Pat Barker, a beloved Southern Gospel bass singer, discusses Southern Gospel’s eras and culture in episode 1 of the Southern Gospel Podcast.
A few links we mentioned:
- My 2009 feature interview with him
- The Mylon Hayes Family’s children sing Something More Than Gold
Pat’s appearing tomorrow on Southern Gospel Forward
Learn more about the Guardians Quartet at their website
Transcript
This is automatically generated and may contain errors.
Daniel Mount (00:03)
Thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. My name is Daniel Mount and I am joined today by Pat Barker. Good morning.
Pat Barker (00:11)
Good morning, sir. How are you?
Daniel Mount (00:13)
Pretty good, how about you?
Pat Barker (00:14)
I’m doing wonderful, absolutely.
Daniel Mount (00:16)
So I figure almost anybody who would tune into a Southern Gospel podcast knows who you are, but just in case somebody just happens to stumble across this conversation, who is Pat Parker?
Pat Barker (00:29)
Don’t ask my wife. I’m a guy who loves this music. I grew up loving it since I was a kid and always wanted to sing it, even though my education leaned more towards classical or opera. In the back of my mind, I always knew if the Lord was willing, I was going to do this for a living. So, I just love the music. I love the church. I love, love the subject matter!
And so I’ve been doing this for 20 years, not counting the local groups that I’ve had the honor to sing with. But, 20 years down the road and still able to do it. And you know what’s funny? You were the very first person to ever interview me, when I started singing gospel music full-time. . So this is kind of full circle here, Daniel. We’re 20 years down the road!
Daniel Mount (01:15)
We are! It’s been, I think actually is 20 years.
Pat Barker (01:27)
It’s been 18 years, 18 years since I joined the Dixie Echoes.
Daniel: Mm-hmm. And I had been blogging at that point for two years, because I started 20 years ago this year.
Yeah, I started up a series where I interviewed people as soon as they joined groups, and there were a number of people who, you know, were there for a year or two and moved on to other parts of their life, and that’s great. And reaching out to people who had just joined groups, I made a connection with some who I’m still in contact with years later. It’s been a blessing.
Pat Barker (01:56)
Yep, that’s awesome.
Daniel Mount (01:58)
So in this conversation, we’re not going to do the standard walk through the details of your life up to this point.
Pat Barker (02:07)
Thank you.
Daniel Mount
I can actually look to the old interview I did back then, and there are other podcasts and other places where you can see it. So I thought we’d talk about something a little different today, which is just talking about the eras and culture of Southern gospel. I thought that’d be a fun conversation. Yeah. So let’s start with the earliest era, which is the singing convention, shape-note songbook era.
And so I’ll say by way of introduction to this era, before the mid-1930s, Southern gospel was more, if you will, a participatory sport than a spectator sport. Now, by the mid-30s, you had groups like the Chuck Wagon Gang and Blackwood Brothers starting to make a name for themselves and singing daily programs on radio that were broadcast across the country.
But before about that point, even though there were full-time quartets since 1910, the culture, I think, was more oriented around singing conventions and buying songbooks to learn and sing the latest songs yourselves. So my first question is, do you think this era is gone forever? Or do you think something like Gerald Wolfe’s Hymn Sing Tour might be the first step toward a return to those days?
Pat Barker (03:16)
I don’t think they’re over. I certainly don’t think they’re as strong as they were. You nailed it. The whole genre was built around those songbooks and around convention-style singing. That’s what it was in its earliest forms.
And I was able to be a part of those early hymn sings. For probably the first three or four years I was on that tour. And I did get to see the excitement of people who just got to hold a hymnal in their hands and sing the parts. You know, the more the church moves into contemporary and kind of just sing the melody and, honestly, the more that the church becomes a spectator sport, the more we will move towards a participatory sport.
And that’s what I see in a lot of the modern churches is really there’s their spectators. They’re not singing as much; they’re letting the praise band do most of the work. So when you go to a Gerald Wolfe hymn sing, with the red-back [hymnal] – man, the excitement level is still there for people who love to sing along. They love to hear all the voices around them, but it’s something that they missed.
I would probably, honestly, maybe go back a little bit further than Gerald’s hymn sing and give some credit to Gaither. So much of their concerts were built around people singing along. I remember I went to see the Gaither homecoming way back, and the whole concert ended with Bill up on stage by himself singing “Loving God, Loving Each Other,” and he dismissed everyone.
And there were probably 15,000 people in the auditorium, and everyone’s walking out singing “Loving God, Loving Each Other” a cappella like they didn’t want it to stop. So the whole crowd is still singing that chorus as the stage has cleared. So I think that really helped – the Gaither tour and that Gaither style of concert.
And then of course, Gerald has taken it to another level and gone to other countries. So I don’t think it’s dead. It’s certainly not as strong as it was in the early 1900s, but it’s still there for sure.
Daniel Mount (05:36)
Yeah. So, by post-World War II, 40s and 50s, you have groups change things over completely to – you know, James Vaughan sent quartets on the road to sell songbooks. That was what they sold. That was how they paid the bills to keep the group on the road. But then there was this period from the mid-40s through maybe 10 or 15 years ago when selling recorded music worked really well for groups. And selling recorded music has not worked so well in the age of streaming. Could you imagine a future where groups might start carrying songbooks again and where that might come back, you know, just come back?
Pat Barker (06:22)
You know what? I think if it would, I don’t think we’ll ever get back to the day where it’s just a pure songbook. I do believe that there’s a few groups who even tried it recently, where it’s a combination of a songbook and a picture book and a autograph book.
They’re trying to be innovative because it’s true, CDs don’t sell near what they did. We do a special with the group I sing with, four CDs for $30. It’s as cheap as you can make it. And you still have to hold them out and go, “You sure you don’t want this?” And they come up and say, “I just don’t have any way to play it. I don’t have any way to play it in my car.” So we do sell a lot of USBs. And we have a lot of people who say, “I stream your music on Apple or Spotify or whatever.”
So the age of the CD is quickly coming to an end. But as far as songbooks go, maybe two or three times a year, I’ll have someone come up and ask if we have songbooks. We don’t have as many people who play the piano anymore. We don’t have as many people who care about singing all the parts as they used to. And so I think songbooks, sure, but it’s going to have to be one of those where it’s a special, with pictures and autographs and things like that to go along with it.
Daniel Mount (07:28)
Mm-hmm.
So just from a standpoint of what the fans want, they’re not there yet. Except for when comes to singing classic hymns, maybe; but for group’s new songs, not there yet. But maybe someday, you know, maybe that’ll come back.
