Daniel Ball sang lead for The Ball Brothers for eighteen years. Now he represents World Vision on the Collingsworth Family tour and other events, and assists several artists in a behind-the-scenes capacity. He’s one of the most innovative people I know!
Show Notes
Daniel Ball:
Earlier text-based interviews:
Transcript
Lightly edited for clarity.
Daniel J. Mount
Thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. My name is Daniel Mount and this evening I have the pleasure of talking with Daniel Ball, who for many years was a member of a group called the Ball Brothers. How are you doing this evening?
Daniel Ball
Hey, I’m doing well and it’s good to see you again.
Daniel J. Mount
Good to see you too. We go way back. I went and checked, and when I first started blogging about Southern Gospel, you were either the first or second interview I did, and that was on September 26, 2006, almost twenty years ago.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So it was right at the beginning too of when we first started. And for those of you that don’t know the history of the Ball Brothers, we didn’t have any background in gospel music. We didn’t grow up around the industry. We didn’t know what it was. And so I look back now at some of the things I said and did. I probably would have done it a little more gracefully. I think my heart has always been in the right place with kind of talking about how the industry is changing and where it’s going, but maybe the presentation of it would have been a little more graceful over the years.
Daniel J. Mount
Well, I think that just about all of us, if we could go back to who we were at twenty or twenty-five, would say a few things more gently, a few things differently. But at the same time, I will say that I thought you carried yourself very well and were very well spoken then as well.
Daniel Ball
Good, good, good.
Daniel J. Mount
So there will be a few things in this interview that will be familiar to the longest-time readers, but even most of the readers of that blog picked up after that point. So I think some of this will be new to some of you. So, if you don’t mind, let’s go all the way back to growing up in Illinois, which is kind of off the beaten path for Southern Gospel, and the groups that would come that way. And also, if you would, talk about your testimony and how you came to saving faith.
Daniel Ball
Yeah, for sure. So my dad was an assistant pastor at a church in Illinois for nearly twenty years. So all growing up, as far as I can remember, he worked at the church – youth pastor, music pastor. We’d had a bus ministry, janitorial services, and in a lot of rural farm town churches you end up wearing many hats. And so I remember getting saved at a young age, at six years old, and coming up to the end of a church service invitation. My dad was actually singing the invitation hymn and my mom was playing the invitation hymn. But what was cool about it was that no one came in and took his place – didn’t have to call him down. He just saw that I came forward to pray. And so dad just stopped right where he was at in the song. Mom kept playing. He came down to pray with me. And I had grown up around church. I had heard about salvation many times before, but never felt the calling of God in my heart to come forward and pray. And so whenever I told dad what I was there to do at the altar – you know, feel like God’s calling me to get saved — he says, “You already know what to do.” And so I remember praying.
Looking back on that, though, I always thought that it was great that Dad, even though he had a position in the church, that never overrode his ability to be a father, to see his child, to know that the most important thing he was doing at the time was not leading the invitation hymn, but going down and praying with one of his kids. And I think all seven of us kids always knew that ministry was something that he did, but it never superseded his role as a father. And I think that’s why a lot of us are still around church and love it and are involved in it. It was because our experience was never bad with it. He never prioritized that over the family.
So that’s salvation.
Gospel music, as you know, living in Ohio or Illinois, is not exactly on the beaten path like you said. My grandma collected the Gaither videos. So we would go over to her house and spend like a few weeks every summer. And she would say, “Watch one of the Gaither videos,” and us boys would learn the songs and just mimic what we heard off the videos. And back then, you know, the Cathedrals were on there, Gold City was on there, the Gaither Vocal Band, Jake Hess and Vestal Goodman and Howard Goodman and J.D. Sumner and all these people that I honestly never got to meet or see in real life. We listened to it, fell in love with the songs. And grandma would say, “Sing one of those songs – you boys learn it and sing one of those songs while you’re here at church on Sunday.” And we would. And so I think growing up, from a very young age, maybe seven or eight years old, there was a dream to sing gospel music. But growing up in Illinois, you never really got to see those groups live. The Cathedrals came about once a year. I saw them first when I was eleven years old in Bloomington, Illinois. And I think maybe the Kingdom Heirs came through once.
I don’t know that I ever saw Gold City sing live until maybe I was married. Groups were few and far between. And that’s one of the reasons the Ball Brothers invested so heavily in the Midwest and the Northeast and some of these places, because we saw the value of being able to go and sing all those rural towns. Some of our largest concerts were in farming towns that would run maybe a thousand people population, and we’d have five or six hundred that would come to a concert in the middle of nowhere, because we understood the value of having groups come in. It’s a big deal.
Living in Chickamauga, Georgia now, we are blessed beyond measure with lots of great gospel music here. But sometimes it’s hard to get a crowd when people can see a gospel concert five nights of the week most times. So we learned those Gaither songs and then kind of always wanted to do it, but didn’t really know how or how God would lead.
Fast forward to 2005. Before we officially launched in 2006, we’d traveled into evangelism a little bit with our dad. And as our families grew and it grew to thirteen people out on the road all at once, it didn’t seem like it was viable. We hadn’t heard of the Collingsworth Family yet. We didn’t know that you could put thirty people on buses and do it that way. So we didn’t have that kind of faith. So we thought we need to downsize this, and dad started pastoring in Chickamauga, Georgia, and we thought that would be a good place for the Ball Brothers to base out of and launch into full-time ministry.
