In June ’10 I provided music for a conference at which controversial author/ activist Brian McLaren was the keynote speaker. At the start of the conference Brian quietly approached me and asked if I would mind learning a song he hoped could be the theme song of the weekend.  The song immediately charmed me and over the course of the weekend I knew I wanted to record it. Hoping Brian might know who wrote it, I was pleased to discover it was Brian’s own composition.  Considering the vitriol he has absorbed as a result of his writings, Brian’s song has an arresting, poignant authenticity that inspires me toward a greater commitment to this most vital virtue.

Kindness

Written by Brian McLaren
Performed by Steve Bell

Lyric

Christ has no body here but ours
No hands no feet here on earth but ours.
Ours are the eyes through which he looks
On this world with kindness

Ours are the hands through which he works
Ours are the feet on which he moves
Ours are the voices through which he speaks
To this world with kindness

Through our touch, our smile, our listening ear
Embodied in us, Jesus is living here

Let us go now, inspirited
Into this world with kindness

Click this image to Order the anticipated album Kindness from Christian/Folk Troubador Steve Bell.

Buy Online

Link

Link

Digital revolution inspires musician to take different path

The challenge

Steve Bell hung up the phone and shook his head. Another Christian bookstore had gone bust. This meant that another shipment of compact discs, DVDs and songbooks would have to be written off as bad debts; the fourth time in the last two years. Combined with a recent concert cancellation, the Juno-winning singer-songwriter was left wondering if it was time to either hang up the guitar or to find a new way to play it.

The background

Mr. Bell grew up on the Canadian prairies as the middle child of a pastor’s family. After finishing high school he played in a variety of musical ventures, including the folk trio Elias, Schritt and Bell.

In the latter half of the 1980s, he began to explore the connection between his Christian faith and his music. This culminated in the 1989 release of his first solo projectComfort My People. After being turned down by several established labels, Bell released the album on the independent Winnipeg-based record label, Signpost Music.

The next 15 years featured a steady flow of developments including over a dozen albums, two Juno awards, and concerts in regions as diverse as Poland, Guatemala, Bangladesh and Israel. Part of Mr. Bell’s success was also attributable to the synergistic working relationship he had with his partner, recording engineer Dave Zeglinski, who managed the business end of things.

Things were looking up for the musician that Billboard Magazine called “a Canadian musical treasure.” In fact, things were looking up so much that in the early 2000′s, Signpost Music signed a half dozen other artists, including Carolyn Arends and Bob Bennett.

A masterstroke had been a symphonic endeavour featuring Mr. Bell performing with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, followed by the release of the 2007 album The Symphony Sessions. The project was so well received he had repeated the concert experience across Canada with symphonies in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Kitchener, Thunder Bay, Hamilton and Ottawa (and even a U.S. date with the Nashville Symphony).

Life, as they say, was good.

The problem

Five years ago, Mr. Bell and Mr. Zeglinski begun to notice change in the industry. It wasn’t incremental, but quantum; not single-dimensional but multi-faceted.

First, the music industry began migrating to the Internet. The digitization of music had dire consequences on Mr. Bell. It meant that people were less inclined to pay $20 for an album, particularly when they could buy a used copy for a fraction of the price or download some – or all – of the albums online.

In addition, many specialty faith-based bookstores were either shutting down or going broke as big boxes like Wal-Mart and Best Buy increasingly dominated the music industry. This shift was critical to Mr. Bell as each independent’s closing meant one less distribution point for albums and concert tickets. In a world increasingly moving toward iTunes, Amazon.com and the Big-Box model, old distribution formulas were being shaken to their core.

Complicating matters was the fact that recording a digital product had become so easy; meaning, essentially anyone could get into the ‘music ministry’ business. Adding insult to injury, many of these new entrants were willing to cut their album and ticket prices in order to “get the gig” and “sell the album.”

Mr. Bell was fond of an Old Testament-inspired maxim that said “You can’t see the new Jerusalem if you can’t leave the old Egypt.” But what exactly, he and Mr. Zeglinski wondered, did the “new Jerusalem” look like? And while he knew he almost certainly had to let go of some parts of his old business model, what parts were essential to keep?