Pat Barker (07:53)
Yes. I would hope so.
I love to – Listen, I’ve got a ton of songbooks from The Cathedrals and Squire Parsons and all these folks who put out songbooks with every album. And I remember George would hold up the songbook to sing one of the songs. Now, of course, now we know he was just helping to sell it, but they weren’t actually reading it. But the songbooks were very, very important up until maybe the mid to late 90s.
Daniel Mount (08:27)
Yeah, I’d say so. I have a fair number of those songbooks myself.
So moving on to the next generation, the generation of the World War II veterans. You know, culturally in our country, we call the generation that won World War II the Greatest Generation. Is it fair to call it Southern Gospel’s Greatest Generation, too?
Pat Barker (08:48)
Probably; if you look at innovators, if you look at people who set the groundwork for what we do now, absolutely. I mean, they were trendsetters. they were forward-thinking. I mean, those ideas that those folks came up with are still holding up today. And so if I’m looking at folks who put in the work and put in the sweat and the blood and the tears. And they also put their mind into it and their whole self. And, they were doing 250, 275, 300 days a year traveling in cars buses and just trying to get from one place to another. Absolutely. I would have no problem labeling that generation, the greatest.
Daniel Mount (09:29)
Mm-hmm.
Because you almost have two phases of this generation, I feel like. You’ve got the first phase of ⁓ Hovie Lister and Jake Hess and James Blackwood and R.W. [Blackwood]. The Statesmen and Blackwood Brothers really hit the ground strong just a couple years after World War II and had major national success. And they kind of invented the genre as we know it today, like redefine it from the singing convention era to what we know today.
Pat Barker (10:06)
Sure.
Daniel Mount (10:11)
But then you also have in that same generation, the group of people who, and give or take, I’m not saying every one of them is World War II veterans, but within the, roughly that same age, you have the people who were doing 300 dates in a beat-up car, and hardly anybody knew them in the fifties. And then maybe in the sixties or seventies, you have Les Beasley and the Florida Boys. You have George and Glen with the Cathedrals, Rex Nelon.
Pat Barker (10:30)
Yes.
Daniel Mount (10:40)
A couple guys with the Kingsmen, you name it. It wasn’t just the 40s and 50s Southern Gospel, the 60s and 70s was largely defined by groups in that same generation, but people who maybe had been paying their dues in a beat-up car and then hit it bigger and got the bus in maybe the 60s or 70s.
Pat Barker (10:58)
Right. Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Mount (11:05)
Now, I said this a minute ago, but do you think it’s accurate or do you think it’s oversimplified to give the Statesmen and Blackhood Brothers and their record label a lot of the credit for changing Southern Gospel from being a songbook-driven industry to an artist-driven record label and live concert industry?
Pat Barker (11:26)
No, I don’t think that’s oversimplified at all. I mean, you, have to give most of the credit to the Blackwood Brothers and the Statesmen.
James Blackwood was a really a genius, when it came to not only putting groups together, but the business side of it. And he was really the one who pushed J.D. to be that kind of business thinking, forward thinking, songwriting, all of those things that J.D.’s known for. James was one of those kind of mentors for him, as well.
So you put James, you put Hovie, you put both of those groups together on the road, doing tours together. Those kinds of things, absolutely. They should get the bulk of the credit for moving it from convention to live concert. Absolutely.
Daniel Mount (12:10)
Mm-hmm.
And then I think when you have JD coming behind and being one of the main driving forces, if not the main, behind establishing the National Quartet Convention, that helped, ironically enough, make it to where the Statesmen and Blackwoods weren’t the only two names people knew.
Pat Barker (12:39)
Right. You know, that’s what that was a great idea that’s still going strong today. I think it was 1957, I think, when the convention started. And it wasn’t just your mainline, top-name groups. There were some of those who were beating the roads. And JD knew they were good and James knew they were good. And so let’s give them a platform. And I think the Quartet Convention still does that.
Daniel Mount (12:44)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (13:07)
And today now there’ll be people – and it’s so funny to me – who complain and go, why don’t we just have top name groups? Well, it’s never been that. I don’t know what convention they went to, but it’s always been, let’s have some of those top-lines, but let’s bring in some of those groups that are going to be the next generation and the next.
Daniel Mount (13:07)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.
One of my favorite NQC stories goes back to when the Rambos first started taking off. I think it was J.D. still running it. He’d heard them. Whoever was running NQC at the time had heard them and invited them to sing on main stage. And they went from hardly anybody knowing them to, I actually talked to Buck Rambo one time before he passed away. He said that they left that year’s Quartet Convention with a slate of dates for the next year. Their entire next year was booked. [Editor’s note: I did talk to Buck before he passed away; but on second thought, I’m not 100% sure this came up in that conversation. I may have read it in his book, The Legacy of Buck and Dottie Rambo.]
Pat Barker (13:57)
Wow.
Daniel Mount (13:59)
And from there they went to become one of the mainstays of the genre. NQC broke them in.
Pat Barker (14:02)
And you know, and to show that that still happens, we did the very first Hymn Sing at Convention. Ben Speer was on stage. I was up there. So this goes back. And the Mylon Hayes Family was up there, and the kids were just tiny and all that. So Gerald really pushed them during that afternoon showcase.
Daniel Mount (14:10)
Mm-hmm. They were tiny when they started!
Pat Barker (14:31)
Said if you buy one CD this week, you go to the Mylon Hayes Family, and you buy that project, and you get everything on their table. Well, they did! The people literally sold out the Mylon Hayes Family. And now, here we are a decade-plus later, and they’re favorite mixed group and they’re touring everywhere and making these incredible albums. So, you know, that attitude is still there, to where we want to help those who are really putting the work in. They’re paying their dues. They are doing it the right way. And the higher-ups, the ones who make the decisions, are still wanting to push them. That has been the case since 1957, and it’s still the case, and I love it.
Daniel Mount (15:05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is a blessing, because it would have been easy for the Statesmen and Blackwood Brothers to try to make Southern Gospel almost a monopoly. In fair fact, for a few years, nobody came close to touching what they could do when they were on tour together. And it was amazing music. But they realized as much as everybody else that their style of music was going to be stronger if there were other groups that people loved. And that’s just been a special thing about our style of music.
Pat Barker (15:47)
Absolutely. I agree.