And we didn’t know what a record contract was, we didn’t know how to collect songs. We knew very little of the recording process. We didn’t know radio. But one of the things that we did know is that social media was just starting to come on the scene, and what a great opportunity if you could put together a product to take it directly to the people. And so we invested very heavily in that at the very beginning.
Not because of great strategy, but probably because we didn’t really know what else to do. Like, you wanted to do something, you wanted to stay busy, you didn’t know how to do it. So you just started, you know, making videos before YouTube and starting chat rooms, and you know, with your blog and things. Those were all fairly new at the time, but I think some of us could see very clearly that was going to be the future. And whoever had a great product was going to be able to get in front of the right eyes and the right people to be able to see it. And I think God sometimes puts that trailblazer in your heart – that he wants you to blaze a path that others will be able to cross and be able to pattern off of sometimes later – but you don’t know that’s what you’re doing at the time. You just think that you’re fighting it out or doing whatever God wants you to do.
So the Ball Brothers’ first full-time year was 2006. Got to sing with Ernie Haase and Signature Sound very early on, which was great, to learn from Ernie. The Martins were very influential in how to set microphones, how to stage a song, how to pick your set list. Like, all of those things are so important that I had no idea contributed to the overall success of a concert. You know, you can’t sing all power ballads in a row right at the beginning. You sometimes gotta warm the crowd up. Sometimes you gotta read the crowd and realize that you gotta change the song list. You can’t go into a predetermined idea of what’s going to happen. Let God lead it, and it might be different from night to night. And that’s kind of a scary thing, especially starting out, ’cause you’re like, okay, we have eight songs. There’s not too many ways we can put these together. But watching the Martins, watching Signature Sound, and then eventually being able to be a part of some of the Gaither videos and record projects over the years – when we retired in twenty twenty-three and looked back over eighteen and a half years, it was hard to believe that it had been that long. We were having fun the entirety of the time that we were doing it and not really counting up, still feeling like there’s still more that God wants us to do – just no longer in the form of the Ball Brothers traveling as a group. So that’s it in a nutshell.
Daniel J. Mount
Sounds good!
There are a couple things in there that I’d love to dive into a little more deeply over the course of the conversation. One of them is — I know we talked years ago about the Signature Sound connection, not so much the Martins. I think it would be cool to talk a couple of minutes, if you would, about how you crossed paths with both of those groups. And you talked a little bit about the Martins — how you crossed paths with them, and then for Ernie and Signature Sound, how you crossed paths with them and how they encouraged you and helped put you in front of some new audiences.
Daniel Ball
Yeah, and really that’s one of the few groups that we were familiar with – Ernie because we’d watched him with the Cathedrals, and the Martins because we had seen them on the Gaither videos.
We had put up a website. One day we just took photos in our parents’ basement and put up a couple clips and put up a website. And the next day we got an email from a guy that said he was Ernie Haase’s manager and Ernie wanted to play us in basketball, or just something crazy like that. And I thought, that can’t be real. Like, there’s no way – there wasn’t social media, so it wasn’t like somebody could just bump into your website. I have no idea how they found the website. Didn’t know it would work. Got an email, and that was Brian Hudson. And Brian was working with Ernie, promoting a lot of his concerts at the time, and said, “Hey, Ernie’s gonna be in Huntsville, and I think he’ll have you guys open the concert, but you gotta tell him that you can beat him in basketball, because if you tell him you can beat him in basketball, then he’s gonna want to get to know you guys.” And we thought, well, we like basketball and we like to sing. So we went and played Ernie in basketball. We helped him set up for the concert, and then for probably two or three hours in the church gym in Huntsville, played basketball. I mean, all out, because you’re trying to beat him, you know. And had fun with Doug and Ryan and Roy at the time. We’re all really big into basketball – Tim not so much. And by the time we got done that night, had formed a friendship and opened the concert. And Ernie says, “Hey, in a few months, I have a tour that’s coming up, and I would love for you guys to come and open the tour.” And so really, when we say this is a story of us going and playing basketball, I mean, that’s really kind of what kicked it off. And then 22 concerts in the summer of 2006.
The Martins, in between there, had just come back from a hiatus, so they had taken a little break from the road. And our end with them was that we could set up their sound system. And set it up for all the concerts, drive there. We’d open for them, we’d set up their sound system. And then what we got out of it was that we got to keep their sound system when they weren’t on the road. And we had a very nice sound system to use that had wireless microphones and Meyer speakers and all of these things that we could never afford at the beginning. I still probably couldn’t. And so it was very beneficial for us to be able to have use of that equipment and very gracious of them to allow us to do that, because we had said, of course, yeah, we know what we’re doing. And then we got all this stuff and we’re like, how do we even put this together? This is far more complicated. But we figured it out and learned on the fly and got to do maybe a dozen concerts or so with the Martins, and that would have been early 2006 before the Ernie dates. So yeah, that’s the Martins and the Ernie connection from very early on.
Daniel J. Mount
Cool! One small point of clarification: if I’m remembering correctly, there are two people with very similar sounding names involved in Southern Gospel — Brian Hudson with a D and Brian Hutson with a T. Brian Hutson with a T sang with the Kingsmen and Soul’d Out. And you’re talking about the other Brian, right?