The solution

In early 2010, Mr. Bell and Mr. Zeglinski went through a no-holds-barred re-assessment of their accomplishments over the past two decades, as well as an in-depth analysis of the current marketplace. Taking leads from the entrepreneurial innovations of fellow Canadian Loreena McKennitt, the pair came to several conclusions about how they would proceed.

First, they sensed they were called to keep making music, but in a different way. This ‘different way’ meant making some tough choices; one of which included releasing all of the artists they’d brought into Signpost only a few years earlier in order to focus exclusively on Mr. Bell’s music.

A second key change was moving toward articulating a new business model; more specifically, a new funding model that included the launch of IncarNATION Ministries. The organization was created to allow Mr. Bell’s supporters to become modern-day ‘patrons of the arts.’ This marked an important shift for Mr. Bell, as it reminded him that his raison d’être centred on addressing people’s primal need for God-inspired beauty. A third key change involved seeking grants available to registered Canadian arts groups, which included Signpost Music. While IncarNATION – founded by David Jennings of Vancouver – had already been in action since 2004, recently it became evident that fundraising efforts needed to be stepped-up, adding sponsorships and seeking additional investors.

While Mr. Bell continues to meet some speedbumps along the way – including a physical disability with his arm that mean an entire summer off guitar-playing, Signpost Music continues to ‘point its special way forward.’ Mr. Bell and Mr. Zeglinski are currently exploring a variety of new projects, including a new album scheduled for release in early 2011 and some novel e-book ideas that would centre on reintroducing some of Mr. Bell’s earlier works alongside selected scriptural readings and devotional meditations.

Steve Bell set to release newest musical offering

By Aaron Epp  |  Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Steve Bell is set to release his new album Kindness

WINNIPEG, MB The last person who expected Steve Bell to record a new album in 2010 was Steve Bell.

After a bad financial year in 2009 that came as a result of the current climate in the music industry, the acclaimed singer-songwriter and his manager, Dave Zeglinski, decided it would be best to lay low in 2010.

But last summer when a Bell did an inventory of the songs he was interested in recording, he realized he had an album’s worth of material ready.

So late last August, the 50-year-old Juno award winner entered the studio to begin working on his 16th album.

Kindness, which features six Bell originals and six covers, will be released in January or early February.

The six original songs he wrote for Kindness came at the end of a period of writer’s block that lasted five years.

“It was dreadful I just couldn’t turn out a song,” Bell says. “Somehow I couldn’t get at what was going on in my head.”

Bell attributes the writer’s block in part to being deeply disturbed by the state of the world, both politically and culturally. He was particularly disturbed by what he saw when he spent a week in the West Bank in 2004.

The writer’s block was so severe that Bell wondered if his recording career was over.

To conquer it, he had to turn inward. During a five-day retreat at a friend’s cabin, Bell spent time praying and, as he says, “attending to [his] soul.”

After a one-and-a-half day period of “deep quietude that I have no language for,” Bell awoke with the beginnings of the Kindness track “Birth of a Song.”

“It was there that I think I wrote the best song of my life,” he says. “When that song came, I realized, Ok I’m not done.”

Bell decided to title the new album Kindness after a friend suggested that kindness is the theme running through the songs.

Brian McLaren, the controversial evangelical pastor, author and speaker, wrote the title track.

“Here’s a fellow who has written some books that have really stressed a lot of people out and for good reason but the vitriol that he has received back because of it is shocking,” Bell says. “The mean-spirited responses and almost the hatred that has come from [some] Christians is almost overwhelming. So I found it quite moving that he would be the one to write a song called ‘Kindness.’”

As Bell studied the word “kindness,” he realized the magnitude of it, particularly its root in the word “kin.”

“The only motivation that will ever sustain kindness in the long run is going to be a deep appreciation of a fundamental kinship between all things,” Bell says, adding that it goes back to the kinship in the trinity the Son loving the Father and vice versa which ultimately results in the Father’s love for us.

“So all of a sudden a word like kindness you realize this is no soft word,” Bell says. “This is a big word. This is not sentimental, it’s not sweet … this is [the] fabric of life.”

Kindness is the most accomplished work of Bell’s 22-year solo career, a career that has seen him tour throughout North America, selling more than 400,000 albums in the process.