Daniel Mount (15:52)
I’m going to throw in a little shout-out here. I’ll try to remember to put it in the description of the video. If you haven’t ever seen it, back when I worked for Crossroads, I recorded a video of the Hayes children in the studio singing “Something More than Gold,” an old hymn. And the fun thing is, the twins, one’s voice had changed, one’s hadn’t. It’s just a cool moment, a cool little snippet of history. And Kennedy is just a tiny little peanut singing her high part there. Yeah, that’s a fun one just to have seen them when they were that little and see what they’ve become.
Okay, so moving on to the next era, we can talk about the 60s, 70s, maybe into the 80s for a couple of minutes? And we already talked about how National Quartet Convention helped build Southern Gospel from just its Statesmen and Blackwood days.
Singing News probably deserves some credit. And then we have the record companies. Heartwarming had artists like Bill Gaither Trio, Speer Family, Rambos, Imperials, Stamps, and Oak Ridge Boys. And then you have Canaan. Marvin Norcross founded it in 1965, and he signed artists like the Happy Goodmans, Inspirations, Kingsman, Florida Boys, Lefevres (then Nelons), Couriers and Cathedrals. So what are thoughts you have on this, beyond what we’ve already talked about? Are there other people [from this era] who deserve some credit for building Southern Gospel into what we know today?
Pat Barker (17:24)
I would say so, and I would say the quartet convention was a great kickoff for the 60s.
Daniel Mount (17:29)
Yeah.
Pat Barker (17:30)
I’d give credit to the convention and to those guys. And then of course, the creation of the bus and those kinds of things that made traveling a lot easier. So you’d go a lot further and do a lot more. Those kinds of things. Of course, JD gets credit for that. The record companies, absolutely. Going out and finding this young talent like a Gaither Trio and all of these groups that you named, LeFevres, and so on and so forth and giving them a place that they can shine and they can do the things they need to do. And then, Singing News, I think was in ’69.
Daniel Mount (18:06)
69, 70, I think 69, but then 70 was the first Fan Awards, maybe? Sounds right, yeah.
Pat Barker (18:27)
So I would give, I would give Singing News a lot of credit. But then we can’t forget, Daniel, right in the middle of the decade, we had a little thing called the Gospel Singing Jubilee. And I’m telling you, to this day, if you go on reels and you’re just flipping through your reels, if I see something from the Gospel Singing Jubilee, I stop and I watch it. And it’s fun and it’s fresh. And it introduced a lot of folks all over the world to Gospel Music, to traditional Gospel Music, what then turned into Southern Gospel Music. The Florida boys and the Dixie Echoes and the Happy Goodmans and the Rambos – and you wanted to see who was going to come up on those steps and sing. So I would give a lot of credit also to the Gospel Singing Jubilee and Les Beasley and those folks who put that forward.
You put all of those things together – that is a perfect storm where everything has kind of just come to a place that it’s really starting to shine and people are starting to see it.
Daniel Mount (19:25)
Yeah, I would agree. Good shout there. Now, I’ve heard that by the 70s, you had some of the top Southern Gospel quartets were kind of competitive with each other. And I don’t mean to say there’s anything wrong with that. But you hear some of those stories. But today – and this is not entirely a contrasting thing, because sometimes you get brothers in the family who are more competitive with each other than anybody else they ever know – but today, there’s a really strong sense of Southern gospel as a family.
And I don’t think there’s any one turning point when everything changed. Because in the 50s and 60s, you have Quartet Convention bringing on new groups and the record labels and Singing News platforming new people. But do you have any insight in how the culture changed through the years and this sense of Southern Gospel as a family started coming about?
Pat Barker (20:25)
I would think if I’m going back in my mind, I would say there’s an ebb and flow. It depends on how much you how much you need each other. So let’s go back to the convention days. They desperately needed each other and so they were all in. Let’s all work together. Let’s all do this together.
Daniel Mount (20:35)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (20:45)
And then you might see a point to where maybe groups are starting to break off and they don’t need each other quite as much. And now we have the competition starts to set in because I need to outsell you. I need to outdo you. You know, the crowd needs to react more. I need to get three standing ovations if you got two standing ovations. And we can’t say that didn’t exist. Absolutely it existed.
Daniel Mount (20:52)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (21:13)
And then you had people who came in like, say, the Happy Goodmans and those family groups that were more church oriented, but you still got the Blackwoods and the Statesmen who are more live stage oriented. And you know one of the Statesmen actually said, you know, “We used to be able to go into all these auditoriums till the Happy Goodman showed up, and now we got to sing in all these churches.” So sure, there was that sense of competition.
And I think that really honestly kept going until the Gaither era kicked in and you’ve got 200 people in a room together singing. I think that really brought about a sense of family, community. And I think that carries on to today, honestly. I would give Gaither a lot of the credit for that. And I’m sure there was competition within all of that. I wasn’t there, so I can’t speak to it.
But I know even today, my goodness, you’ll get on the bus. And somebody might say, “Man, I was just shocked. We did better than so-and-so. I just didn’t see that coming. But man, the crowd really loved us.”
So it’s still in the back of your mind: how did you do compared to someone else? But I don’t think that is a bad thing. I think you do. I’m not trying to cut your legs out from under you, but it’s okay if we make each other better. If it becomes a thing of pride, sure, that’s where it falls apart. But there’s no problem with if I know I’m singing and the Gold City is coming after me, I want to set it up so Gold City is successful. And then Gold City needs to set it up to where the Hoppers are successful, or Triumphant or name any of the groups.
That’s our job: if I’m opening, my job is to make your situation better. And if I’m closing, my job is to close it out. And to make it the greatest closing that you can have. So in that sense, competition is still there, but that’s healthy. I don’t think there’s any problem with that
Daniel Mount (23:22)
Mmm-hmm. Yeah!
Now along similar lines, I think there’s really no way around saying that the members of the Blackwood Brothers and Statesmen in the 50s and 60s were stars. And I don’t mean it in a bad way! They just were.
Pat Barker (23:32)
Goodness, yes.
Daniel Mount (23:50)
And I read somewhere that in their peak years, there were years when the Statesmen didn’t mingle with audiences before concerts to increase the impact when they hit the stage. And not that this wasn’t the case then, not that Southern Gospel artists weren’t approachable then. Because after the concert is another story. (And you have everybody else on the road in a beat-up car when J.D. has the first bus.) Now, Southern Gospel artists are probably the most approachable and friendly people in any genre of music. And do you have any insight into how that part of the culture developed?
Pat Barker (24:10)
Not a ton. I think, when I would go see the Cathedrals, Ernie and Scott would be at the table when I walked in. When I went to see the Stamps, Ed Hill and Ed Enoch would be at the table when I walked in. If I go see the McKameys, same thing. But Peg wasn’t out there. George and Glenn weren’t out there.