Daniel Ball
Yep. I am talking about the other Brian, the promoter, the behind-the-scenes one. He’s been involved in a lot of concerts that people probably go to. What I’m finding out now is that there are people who stand up on stage and sing and everyone knows them, and then there are people like — and maybe people would be familiar with Landon Beene — but you don’t see him out front as much. But he’s also behind a lot of the concerts and events that people have loved.
And that’s interesting because the turn in my career over the years — I’m sure we’ll get to that in a little while — has involved more behind-the-scenes things than the out-front thing. And that’s neat to have it from both perspectives of setting up the concerts and doing all that kind of stuff, but also understanding what it’s like to be the group on the stage.
Daniel J. Mount
So one thing – it wasn’t terribly far into your career when you were on your first Homecoming video. Do you remember which songs? Like, if people were to go on YouTube — because I think all the Gaither Homecoming songs are on YouTube at this point, on his own channel, not pirated stuff. If people wanted to see Ball Brothers songs, those are gonna be some of the nicest recordings you have out there. Do you remember what songs you did on Homecoming videos that people can pull up?
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So on the Ernie Haase and Signature Sound video, which was a Gaither video but was mainly featuring the Gaither Vocal Band and Ernie Haase and Signature Sound, that was Get Away Jordan. And we did “I Sing the Mighty Power of God” as an a cappella. And so that’s one of the most-seen ones. And then the other Gaither videos that we were a part of, we never got a feature on them. Like, they’ll give you a song to learn ahead of time, and then you may or may not have time to do that – we never recorded one. So we did two or three other ones, and those were Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art, I think. Two of the hymn ones.
Yeah, and so if you look at the very top row in a lot of the shots, we’re sitting in there, and we were so not well known that our brother Josh, who sang with us at the time, was just kind of coming on to singing full time. We started off as a trio and he ran our sound, and then he later came on as a vocalist. He was a seat filler, and so they didn’t have a seat for him when we got to the video – it was just for the three main vocalists. But then sometimes throughout the day, like maybe Michael English couldn’t be there for the first hour or something like that. So Josh would go sit in that seat so there wasn’t an empty seat, but then later somebody would be there and he’d have to go sit in another seat to make sure all the seats were filled. So he was part of the Gaither video as a body double!
Daniel J. Mount
I actually never heard that story. That’s fascinating. Do you remember — unless it’s like protected under nondisclosure or something — do you remember what hymn you would have sung? What hymn you were working up in case you had the chance?
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So it was actually not a hymn, and that was one of the issues. It was “Rest within the peace of God, where you’ll be safe and warm?” And it was because I think Brian Hudson thought that if Bill heard that song, he would love it and put it on the video. And so that’s the song we sent in. And when we got there, Bill pulled us aside and said, “Hey guys, I really love this song, but this video – I’m gonna advertise it as all hymns. We’re gonna do all hymns, and so we’re gonna keep it as all hymns.” Well, at that time I think we didn’t have a lot of recording and stuff done. Even though that was released in 2008, I think it was probably recorded in 2007, maybe. And the only other thing that we had that was a hymn was “I Sing the Mighty Power of God,” which had just been prominently featured on the Ernie Haase and Signature Sound video that had just been released. And so they didn’t want to do the same hymn again. And we had like maybe seven tracks; the rest of them were upbeat Southern Gospel or ballads and that type of stuff. So it was one of those things where we just didn’t have the right thing at the right time. But I think it was gonna be “Peace of God.”
Daniel J. Mount
That’s very interesting! There’s no obvious place to talk about this, but I would love — any funny or favorite memories you have from your years on the road, be it a funny story or a moving story where God really moved, just whatever comes to mind. I think it’d be fun at some point in the conversation to work some of that in.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So there’s lots of funny stories. There’s also moving stories that happen. I think the Ball Brothers ended up kind of gearing towards those funny stories. One of the things we found out on the road is that discouragement is a universal problem that most people deal with at some point or another during their life. And so we tried to find any of the funny moments, or maybe things that would even be embarrassing or something like that, and share them.
One of the things was, we were in Arkansas and we sang a Sunday morning — the way we used to do concerts was we would pack in as much as we possibly could put in a day. So we had a sunrise Easter service in Alma, Arkansas. And then in Fort Smith, which is fairly close, they had an afternoon concert for us. And of course we’re like, yes, let’s do it. If it’s physically possible, like, yes, we’ll take it. Our schedule’s open, we’ll book it. So we did the sunrise Easter morning service and then we went to set up for this afternoon service. No time for lunch, nothing. And there’s a taco truck in the parking lot of like the civic center or something where we’re doing this on Easter Sunday. And I walked over to the taco truck and — I don’t remember if it was advertised as “World’s Biggest Burrito” or something like that. And I thought, I’m hungry, and there’s this taco truck here. It’d be cool to get a picture of this huge burrito. And it’s like this long. So I’m sitting there eating the burrito as a joke, and then I’m like, you know, actually it’s really good. It’s just a really good burrito. So I ate more of it.
And we got on stage to sing the concert that afternoon, and we got to the song “Redeemed, Forgiven,” which was probably three or four songs before the end, because “It’s About the Cross” and a couple other things that kind of wind it down. We got to “Redeemed, Forgiven,” and I realized I was having trouble with acid reflux, and so I was just turning around drinking water as much as I could, thinking it would make it go away. Well, I had drunk too much water, and when the acid reflux came up, I thought I was gonna throw up. So I just put my hand over my mouth and the acid reflux shot out my nose while I was singing, like in the song. And so I took my tie and wiped my face off, turned around, took my tie off, and turned back around. And as soon as we finished the song, I was like, “Good afternoon, folks. We’re done. We’ll see you later.” And I walked off the stage. And the guys had no idea why I had ended the concert or what had even happened.