People who have come to know Bell for his deft guitar playing, clever melodies and theologically-rich lyrics won’t be disappointed with Kindness.

“This new album is probably the best one I’ve ever done,” Bell says. “And I think I’ve got a few more in me yet.”

From solo act to symphony headliner, Steve Bell is crafting a significant career.

by Doug Koop featured in 7 Magazine

Steve Bell is contagious. But don’t worry. The man who just celebrated his 50th birthday is not sick. It’s his enthusiasm for life and relentless curiosity that are so infectious. He has a bounce in his step and joy in his face when he enters a room. He is interested in people and things.
Ideas sprout from him like berries in mid-summer. He will amuse you with an offhand tidbit about his latest grandchild. Then again, it might be a story he chooses to tell, some riveting episode from his travels or his youth. He remembers where he’s been and where he came from.
One of those places is prison. Steve was raised in a musical family, the son of a Baptist preacher man who served for a time as a chaplain at Drumheller Prison.
“The inmates used to use the chapel there for jam sessions on Saturday afternoons,” recalls Steve. “When I was a little boy, eight years old, I used to be allowed to go in and watch them play. They ended up teaching me how to play guitar. That’s where I learned to play.”
Steve and his family had a gospel band that played the church circuit. But after high school he joined bands and played in nightclubs, with some regional success, for the better part of a decade. He often tells the story of his father, who sat gamelyin a smoky club just to be with his son and hear him play.
He quit playing clubs in 1988 after a personal spiritual experience. “I very definitely heard from God,” he explains,
“pretty clearly, not a voice, but it was more like a heat that speaks: ‘This time of your life is over. I have something else for you to do.’ It was powerful enough that I quit the band I was in and started looking for work.”
That same year his wife, Nanci, was itching to get back to teaching. “So she worked, I was at home. Scripture came alive for me that year. Songs just poured out every time I picked up my guitar.” Saturated with psalms, he released his first solo album, Comfort My People, in 1989. Three years later he moved into full time ministry.
Not that it’s been an easy path. Steve’s first album garnered him a following with wide range of churchgoers, finding appreciative audiences among Protestant, Catholic charismatic and conservative groups. Comfort My People was very worshipful and featured simple guitar stylings.
But his second album had a very different sound and many of his waiting fans didn’t know what to make of it. Deep Calls to Deep hearkened to images of the dark night of the soul. It was full of synthesizers and keyboard pads. Steve had quit his job and invested $30,000 in the project, and he was desperately afraid it would bomb. “I remember one night being restless, not being able to sleep, and finally my wife just had it and said,’Steve, this is sin. God called you to sing and play. You’re doing it. Believe it or quit.’ That was such a profound moment in my life.”
He didn’t quit. Since 1989, the independent artist has released 15 solo CDs and performed more than 1,500 concerts to over a half million people in 15 countries including Ireland, Bulgaria, India, Thailand, Ethiopia, Poland and the United States. He’s won numerous awards, including two Junos. Several of his songs are sung in congregational worship throughout the world. If he is asked to sing
“On the Wings of an Eagle” one more time, he might just drift on autopilot into a whole new mindscape.
Steve’s newest album, Kindness, has just been released.
“My life seems a relentless chasing after God who playfully—maddeningly— remains just beyond my clutch,” he says.
“Every once in a while I stop to catch my breath, and when I think to look back where the chase has led, I realize there has been good purpose to His elusiveness. Then, I quickly spin around to pounce on the One who winks before darting once again down the street. And so it goes…”
In the decade ahead, Steve’s career will continue to evolve in unexpected ways. Who would have thought that the boy who learned to play in the Drumheller Prison would be headlining performances of his own music with major symphony orchestras across Canada? And would you believe that in the next few years he will be bringing his wonderfully rich,profoundly spiritual, finely crafted music to symphony audiences in places like San Francisco, Chicago and New York? Believe it.
“We can go into any major city and present a legitimate cultural event,” he says. “I’m not going to get played in pop radio, but I can go into a concert hall and give a presentation that is true to my music and true to my calling. We have done this. We can do it.”
Steve may primarily be a “solo” artist, but few people are so deeply aware that relationship is at the essence of who God is and who we are. To explain, he summons a story about his former addiction to tobacco and how his personal actions impacted others. At the time, he had his life more or less on track, but continued to enjoy cigarettes.
Because he’d promised Nanci he would never smoke in front of the children and never smoke at home, he would take little walks alone to satisfy his urge. When his daughter was young he’d explain he was running out to the store to get something. “Can I come with you, Daddy?” she’d ask. “No, sweetheart. Daddy won’t be gone long. By the time we have you dressed and ready to go I’ll already be back.” And off he’d go, sucking back a smoke on the way to the 7-11 and another on the way back.
But one day when she was five, Steve was about to head out and asked Sarah if she’d like to go with him. She gave him a hard glare and answered, “No.” The rejection hurt.
“In that moment I realized that there really are no truly independent actions,”says Steve. “Everything we say or do connects in some way with others. We can not live outside relationship.”
Steve brings science, music and theology together, joyfully explaining how this heart of connection reflects our very DNA (individual cells have all the information they need to do their job in conjunction with other individual cells). And he insists that the very nature of God is expressed in the concept of the Trinity, a harmonious relationship of three
“persons” mutually appreciating and loving each other. Steve’s music and character offer glimpses of that deep harmony.
Doug Koop is the managing editor of SEVEN.