Daniel Mount (24:17)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (24:38)
JD was not out there. The stars, you know, stayed back. That’s how I viewed them. That’s not – they didn’t call themselves stars. That’s how I viewed them. So they stayed back, and it was a major impact when they walked out on stage and you got to see them for the first time. And so I don’t really have a problem with some folks not coming to the table.
But I do believe in an era where it’s much more difficult to sell. You’re going to the table ’cause you need to try to sell something. You need to try to make a connection with folks before they get out there. With our group, Dale Forbes, he does the t-shirts. So he gets out there about 45 minutes ahead of time to try to sell some t-shirts. John goes out about 30 minutes ahead of time, and then I’ll come in 15 minutes or so ahead of time.
Now, does it hurt a little bit in the impact you make when you hit the stage? Yeah. But sometimes it helps because people come out and say just what you said: “Man, we couldn’t believe you were out there. It was so great to talk to you before the concert.” And so I think you lose a little on the star impact.
Daniel Mount (25:48)
Mystique or whatever, yeah.
Pat Barker (26:06)
But you gain some in the fact that you have made a connection before you even walk on stage. And this genre is built around relationships and connections. You’re connecting with the people in the audience. You’re building relationships. It’s really the only genre I know of built around relationships as much as it’s built around the music.
Daniel Mount (26:13)
Yeah. You know, I think you started— so I grew up up north and I didn’t know anything about Southern Gospel till I was late teens. Those two things hurt me from seeing so much of the era of the first concerts you saw. I mean, JD had passed away by the time I discovered Southern Gospel and Glenn had passed away.
I just barely missed George’s final concert. It was promoted in my area, I tried to talk my parents into it because I wasn’t driving yet and couldn’t quite talk them into it. Of course, nobody knew at the time it was his final concert, but you know… So I knew who he was before he passed away, but didn’t see him live. So there’s this era where you saw of the stars of that era. By the time it’s mid 2000s, middle of that first decade and I’m going to concerts, there’s almost nobody who’s staying back in the bus by that point.
I mean, okay, Ernie Haase and Signature Sound is a different story. They were events when they first hit the scene. And there are a few other examples, but like almost every group I went – like I can go see the Blackwood Brothers and Jimmy’s down there with everybody. And if anybody has rights in that group to be considered the star of the group, it’s Jimmy, and he’s down there with everyone.
So I think I experienced Southern gospel a few years after you did. And I didn’t really experience going and seeing many concerts where the best known singer wasn’t out there before the concert, just a few years difference.
Pat Barker (27:18)
Right. Yeah, I went to my first concert in ’85 and it was the Masters Five.
Daniel Mount (27:44)
Wow!
Pat Barker (27:49)
None of them were at the table. I mean, not even Steve Warren.
And again, when I’d go, you’d have the one or two workers, and then the stars came out later, but it did— it changed. When the table started changing: we need to be out there. “Hey guys, we need to be out there.” I remember Mark Trammell, when I first joined him, he said, “Hey guys, we need to be out there.” That was his doing, and it was a 30-minute window. Let’s get out there 30 minutes for the program. That was kind of the thought process. If you’re out there an hour before the program, you’re standing at your table lonely, like a yard sale at two in the afternoon and nobody’s coming. But if you get out there about a half hour before and you’re able to greet the people, hug some folks’ necks. And so that has been a big change since the time that I first saw concerts.
Daniel Mount (28:28)
Mm-hmm.
I don’t know if Mark was doing it as much in the first couple years he was on the road. My first live Southern Gospel concert was the Mark Trammell Trio and Eric Phillips was the only one at the table. And I knew who Mark was but I didn’t know the other members of the group at the time. And I still laugh at myself years later: It was like a 50th anniversary for a Baptist church in the area and everybody was dressed in suits and ties and the thought that went through my mind was: “They got one of the local kids to run the table for him!”
I had no idea he was one of the singers. And he came up on stage, and I was like, my goodness, he’s one the of the group. And he’s a really good singer, too.
Pat Barker (29:19)
[Laughter] He’s still, he’s still— I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He still looks like one of the local kids!
That’s funny. That’s funny.
Daniel Mount (29:42)
But every concert thereafter that I saw the trio and then the quartet, everybody was down there. So I think, expanding on this idea a little more….
One of the most unique and special aspects of Southern Gospel is the fan and artist interaction, but also how artists interact with everyone else – media outlets in my case, but media, radio, record labels, you name it. Of course, there’s always a few exceptions. But in the years I was running the blog and then the years I worked for Crossroads, I came across just an incredibly high – well north of 95% – of the people in this style of music who talk to fans, everybody else, with just this graciousness and warmth and humility and thankfulness.
It never failed to blow my mind how even the biggest stars would just thank me for talking about their music. And I’m thinking, “Mark Trammell doesn’t need me!” that kind of thing. But I saw them treat everybody else the same way. I knew it wasn’t like I was getting special treatment.
And so I’ve always wondered, but never been quite brave enough to ask anyone: This way that artists interact with the fans and everybody else in our style of music, is that just something that’s seeped into your bones from growing up around this, loving it, seeing others do it? Or is this something that there was like a generation of old timers that taught the new kids coming along, “This is how you talk to people”?
Pat Barker (30:46)
I can only speak to my experience. It was me seeing it. It was me experiencing it. I got to talk to JD Sumner when I was 13, 14 years old. I went to see Gold City when it was Ivan and Brian and got to talk to them, got to ask them questions, got advice. I remember I went to see the Cathedrals in ’95, maybe. High and Lifted Up had just come out, that album. And they came to Gadsden, Alabama. They did every year. And so I went to see them, and they did a Q&A during the concert. They did a three hour concert, and for about 20 minutes, they did a Q&A from the stage.
Pat Barker (31:45)
You can make requests, you could ask questions. So I asked, “What advice would you give to someone who wants to do this for a living?” Standard question. And, um, Ernie spoke a little bit and George said, “I’ll just tell you, you need to sing everywhere you get a chance to sing.” And then he gave great advice. And then the concert was over—and it about an hour later after that Q&A that they ended the concert. And I went up to the stage where George was—George didn’t go to the table.
And just said, “I enjoyed it so much.” And he said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but one day you’re going to be doing exactly what I did tonight. And I just want you to know that I feel like you’re going to be doing exactly what I did.” And of course, 20 years later, I’m doing the Cathedral Family Reunion.