I soon realized later that you can’t eat whatever you want and sing. But at that point, it was probably 2009 – I was probably getting close to thirty – and it changes a lot. And so after that, really thinking through what I’m eating, when I’m eating, and what I’m gonna have to do on stage afterwards. It kind of catches up with you. So whenever young people tell me they have an embarrassing moment on stage, I’m like – has acid ever shot out of your face in the middle of a song and you can’t make it stop? So that happened.
We also got our bus stuck on a railroad track one time. We had a Kingsley coach, kind of like Brian Free drives, and we had just gotten it and got it hung up on a railroad track with a train coming. We called 9-1-1 first and they called the railroad station and got the train stopped that was heading towards it. And then it was before iPhones, but we just had our little digital camera out just recording the bus, waiting for it to happen. I thought, if nothing else, we’ll get a video out of this. Everyone was safe, but we got it off and got it off in time.
Daniel J. Mount
You know, there’s one – and I think part of the reason I ask this toward the start of the conversation – there is one story I keep thinking about with a smile every time I think about our first interview. And if you wouldn’t mind sharing it again, if you still remember it: There was a little mountain church in Virginia where you had a radio station bleed through your speakers and a preacher had quite the reaction.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So this would have been actually pre-Ball Brothers. I think we were still traveling with my dad at the time. And you know, pastors a lot of times will get all kinds of crazy people that come into the church and need help and need prayer. And the pastor was shook up when we got there, saying that a person came in that was demon possessed or thought they were demon possessed, and he had prayed over them, and he was really shaken up by it. And so we got in to do our — I don’t remember if we didn’t have a good sound check, or probably not a good sound system. But what happened was a radio station started bleeding through our wireless microphones, and it sounded kind of demonic. I mean, you could pick up that it was music if you knew — like, it was just something that wasn’t scanned right on the channel. But the pastor had pretty much thought that the demons had returned and were there in the service. And so he was ducking down behind the altar, trying to pray the demon out. And we’re trying to get our brother Josh to scan the frequencies to get the radio station out of the thing. But it sounded weird at first, and then you kind of caught — like it was coming in and out — and then you’re like, it’s different music than what we’re playing. That was crazy.
Daniel J. Mount
That’s just – every time I think about our first interview, that story comes to mind. Now, so over time, as you got on – even from your first recording, but even more pronounced a few years in – you developed a very distinctive sound, even within Southern Gospel, with jazzy chords and modern harmonies. Looking back, I assume it’s mostly pluses, but what were the pluses and, if there were any, the minuses of having such a distinctive sound? Was it always a plus, or were there times when it was really a constraint, being known for a very precise part of the spectrum?
Daniel Ball
Yeah. And so the reason that it happened was because we didn’t have a low bass singer, and none of us had very low-timbered voices, or very high for that matter. And so when we started doing four parts, we had to figure out a way to make them all fit. And so the Four Freshmen and the Lettermen were able to do that – never have the bass go really low and never have the tenor go really high. All the parts were pretty much stacked. So I think it was somewhat out of necessity that we chose the style, and then it kind of became a trademark.
Bill Gaither was a real encourager to us to pursue that; but he did tell us one time, he says, “When you’re doing some of the most intricate harmonies that the Ball Brothers did,” he says, “that’s a specialty thing. Ninety-seven percent of the people in the crowd, that’s gonna go over their heads. So you have to give them some things that come back to rest, that they can identify with. You can’t” — you know, like take jazz, for instance — “that’s an acquired taste. It’s more than some people can handle, because a lot of the things never resolve.” I love it, but I’m not the normal music consumer. And there certainly is an audience for that. But when you’re going into a little country church in West Virginia and things like that, it might go right over their head if you stay there the whole time. And I think with the Ball Brothers, it was always trying to trailblaze and balance those out at the same time. And there were several times in our career where we got out in front of something that probably didn’t end up being the right direction, and then we compensated for it, and you’re trying to fill that out as you do.
One of the things, though – it made some of the harder songs hard for radio to play, because they didn’t really find their place in Southern Gospel radio. The internet and streaming helped with that, because you could find a wider audience outside of where the Southern Gospel radio stations traditionally were. That led the Ball Brothers to traveling to Germany and Scotland and Northern Ireland and all these different places around the world, because some of that harmony really resonated with crowds that weren’t typical Southern Gospel crowds.
Some of the drawbacks of it: It’s really hard to find songs. And so we really struggled to be able to find stuff that we wanted to sing and say, and then also have it presented in the harmony. So you’re trying to weigh that out: what do we want to say and how do we want to say it?
It was hard to learn stuff. Some of the Christmas stuff that we did – I played a Christmas record that we did called Snowball just the other day. And it’s haunting, just because some of those a cappella arrangements were so intricate that it’s one of those things you have to memorize your part all the way through it. And I can still sing every single note of it, but I don’t know that I enjoyed it as much because it was so difficult to do, like you couldn’t just enjoy it. You had to just be locked in the entirety of the time. And sometimes a Southern Gospel song is a little bit more left up to interpretation, that you can just do. So yeah, there are pros and cons of that. And then not having another group that was exactly like yours — there’s a benefit to that, but then people have a hard time figuring out where you fit.
