see how the Funtastic ended....but of what I did see, it was indeed "funtastic"...gospel music is alive and well in this part of the country, no doubt.

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Reader Comments

   (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) ~ 11/23/2008

Hey John,
It was good to see you at the Gaither concert last night.

As you know, I always read your great articles about the history of Southern Gospel music. But I never came across this blog until now. I was reading back through the last couple of months and found your excellent review of the recent Melody Boys concert in Fresno, CA. I just wanted to thank you for all the nice things you had to say about me in the article. I sure appreciate it. You know how much I love Southern Gospel.

Take care and keep writing!

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