And so he took the time out with people clamoring to just speak into me for a minute. And I’ve gotten that from almost every artist. There has been, out of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of artists I’ve talked to, one or two wouldn’t give me the time of day. The rest of them are kind and thoughtful.
Sue Dodge, I talk about her all the time. I used to work handing out microphones at the Grand Old Gospel Reunion. That was my job. I would hand microphones to the old timers. And she took time to talk to me, to pour into me – had no clue I was – I wasn’t singing. And so I do it because the people before me did it to me.
So there may be bosses who say, “Hey boys, listen, we need radio and we need these folks, so put on your big boy pants and then go out and be sweet.” But for me, I do it because they did it for me and hopefully it passes on to where someone decides they do it because I showed them some kindness and it just keeps going.
Daniel Mount (33:49)
Very neat!
So pivoting to look at Southern Gospel from a different angle: songs. From a songwriting standpoint, Southern Gospel in the 1950s, 40s, 50s, maybe early 60s, was kind of like the CCM of its day. There were a lot of pop culture references, references to current technology, and the songs were just really cool and current. And there were some exceptions, but they weren’t always that deep or that theological.
But this really changed around the 80s, I feel like in the late 70s into the early 80s, when songwriters started writing more songs with more depth and scripture and good theology in the lyrics. Why—and I’m not asking you to agree with exactly how I assess the songs—but there is this shift, I think, that we can probably both see, even if you describe it in slightly different wording. Why do you think this changed?
Pat Barker (34:39)
Yeah.
Daniel Mount (34:44)
Why artists were willing to record deeper songs, but also radio willing to play them, fans willing to hear them and buy them at the product table. It had to be an industry-wide shift to be okay with going into songs with a little more depth to them, a little more meat on the bone.
Pat Barker (35:02)
I’ve thought about this. Dianne Wilkinson, who we both loved dearly, she told Dustin Swaetman, who we both loved dearly, because he asked a similar question. Of course, both of them are in Heaven now, but he had asked a similar question of her. And she said, “Honey, I’ve noticed that God has seasons for songwriters. And you can see ebbs and flows. It seems like all the songwriters that are tapped in to the spirit all kind of flow in the same direction at the same time because God knows what the people need to hear.” And so I have kind of taken that with me, and it does seem to be the case that songwriters all kind of flow in the same direction.
And then the listener kind of goes with them because this genre is very – I talked about the relationships. It is very song-driven. It is more about the song than almost, I would say, any genre in all of music. And so when I look at the thirties, forties, fifties, all of that, yeah, there is a lot of pop culture. I remember hearing a song, the Sunshine Boys sang about the atomic bomb.
Daniel Mount (36:02)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (36:24)
It was like that, that you had to go through. And then of course, there were some deep theological writers in the fifties and sixties, but then you do see that shift. And I think there was a shift also where a lot of the songs were very personal. And then maybe you see songs in the eighties and nineties that start going to the glory of God and they are a little more general, not so much personal. They’re more kind of heaven-driven than they are inward driven. And I think we can thank Gaither for that. We can thank Dottie [Rambo] for that.
You know, Gaither kind of invented inspirational music. And I think that was a catalyst for what came after. So, you know, I give the shift credit, of course, to God, but I think he did it through the songwriters. I think the songwriters set the tone
But now let’s be honest: There’s a lot of fans that still don’t really enjoy a deep theological song. I remember – and you will love this – I remember when I first joined Mark Trammell we were still singing songs off of the album you called the “greatest quartet album without a bass singer,” Always Have a Song. We were still singing “Loving the Lamb.” And I asked him, said, “Why don’t we sing ‘If Only Just a Few’? That’s my favorite song off the album. Why don’t we do it?” And he said, “It’s just too deep. The audience just doesn’t connect with it. It just goes—” not all the audience. He wasn’t calling them dumb. It’s just, when you’re in a live setting like that, sometimes a song is just a little too deep for a live audience to comprehend. And so you do have limits as to what the crowd will accept and not accept. But for the most part, yeah, I agree with you. But I give the credit to the songwriters.
Daniel Mount (38:32)
To that song, “If Only Just a Few,” I had the blessing, I guess, to catch them early enough when that album had come out that they were still singing it. Because I don’t think it was just once. I think I heard Mark sing it live at least twice. And it was something to hear him sing it live.
The deeper songs are what drew me in. Like I grew up around contemporary Christian music; Steve Green will have some deep songs, Michael Card, et cetera. But most of what you hear on radio isn’t. So when I discovered Southern Gospel and discovered some of the deeper songs, I was like, “Okay, I’m in. This is where I want to be.”
Pat Barker (39:08)
You’re right. Great.
Daniel Mount (39:29)
Now, looking at Southern Gospel from a different angle of more stylistic influences, I’m not sure it’s happening as much as it used to, but there was a period when a number of Southern Gospel artists, you could find several at any given point, incorporating influences from what contemporary Christian music was doing about 20 years before that point. So when I came in and started in the mid 2000s, there were artists incorporating influences from the Steve Green, Sandy Patty, Larnelle Harris era and the big orchestrations inspired by Greg Nelson – Lari Goss and Wayne Haun, some others in that era. And then you move on into the teens and you have artists incorporating more influences from like 4Him, Phillips, Craig and Dean.
And each of these eras brought value and brought new fans. I was one of them. I love Steve Green’s style of music. That’s another aspect. I love the kind of music that Steve Green did and couldn’t find it anymore in CCM and found that style of music as well as some great lyrics in Southern Gospel. And that was my entry point. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the convention songs and everything else, but the Steve Green style stuff like Greater Vision was doing or the Cathedrals – “Death Has Died,” even. That’s a few years before that point, but kind of precursor to what would come.
So, you know, I love that. With these influences all still present and all the other influences Southern Gospel’s had through the years—country from the Hinsons through today, bluegrass from the Isaacs and other groups through today, you name it—what would you say defines Southern Gospel musically today, if it’s even fair or possible to define it musically?
Pat Barker (40:53)
It’s not possible. It used to be.
Daniel Mount (40:54)
Okay.
Pat Barker (41:00)
You know, it’s funny when someone posts, “Well, that’s not Southern Gospel.” Gerald Wolfe will almost always put in the comments, “What is Southern Gospel?” And you never get an answer. And so I’m okay with the umbrella being wide enough that I can’t define it. We know what CCM is and we know what black gospel. Those are great genres and I listen to all of them. I love them.