Some of the groups we listened to are obviously the Gaither Vocal Band, and we listened to the Cathedrals and Gold City and the Inspirations and all those groups too. Some of the groups that we liked were like the Mullins — when Buddy Mullins sang with his brothers, they did one called, I think it was Vocal Point, where it was the Acappella Project. And we, I think, over the years re-recorded nearly every single one — and not always as an a cappella, but just the songs. “My Savior, First of All,” “Nothing to Bring Him,” “Who’s Gonna Stand in the Gap” — several of the ones the Ball Brothers ended up recording were from that project, that’s how much of a favorite it was. We tried to sneak one in almost every single recording.
Another one was Shane Dunlap with N’Harmony, “When He Comes Right Out of the Blue.” Because a boy growing up in Central Illinois hearing that, you could envision yourself doing that – I knew I would never be George Younce, I would never be Ernie Haase, but I could hear some of these other things and think, I think I could do that, or I think we could do that.
And so I think that’s one of the bright spots of it — that maybe it modernized the sound just enough that some kids that would have maybe otherwise not been interested in the genre started listening to some of the groups. And we still run into people now that were brought into Southern Gospel and maybe just knew “It’s About the Cross” or something like that first.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. You mentioned challenges finding songs. I remember one year, I think it was at the first or one of the first Quartet conventions after they moved down to Pigeon Forge, you told me that was a phase when just about every song people were sending you was a Jonah song.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So one of the things – the Bible story songs are really big in Southern Gospel. Just, you know, Peter walking on the water, five loaves and fishes. And it seemed as if you got so many sent in to you that were about a Bible story. And I don’t have a problem with Bible story songs – they’re in contemporary music as well – but what we liked about a song was the practical application: not just telling a story of something that happened, but something that we wanted to make you feel a certain way or to do a certain thing after it. And sometimes telling the Bible story – other than just reminiscing, if it doesn’t have the practical application of it, then you’re kind of like, we’re just telling a story that’s been told. Like, tell the story, and then what we’re supposed to do. And we did do Bible story songs – I’m not gonna say we didn’t do any – but there’s not a lot of them.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. So it was not terribly far from around that point — maybe even by that point, a couple years into what you’re doing — you started doing Christmas tours, and that ended up being a really big part of what you did through the year. A lot of effort went into doing a real high-production-value event. So I thought it’d be cool, if you don’t mind, to share a little bit about your Christmas tours.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So one of the funny things is, very early on we’re told that Southern Gospel groups shut it down at the beginning of December because there’s too much on people’s calendars and they’re not gonna come out to a Christmas show. We didn’t have enough money to survive the winter without doing something in December. So we were going to do Christmas shows. And so rather than just doing it as a Southern Gospel concert and sprinkling in a few Christmas songs like had been done, we just decided to make it an all-out Christmas concert. We would sing maybe “It’s About the Cross” — that kind of had a Christmas message to it anyway — but pretty much just did a complete two-hour Christmas show. And what we found was that many people that wouldn’t darken the doors of a church or come to a Southern Gospel concert would, around Christmas time, come out to a Christmas show — because families are in town, or they got invited. And what a wonderful ministry opportunity it was, because we were able to evangelize more on some of those just because we had fresh people in the church pews. And sometimes some of the fun and some of the snow machines and things like that really broke down the walls, so that when we got to the point where we were going to give them the true story of Christmas — and talk about salvation, and talk about, “hey, we’ve had fun tonight, but it’s about the cross” — that was where it was going pretty early on. We had that one song, I think, in 2009, that allowed us to get to the point of ministry and have people with some of the barriers broken down.
And even with music backing up outside of the Christmas tour, some of the fun stuff that we did, the crazy harmony stuff — it got the ears of people to listen to it in a way that might not have otherwise happened. So the Christmas tour was strategic, and we had a lot of fun with it. But it allowed us to – if I can get somebody to laugh, I can witness to that person, because there’s a certain level of trust and a certain level of barriers that are broken down. And not that sometimes I haven’t witnessed to people going directly into it, if that’s what the Holy Spirit’s leading me to do. But a lot of times He’s given us gifts or personalities that we can use as tools for ministry, not just to get applause at the end of the night or to sell more tickets or to say we had so many people at our concert, but to be able to get the gospel out to a wider audience. And so that’s what we were able to do with the Christmas stuff.
Daniel J. Mount
Didn’t you do at least some of the Christmas tours in conjunction with another artist? Roy Webb some years? I forget – I’m trying to remember who it was exactly.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So early on we had Roy for two or three years right at the beginning. And then later on, my sister-in-law’s group, the Gibson Girls — we ended up doing several with them. And even I myself, doing solo ministry for the past three years, have still done some Christmas dates with the Gibson Girls. And talk about a unique avenue for ministry – they’re kind of like reminiscent of the Andrews Sisters or something like that. And so they do honor flights and work a lot with military. But they’ve been able to see a war-hardened seventy-five-year-old veteran brought to tears in some of the songs, and been able to witness to people that maybe would not otherwise come to church or have been hardened to the message of the gospel. And so once again, a very unique opportunity for ministry in how they present themselves.
Daniel J. Mount
Yes, neat. So we’ve talked a couple of times in passing about “It’s About the Cross,” but that song was so big for your ministry that I think it might be good to talk about it specifically. Do you remember where you first came across the song? Did somebody send it in to you?