Originally posted in the Clarion Journal

by author – Brad Jersak

Steve Bell is a seasoned, Juno Award winning song-writer / musician based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In recent years, his thoughtful folk messages have caught the notice of symphony crowds with touring performances backed by a variety of city orchestras. But behind and beyond the pristine quality of his musicianship and lyrics, Steve stands in the tradition of Canadian artists with a heart for integrating spirituality and justice (Bruce Cockburn for example). He is involved in humanitarian work both locally and nationally. In a recent interview with Bell, I asked him to share the backstory to his social concern. Two items from his childhood especially caught my attention.

This song was the title track of Sandi Patti’s 1986 Grammy Award winning release. It was also penned by my friend and songwriting mentor Jim Croegaert whose songs have so inspired me over the decades. Jim’s ability to unpack a present moment of joyous wonder and tie it to a well-worn narrative (without cloying cliché) is truly remarkable. “Did the grass sing? Did the earth rejoice to feel you again?” This song never gets old for me.

Was It A Morning Like This

Jim Croegaert
Meadowgreen Music (ASCAP)

Lyric:

Was it a morning like this
When the sun still hid from Jerusalem
And Mary rose from her bed
To tend the Lord she thought was dead

Was it a morning like this
When Mary walked down from Jerusalem
And two angels stood at the tomb
Bearers of news she would hear soon

Did the grass sing
Did the earth rejoice to feel you again
Over and over like a trumpet underground

Did the earth seem to pound He is risen
Over and over in a never ending round
He is risen

Alleluia Alleluia

Was it a morning like this
When Peter and John ran from Jerusalem
And as they raced for the tomb
Beneath their feet was there a tune

Last winter, my friend Jim Richardson sent me a poem his son Matt had written for a university assignment. I was immediately struck by the depth of feeling and wonder the poem created and given that this was apparently Matt’s first poem, I was moved that one so young was attending so deeply.

The other thing that struck me immediately was melody. This often happens to me when I’m reading – melody starts breaking in. When this occurs I’ve learned to clear off all appointments, grab my guitar and wait – ‘cause a song is coming down the pike.

The Gifting & The Giver

Music: Steve Bell
Lyric: Matt Richardson and Steve Bell
Signpost Music
Adapted from the poem “Eternal Swell” by Matt Richardson

Lyric:

On ceaseless rippling waves I gaze
And hear sonorant, soothing, splashing
Stilled senses resolute to praise
And revel in whose surf is crashing

I see in rocks, in sands and swell
In highest cliff and lowest crater
In broken shards of pearly shell
Fair fingerprints of the Creator

And I onshore admire this living scripture
And adore the painter of this picture
I adore the gifting and the Giver
The gifting and the Giver

Eternal waves incessant fall
Falling they fall no sight to ending
I sit on sand and ponder all
My senses overwhelmed, transcending