But I love that we have the Isaacs. I love that I can claim the Isaacs under my umbrella. Even though I could never in a million years sing what they sing the way they sing it. And I can have the Isaacs, I can have the Gaither Vocal Band, I can have McKamey Legacy, I can have the Rochesters, but I can also have Legacy Five and I can have Ernie Haase and I can have a Memphis Quartet Show right across the street from a Gaither event. And they all fall under the same umbrella. I’m okay with that. I like the fact that I can’t define it because it allows for a lot more, to me, a lot more diversity, a lot more talent to come in. I mean, we can claim Taranda. I mean, my gracious, what a singer!
Daniel Mount (42:04)
Mm-hmm!
Pat Barker (42:24)
So I can have her under my umbrella? Absolutely. I’ll take it all day.
Daniel Mount (42:27)
Neat!
Yeah, we’re going back to: It’s the songs. I think it’s the content of our lyrics does more to define Southern Gospel than any musical style component.
Pat Barker (42:44)
That’s fair. It’s very Jesus-centered. It’s very salvation-centered. It’s a lot about what’s happening to us on the inside and what God is doing through us and what our life experiences are. It’s a perfect marriage of what country music used to be and what gospel music is. It’s just a lot more personal to what’s happening to us than, say, a contemporary artist might be.
Daniel Mount (43:18)
Yeah, there’s the personal component to the lyrics and there is…
When Southern Gospel is talking about a theological concept, a concept from the Bible, sometimes it’s the blood, the cross, the second coming, or a whole number of other things like “Power in These Bones” from the Kingdom Heirs—it’s one the most obscure passages you could ever find in the scripture to write a song from—and Arthur Rice and Diana Wilkinson pulled it off and wrote a passage about the prophet whose body was casted off the bones and the bones came to life and turned it into an amazing song.
Pat Barker (43:39)
Right.
Daniel Mount (43:51)
But I think… There’s this thing that I can’t quite put the right words on it, but I have this thought in my head that I’m hard to articulate, right? But all I can do is contrast it with somebody whose music I also love—Andrew Peterson is a CCM artist who has some wonderful, thoughtful lyrics and some great singing too.
Pat Barker (44:01)
Yeah, wonderful.
Daniel Mount (44:17)
But the way he would approach the same passage as a Southern Gospel writer will be more abstract. When a Southern Gospel writer is talking about their testimony or talking about something from Scripture, it is straightforward. Maybe not in your face in a bad way, but you will have no question about what they’re talking about. It’s the gospel component and the Scripture component, testimony component—it’s all very straightforward. There’s that component to how a Southern Gospel song is written lyrically, and it could have just about any musical style you could imagine. The other component being prominent harmonies.
Pat Barker (44:36)
Right.
Daniel Mount (44:48)
Because other genres, like singer-songwriter, it doesn’t matter whether there’s background vocals or not. It’s around one singer’s voice. Other genres have some harmonies, but even you have like how 4Him, a big Southern Gospel influence of Brian Free and Assurance and some other groups, how they would do harmonies back in the day. There’d be three or four parts going, but the lead would be very dominant in the mix. Southern Gospel has harmony parts that are up in the mix.
Pat Barker (44:53)
Right.
Absolutely. And I think that’s one of the things that draws audiences to Southern gospel is the harmony, because in their churches, they’re hearing that one singer with some folks maybe behind them and it’s songs that just aren’t that familiar or it’s more of a—and I’m not complaining—it’s more of a light show sometimes than it is a worship experience. And so I think you get some of those folks who just miss harmony and they miss singing together. And I think that’s one of the things that draws folks to Southern Gospel and has for a hundred years.
Daniel Mount (45:54)
Yeah…
So much of the best of the history of Southern Gospel isn’t on streaming. Canaan Records, HeartWarming Records, you name it. There’s some. But even some of the best from some of the biggest labels aren’t on streaming. And a surprising amount isn’t even on YouTube. And that’s overall a bad thing. You know, something I hope changes because it would be good for somebody who’s just discovered the Cathedrals to go back and hear their Canaan releases. They can hear a couple of them. They can hear “Something Special” on streaming and a couple others.
Pat Barker (46:14)
Right.
Daniel Mount (46:26)
But the trade-off is that Southern Gospel is one of the few spaces left anywhere in music where a new fan can experience something that we both experienced 20-plus years ago. Where we didn’t have the instant gratification of hearing everything immediately, but on the flip side, we got the extra delight in listening to something that took years to track down before we could finally hear it.
What are some good starting points for new fans getting into this music? You know, if somebody – I have hard time imagining how they made it this far into the conversation, but you know, if there’s a new Southern Gospel fan, if they’ve never heard of Southern Gospel. But this can be useful as we think about how we talk about Southern Gospel to our friends, we who are listening. What are some good starting points to point people to? Recordings, classic recordings that you loved through the years, the ones that are online, but maybe some of the ones that you liked that aren’t so well known and might take some time to track down.
Pat Barker (47:02)
[One] I love, because it was the first album I heard, Live on Stage from the Blackwood Brothers. And that one is easily available on YouTube. You know, one of the first things I would do honestly is go on YouTube and I would type in the Blackwood Brothers full albums, the Statesmen full albums, the Cathedrals full albums. Type in any group that you’ve heard about on a Gaither program or you’ve heard your granddaddy talk about it, whatever,
Daniel Mount (47:36)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (47:58)
And go in and listen to full albums.
You know, when we were doing the last Guardians recording, I was given the privilege of putting the songs in order. That is something I take very seriously because I grew up putting the needle down on track one and listening all the way through side A, flipping it over, putting the needle down and listening all the way through side B. And they took the order of songs very seriously, and so I did too. And in this age of streaming, where you can just pick a song, pick a song, pick a song, pick the song that’s got the star next to it cause it must be the most popular – those days are coming to an end where you’re building something through an entire album.
Albums are still very big right now. My kids only buy records. That’s all they buy. We’ve got four record players at our house and not one CD player. So they buy records of their favorite artists.
And so I would say go on YouTube and hit full albums of these groups that you’ve heard about.
Another album that I would settle in, kids, and just give yourselves about 40 minutes to soak in: “In the Garden.”
Daniel Mount (49:25)
Yes!
Pat Barker (49:27)
It is not going to thrill you. It is not going to get you up and clapping, but it will absolutely put you in another world. If you go back and listen to “In the Garden” by the Weatherfords and give Weatherfords the credit for groups like the Cathedrals and all of those. And go back and listen to the Imperials before they were contemporary.
Daniel Mount (49:30)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (49:53)
Listen to some of these groups before they made switches. Go back and listen to some old Oak Ridge Boys gospel album from the early days. And I guarantee you – this is what I tell people – if we will get kids listening to the good stuff, they’re hooked. It’s over. They will be in. My kids are the same way.