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So we recorded up in Lakeville, Minnesota with Darren Rust. And he has a group called the Blenders, which is a secular group. They do a lot of Christmas music. So some of the Ball Brothers arrangements were either arranged by Darren or borrowed from the Blenders early on. And he also recorded – so when you go to a studio and hear a producer, you kind of ask, what else have you produced, what other groups have you mixed? And there was a group called Go Fish, which was basically a children’s group – I think their tagline is “Children’s music that doesn’t drive mom bonkers” or something like that. And they had a Christmas project, and on the end of it, it had “It’s About the Cross.” And it was straight-up Christmas. “It’s not about the manger” was the first verse, but the second verse I think was something about “it’s not about snow on Christmas Day” and these things.
And so when we got ready to make our first label project with Sonlite/Crossroads in probably late 2008, early 2009, we got done and we had nine songs ready to go – like we’d selected nine songs – and we kind of said, “Hey, we just have nine songs.” And they said, “Well, we’d really love for you to have ten,” because that was kind of the standard for a project at the time. And so I thought, well, I like this one Christmas song, but this is a regular project. So I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do this — I just asked Darren, who was the producer, “Can I have Jamie Suth’s number, to call him and ask him if I could just rewrite the verse?” And so I didn’t know that you don’t just take somebody’s song and say, “Hey, can I rewrite your song? ‘Cause we want to use it for something different.” But I did. And he said yeah, he said, “Just let me – I want to make sure it’s theologically correct, so let me hear what you’ve come up with.” So I sat down, wrote the second verse to it, sent it to him. He says, “Yeah, that’s good.” And funny thing is, he says, “Do you want some of the royalties off that?” I didn’t know what that was. And I’m like, “No, man, if we just want to use the song, I don’t need any writing royalties or whatever.” Our version of the song wouldn’t go on to get downloaded and streamed millions and millions and millions of times. But it was still worth it, because what that did for the Ball Brothers’ career and ministry just outdid almost anything else that we did.
In 2019, we did an event called Faith Fest in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. And there were maybe 10,000 people there to see contemporary groups – Jordan Feliz and MercyMe, and I don’t remember who else was there. And Ball Brothers was just on an opening stage. And I think the impact of that song — whenever we got to “It’s About the Cross” and you look at a sea of people as far as you can see, people that didn’t normally come to our type of concerts were all singing along with us. Then you realize that the impact of that song had far exceeded our normal audience. The song kind of took on a life of its own. And that’s a really cool thing about having the right song on the right platform at the right time, and God just doing something crazy with it that was kind of bigger than what we ever dreamed would happen.
Daniel J. Mount
It’s always hard to tell why a song caught on. Why do you think that song caught on the way it did?
Daniel Ball
Yeah, I’ve actually thought about that a lot. One, it encompasses the entire message of the gospel from the birth to the resurrection, and what our place is in it, and it’s the simplicity of it. I think sometimes when a melody is simple enough that somebody can sing along with it by the time they’ve heard the third chorus, there’s something beautiful about that, because like you said, with some of the harmonies and stuff, sometimes we can complicate it so much that an average person would never learn that song. And so I think there’s a simplicity of message in the melody of it. And then just God getting into something – I mean, you can’t discount that, because we can write it up on paper any way we want and obviously can try to replicate it a thousand times, a thousand different ways. And once God wants to use a certain thing, it doesn’t matter who the people are or what your talent level is – God can get behind it, use it, put it in front of audiences, and just have it take on a life of its own.
Daniel J. Mount
Definitely. I think it has – as you mentioned, some of the harmonies you did on some of the arrangements were really intricate, which is great. But as you mentioned, some of your arrangements on some of the Christmas projects, an average person in the pews is not gonna be able to just sing along. And this song – and we can’t discount what God did with it, because that’s central, and it’s about the message, and it’s about the cross – but there is the fact that it has tight harmonies and it fits your sound and it still sounds like you. I mean, you didn’t sound like the Cathedrals doing it or the Inspirations. It still sounds like you. But it also has the tight harmonies while being simple enough that, as you say, somebody else can sing along. And I think that when you look at the songs that become the all-time biggest classics in Southern Gospel or any other genre – but in Southern Gospel, “Midnight Cry” and “Sweet Beulah Land” are songs people can sing along with.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. And I think it’s cool. Sometimes I’ll just go to YouTube and type in “It’s About the Cross” and see a group of young people currently singing it in the Philippines or somewhere clear across the world. And I always fast-forward to the bridge because it has that big a cappella bridge in it. That was pretty hard. And how we did it was, there’s a cascading lead line. So we did it through with one vocalist and it didn’t sound right. So we did it with four vocalists, and then we had a cascade of lead going back in and doing something different over the middle of it. But most people singing it live, if they have a quartet or something, don’t realize there’s like six parts that come in right there. So to make all of that happen, you have to have your four bass parts and you have to have other people singing over top of it. And so it’s funny, because you listen to that and you get “every drop of blood” and “one should have been me,” and seeing how people have interpreted doing that live.
When I went back and re-recorded it solo, I just took out the a cappella bridge completely, because with one person it was a nightmare to try to figure out where even I – knowing it – was supposed to go or do. But just to see the impact in so many places around the world and hearing it sung in different languages — that’s really a testament of what God can do with a song. And a testament of anything that we record or do on the internet: it doesn’t have the shelf life of a radio single or just while it’s being promoted. As long as it’s blessing people, and even in streaming – it’s not like the songs used to have, where there was a shelf life as long as it was out on some type of physical media like tapes or cassettes. And the beauty of streaming is that still every single day people log in and listen to that music, and it’s there, and it doesn’t go out of stock, and it doesn’t go away (songs are added, but we get to keep what we’ve had).
And I think that’s one of the coolest things about ministry – hearing, you know, we’ve been off the road now for three years, but I’m still out doing concerts and stuff, speaking on the Collingsworth Family tour. But hearing people every night that were just as moved by that song as if it was just sung to them today, before they came to that concert. And I think a lot of times we think that we do something and God’s done with it, moved on. But He still uses that currently. And I think that’s an encouragement to anyone that’s been in ministry – that anyone that’s ever been in a group and recorded a song, that stuff is still touching people’s lives years later, after we’ve walked away and done something else and moved on with our careers. God can still use that stuff. And that’s really powerful.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah, it is. Now, as we’re talking about — there are actually two places I could go with this, and I want to go to the second one in a couple minutes. But I’ll go here first. As we’re talking about “It’s About the Cross,” if we were to give people five songs – like, if you’re not too familiar with the Ball Brothers music, listen to these five songs – surely that one has to be on the list. What would the other four be? If somebody comes up to you at a Collingsworth concert and says they’ve heard you used to sing with a group called the Ball Brothers – well, what are some songs I should listen to to get a feel for what you all did?
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So “Someday, Someday” – that was one that was kind of like a fifties style. But it stayed in our program night after night because I think it brought a lot of people back to a sound and feel of music that had been missing for years. And so there’s kind of a gap there. And so that’s one of the things that we did that was always a crowd favorite.
I always liked the song “Forgiven,” because it was a Southern Gospel or country gospel sounding song. And we didn’t grow up around that. So to sing that song every single time was a lot of fun, because I didn’t grow up around that kind of music at all.
And then I think probably something a cappella, like “I Sing the Mighty Power of God” or “I Shall Know Him,” because we always tried to do something a cappella. I still love a cappella. It’s hard to do a complete concert of all a cappella songs. But to be able to just flat-footed stand up and sing that wherever – it always kind of kept you in check as a vocalist. And it can be very beautiful.
And also we found out it could be a train wreck. We were doing it at Silver Dollar City, and literally the train came by – train whistle – in the middle of “I Shall Know Him,” which has a pretty tight harmony in it. And the train whistle was not in the key that we were singing in. And so then you’re trying not to drift into that. But that keeps you on your toes every single night when you do a big a cappella arrangement, because a cappella can be beautiful, and just a little bit off and it can sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. And we were on both sides of that from night to night, but it was really nice when it worked. So yeah, I would say something a cappella in there too.
And then for the fifth one, maybe just one of the Christmas things, that’s just completely different than what we would have done before.
Daniel J. Mount
Cool! So now, similar question but from a different angle. There are probably going to be a lot of people who listen to this who have been to a Ball Brothers concert or heard a fair amount of your music. So for that audience, what might be some deep cuts that you really like that might be worth people coming back to and listening again? The songs that maybe weren’t the biggest hit, but you still think of and, you know, like, let’s give that one another spin. A few of those, maybe.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So several things happen. As you record for eighteen years, your voice changes. And so that’s one thing. When you start recording when you’re twenty-three or twenty-four years old, and then you’re all of a sudden you’re forty, you can’t just sing everything that you want to. So you don’t keep everything in the catalog brushed up. But “Mercy Said No” was one of the ones we put on the first record, and we had thought about going back, and we actually have a track made for it where we’re gonna go back and re-do that.
Daniel J. Mount
Mm-hmm.
Daniel Ball
And a young man by the name of Chris Williams did a solo project, and we just gave the track to him because he had the voice that could do it. But “Mercy Said No” is one I liked of the Ball Brothers. One of my favorite ones that I think went right over everyone’s head was a Scott Krippayne song called “Build a Bridge.” I was so into the message of that song because of what I was going through in life at the time. It was basically saying if you’re gonna build something, you have to count the cost of what it’s gonna cost you to get to where you wanna go.
Daniel J. Mount
Okay.
Daniel Ball
And I thought it was great, and Scott did a great job writing it. But every time we sang it in concert, it’s like it completely went over people’s heads. But it’s one of my favorite tracks that we ever did, one of my favorite songs. And we probably did it in concert a couple dozen times over the years, just trying to make it fit somewhere, because sometimes it’s the right song, but it’s in the wrong spot. And it just never really went over, but I still love that song. Like, if I was gonna go back and listen to a Ball Brothers song, I’d listen to that.
The Breakthrough Project was my favorite one that we ever recorded. That was all four of the brothers, so I think that was part of it. And part of it was that Song Garden really enabled us to go in there and make the project that we wanted to. They trusted what we were doing and said, “Hey, we’re gonna fund it, and you guys make the project, you guys make all the decisions.” And so for the first time, it was kind of us getting to explore different sounds, studios, sonically what we wanted to do, harmony-wise what we wanted to do, and message-wise what we wanted to do.
Another thing that we did over the years is that we recut several Gold City songs, like “It’s Gonna Be a Good Day,” but we switched it up so much that it almost didn’t sound at all like the original. We slowed it way down. I think “Someday” was a Gold City song, and I don’t remember if they released it before or after us, but I heard Gold City doing that on a demo. And then “Keep Me on the Wheel” was another one that we did a cappella that was originally Gold City. The Mullins, of course, like Legacy Five, anything split off of the Cathedrals, Greater Vision, Mark Trammell Quartet, were all very influential in us.