They listen to the Kingdom Heirs more than just about anybody. When I was getting ready to sing at Dianne Wilkinson’s memorial service, I was listening to a lot of those Dianne songs with the Kingdom Heirs. Kids are in the car and they were eating it up. And to this day, they still want to hear Jeff Chapman more than they want to hear me, but that’s fine. I don’t blame them!
So I would do that. I have Gaither TV Plus. This is not a plug for Gaither. I have Gaither TV Plus and I can go back and watch any of those old videos from ’91 all the way up to the video from a few months ago. I have Singing News TV. So there’s streaming out there that plays some of that classic stuff and some of the new stuff. So it gets you a little bit of everything. So there’s apps out there.
But go on YouTube. I do it still. I still put in The Talleys full albums and just search through and see what I want to listen to. That would be where I started.
Daniel Mount (51:17)
Neat. Thank you! All right.
So looking at it from a whole different angle, which is a big part of your world is touring. And you mentioned you’re the concert manager for the Guardians. So you’re really engaged in this side of things. Twenty-five years ago, and then further beyond that, the leading groups toured a circuit that contained a lot of auditorium-ticketed concerts. Like that’s the traditional old school Southern Gospel circuit. And that definitely isn’t gone, but it has shrunk a lot. And more and more Southern Gospel is happening in the church. Church concerts. What are some of the blessings, but also some of the trade-offs of this shift that you’ve lived through? Because when you first came on and started joining groups, there were a lot more auditorium concerts than there are now, as I would understand it.
Pat Barker (51:54)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I would say again, that’s an ebb and flow thing. I would say Southern Gospel started in the church and then with the Quartet Convention, with the Blackwoods, with the Statesmen. Now you’re doing a lot of these auditoriums, these all-night sings. You’re at the Ellis Auditorium, you’re in Birmingham, you’re at the [unclear]. And then I would say honestly, in the late sixties, seventies with the Hensons and the Goodmans and some of these groups coming on that were more family groups, more church groups, it kind of went back into churches.
And then, you know – I say Gaither a lot, but he deserves a lot. With that tour now you’re looking at auditoriums kind of being where you need to put a lot of these groups. And as you say now it is moving back to where there’s a lot of churches.
The good thing about that is I love singing in the churches more than the auditoriums. I think you get a better spirit in those churches more than you get in the auditorium.
I love the auditoriums. We’re doing three auditoriums starting off this coming weekend with Bill Bailey. So I love doing the auditorium sings, but there’s something about settling at a church and everybody just seems to be a little more in unity, a little more willing to worship and to have this spirit of worship.
Daniel Mount (53:15)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (53:39)
The downside, honestly, would probably be the money. I’m just going to be honest. You’re not going to get the flats that we call them. You’re not going to get the flats from a church that you might get from a ticketed event at an auditorium. And so there is some trade-off there. And, you know, honestly, there’s some churches that I’m not going to that church, but they’ll go to the performing arts center. Right?
Daniel Mount (53:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, fair enough.
Pat Barker (54:08)
So neutral sites can bring in more people and churches sadly can sometimes be a dividing point for some folks. So there is the good and the bad, but that comes with anything. With an auditorium, that’s a tougher setup. It’s tougher to try to get things loaded in, loaded out. You’re working with the auditorium sound crew, trying to figure out what you can plug in and plug out. You don’t really have those issues in churches.
So you’ve got to be ready for any of that kind of trade off. And you do a different concert for an auditorium than you do for church services. There’s things that I’ll do in an auditorium that I probably wouldn’t try in most churches, but you know, that’s how it should be.
Daniel Mount (54:40)
Mm-hmm.
If you don’t mind me following up on that, what is something that would work in an auditorium that wouldn’t work in a church so well or the other way around?
Pat Barker (54:59)
The way you set up songs. Let’s say in a church service, I’m going to want to start off more with “The Lord’s Prayer” or “A Gentle Shepherd,” as the Cathedrals would do. I want to start off with something that kind of sets the tone just a little bit. When you’re in an auditorium, the promoter really wants you to hit, come out, you know, guns a-blazing. So the way you set up a concert is different. The way you end is different. And when you do an auditorium, you may be doing 30 minutes because you’re splitting it with three or four other groups. You got a church all by yourself, you’re doing an hour and a half to two hours. And, you know, you can play off a crowd differently. In an auditorium, I’m going to be a little looser. The crowd is going to actually be talking to me. I have that happen all the time where they just start talking to me and I feel a little more comfortable playing off of them than I would maybe in a church. Kind of have to tether that a little bit. So it’s a different mentality. It really is.
Daniel Mount (56:02)
Hmm. So this is something we’ve touched on at a number of different, from a number of different angles over the course of the conversation, but I’ll touch on it a little more directly here. With the shift away from buying recorded music and the changes in the Southern gospel circuit, you know, fewer flats, et cetera: What are the best ways for fans to support artists today and to help the music, help the style of music make it through the current cultural and technological changes?
Pat Barker (56:31)
Go to the concerts. Don’t sit at home. Don’t try to find it on Facebook somewhere that you can sit and watch for free. Go to the concerts, support them, clap, cheer. Go to the table, love on them, support them, pray for them. Those kinds of things are very important. Share it with people who have no idea what this music is. When I discovered Southern Gospel music, I was telling everybody at school. No, they didn’t care, but I told ’em that JD made the floors rattle and I told him that George was funny. And I would share music with my friends. And so don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with the people you go to work with and let them know, “Are you frustrated with music at your church? Listen to this. This is a little different. You might like this.” Don’t hide it.
And then give. Most groups now – I don’t think we do – most groups now have a button on their website that says donate. There’s a handful of groups I started donating to in COVID and I never stopped. It comes out a few bucks every month and I don’t even notice it. And so if you’ve got groups that you want to support, almost all of them have donate buttons that they created at COVID and they’re still there and you can give monthly to these groups. And you can share their music and you can do all of these things and that’s really the only way that it’s gonna survive. Honestly, is everybody working together to get the word out?
Daniel Mount (58:13)
Yeah. Amen. Now, whole different angle, but we’re talking about cultural and technological changes. Do you have any thoughts on the impact of AI, artificial intelligence, on Southern gospel?…
Pat Barker (58:27)
Well, I’ve met Jeff Easter, so I know what artificial intelligence looks like! [Laughter] That was a joke I told at Singin’ News—Jeff and Sheri and I were cohosting the Singing News Fan Awards. Somebody said something about AI and Jeff said, “What’s AI?” And I said, “That’s what Sheri’s lived with for 30 years: artificial intelligence.” So I love that joke!
But you’ve seen it in country music. I mean, the number one song in country music a few weeks ago was an AI song. The number one song in Christian music was an AI song. And that’s in streaming. That’s not radio.
So it’s here and I guarantee you where it’s gonna hit first is demos – songwriter’s demos. That’s where it’s gonna hit first and people will start to get used to it and they will start to warm up to it a little bit because it’s cost-effective and you can barely tell the difference.
But I’m gonna go back to what Lari Goss said probably 30-plus years ago. He said it to me maybe 10 years ago because I asked him about it. Maybe it was Gerald who told me this. Somebody asked Lari, “Why do you always use a real orchestra?” And Larry’s answer was, “A violin will always sound like a violin. A trumpet will always sound like a trumpet.”
So just because you think it sounds like everything else and it sounds real—ten years from now, that Casio keyboard is not going to sound like a violin. It’s going to sound like a Casio keyboard.
So I’m always going to lean on the fact that our audience is going to want it to be real. They’re going to want it to be authentic. And if it creeps into Southern gospel, I just don’t see it having a hold on our audience. It may take a hold of everything else, but with the relationships that we build and all those things, I just don’t see our audience – and hopefully I don’t see our artists trying to push it. But it’s not something that we need to just go, whatever. Cause it has the ability to creep in like a lot of other things have.
Daniel Mount (1:00:45)
Yeah.
That’s a good point. And I will say, like songwriter demos, something that the public never hears this one thing. But it’s something very different when it’s something the public hears.
And what Southern Gospel has is relationships. You know, the biggest part of the Southern Gospel experience is going to live concerts and hugging your favorite artist before or after the concert, sharing with them what’s on your heart. You can’t do that with an AI artist. That’s never going to happen. Yeah. Okay.
Pat Barker (1:01:18)
You cannot.
Daniel Mount (1:01:21)
Last question, I’m getting toward wrapping up. Just a fun one. I thought it’d be fun because that could be—there are a couple challenging things Southern Gospel’s dealing with right now, but I didn’t want to end with a challenge, I wanted to end with something a little more fun.
Pat Barker (1:01:33)
Thank you.
Daniel Mount (1:01:50)
So, suppose Bill Gaither retired and left you the Homecoming Series to carry on. Or suppose you created a modern successor to the Homecomings. How might you approach putting a Homecoming style tour together?
Before you answer, I want to limit the question a little bit. I’m not gonna ask you to name which of the current leading artists you’d invite because there is always a risk of – you didn’t mention somebody – hurt feelings. I don’t want to put you in that position. Anybody who’s made it this far in the interview knows who the leading artists are and they would be incorporated in a tour of this style. So we can just set that part aside. So I’m gonna come at it from a different angle. Homecomings had established stars in up-and-coming young artists.
Pat Barker (1:01:59)
Right….
Daniel Mount (1:02:15)
But the big spark plug of the series, I think, was Gaither bringing back the legends who had semi-retired and were working less, or touring less, like Jake Hess, James Blackwood, Howard and Vestal Goodman. So maybe we can focus on those last two categories. If you were putting a homecoming-style tour together, who are some up-and-coming artists you might include, and who are some living legends you might bring back?
Pat Barker (1:02:23)
Mm-hmm.
First off, if I take over the Homecoming series, the first thing I do is create a sign that says “Homecoming Series going out of business.” I don’t know if I’m the guy!
I could call him up-and-coming, but I would have Joseph Habedank there. I would have the Mylon Hayes family there. I love the Chitans. I would have the Chitans there. They’re fantastic. Such a sweet family and they do such a great job.
Another thing that Gaither did that was genius was everybody was different. You would have a Janet Paschal and then you would have the Martins.
Daniel Mount (1:03:06)
Mm-hmm.
Pat Barker (1:03:33)
And then you would have the Isaacs and then you might have Vestal come up and you know, everything was very different. So it’s gotta be variety. It can’t be an all quartet show and it can’t be a solo driven—or things like that. So I love having Joseph, he’s just such a wonderful singer, and people like that. Established, you gotta have the Isaacs. You gotta have a Triumphant. They’ve obviously [unclear] themselves – Eric and those guys.
I would also have Sue Dodge coming in. She still tours and it’s still busy, but you’ve got to have some of those legendary names. And so Sue would be coming in. The Blackwoods would be coming in. Ann Downing would be coming in. I know she has some health struggles, but those are the kinds of names that we don’t need to forget. We don’t need to act like they’re not there anymore because they are. And they’re still, you know, bringing everything they can bring. And then, of course, I would feature me for probably 45 minutes to an hour because that’s just how I roll! [Laughter]
But then, you know, I would also introduce some music that maybe the audience has never heard before. Don’t think for a second that I wouldn’t have Sovereign Grace coming up.
Daniel Mount (1:05:02)
Neat! Yeah.
Pat Barker (1:05:02)
Singing before the concert started, I’d have some music like that, that would kind of set the tone. So it would be very different from what Gaither is able to do. But he’s the best. You know, hopefully the rapture happens before he retires. Cause I don’t need to be in charge of that.
Daniel Mount (1:05:12)
Mm-hmm.
All right, so we’ve talked about a little bit here and there, but you’re with the Guardians right now. How can fans keep up with what the Guardians are doing and what you’re doing? Mention any social media channels, websites, anything like that you’d like to mention.
Pat Barker (1:05:37)
Yeah, we’ve made it easy. It’s guardiansquartet.com. That gets you everything.
There’s a great app called Bandsintown that a lot of the artists are on. Download that app. It’s free and you can put in your favorite groups and you can follow them. And when they come in your area, you get a little email and it lets you know that your favorite group is in the area. So we do a lot through Bandsintown.
Facebook: I am in charge of all the social media. So I’m posting our schedule all the time on Facebook. Because people will come up and they’ll say, “We had no idea you were here till this morning. I popped on Facebook and saw that y’all were going to be in town.” So I do a lot of posting on Facebook, a little bit on Instagram, but I’ve got to do better in 2026 on Instagram. So guardiansquartet.com is going to be your starting point. And then everything kind of goes from there. Yep.
Daniel Mount (1:06:29)
Everything’s linked from there.
Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Pat Barker (1:06:33)
Thank you, Daniel. It’s always good to catch up with you, my brother.
Daniel Mount (1:06:36)
Likewise.! And to the listeners, thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. Keep up with the latest episodes on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or on southerngospeljournal.com. Thanks for listening.