And so even though sometimes we gave those groups a nod, it wouldn’t be an exact copy of them. But it wasn’t because we wanted to put a Ball Brothers spin on what we liked about their songs. And so you find that over and over again. So I find some of those tracks neat. Knowing the story or why we put it behind there, so I would point people to some of those probably.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. I’ll throw a few more in just for fun. You mentioned The Breakthrough Project. One of my favorite tracks on that project is “Sometimes He Calms the Storm.” It’s a very good song.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. So that was probably one of the top streamed songs underneath “It’s About the Cross.” And I think just because it resonates with so many people. And the funny thing is, I didn’t like recording songs like that because I thought they were sad or crying songs. And I would say that song maybe came back to minister to me the most personally after we recorded it. And so it’s funny how you record a song because you think God’s wanting you to do it because it’s gonna help someone else.
And little did you know, ten years later, that’s the song that you’re coming back to that ministers to you. And that’s happened several times in our career where maybe I wasn’t spiritually mature enough to see it or just hadn’t lived enough life to get through a place where that really resonates. But you kind of go back and look at it with a different perspective, and the songs mean more to you sometimes. And then sometimes songs that you’re really close to, you grow apart from because of where you’re at. That’s happened too.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. And I’ll mention one more, “Of Thee I Sing.” I just love it. It’s very simple. It’s not one of your more elaborate arrangements, but it’s a great song, and I love your cut of it.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. Greater Vision initially did that. And I thought that it was an old hymn, so I kept looking for it in a hymn book and could not find the music to it. And then finally realized Miss Dianne [Wilkinson] had written that as a new song and made it sound like an old hymn, which is cool. ‘Cause once we kind of finally figured out where it was, because we were trying to get rights to it – we want to record this, but we thought, well, you know, is it a public domain song? That’s what it sounds like. And then I think Rodney [Griffin] – we were finally able to get a hold of him and find out that they had put it together, so it was awesome.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah, Diane Wilkinson. Okay. There are so many more things that we could talk about, but I try to keep it to around an hour. So I think, ’cause I wanna spend a couple of minutes talking about what you’ve done in solo work and supporting a couple of different organizations at the end, I should probably move forward in time to your decision to come off the road. Didn’t you all start a basement refinishing business or something like that during COVID times, and that was kind of part of a factor in that taking off with more time at home? So can you just kinda share some insight into the decision to come off the road?
Daniel Ball
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think during COVID, I think Dave Ramsey at the time was saying if you had six months’ worth of backup income saved up, then you’d already be set. So COVID hit, and we’re like, hey, worst case, we’ll be knocked off for six months and we’ll be good. And then we got about six months into it and realized that concerts weren’t coming back at the regular capacity that they were. So a lot of these groups struggled into 2021, 2022, just not having things cancelled on them or going out where you had a full weekend and then the middle falls out. So you have a Wednesday booked and a Sunday booked, and you’re sitting there Thursday, Friday, Saturday in a Walmart parking lot in Butte, Montana, trying to make it all work.
And so we had a skill that we had learned when we were younger. Our uncle had a basement waterproofing business in Illinois. And it’s one of those things you thought, “Man, I’m so glad I’ll never have to do this again.” And you don’t know why you learn it. But one of the things we tried to look at was where the market was at and what people would need, and we realized that if a lot more people were gonna be working from home over 2020 and 2021, maybe they might have a wet basement that they want to make extra living space. And so we started Basement Correctors, what we thought would be very temporary and part-time, and it kind of grew.
And so as concerts started coming back in 2021, we had about 50% of the Ball Brothers schedule had returned, and about 50% of it was Basement Correctors. When 2022 came around, it had grown to where 100% of the Ball Brothers dates, or pretty close to it, had come back online, and Basement Correctors had also grown to 100%. And so what it was basically doing was working like two very, very full-time jobs. And so we would travel on the dates that we had, we’d come back, we’d be taking calls for it and coming back in.
And I think it got into 2023, and Andrew came and said, “Hey, we can’t run this pace anymore of working all the time.” It was great because you’re able to catch up on stuff that 2020 took away from us. But another thing was that Basement Correctors grew enough where we, I think, probably employ around 20 people right now. And Chad came off the road and worked with us, and Rhett came off the road and worked with us. We were able to be at home with families a lot more, and I think that’s one of the things that the pandemic taught us that maybe we didn’t know we were missing, was being able to be at baseball games and football games and graduations and awards shows and things like that that we had just been on the road and not been a part of.
And then when you are there for a season where all your dates are canceled, it’s very hard to leave those things because you see how much it means to your family and to your kids. And then the age of our children. So whenever they were five and six years old, leaving, getting on the road – and now they’re fifteen or sixteen – their needs are very much different about having a dad that’s there with them when crises arise or when problems at school come up. And so I think that was kind of on everyone’s mindset of like, hey, our kids are getting older now and we have a way to not have to be out on the road as much.
And then I think one of the biggest benefactors to the Ball Brothers over the years have been some of the people that have built up their own businesses and been able to help out with a bus repair or something like that. And rather than being at the receiving end of that constantly, I would rather be able to give in that kind of way. And I know that was in Andrew’s heart to be able to do as well. So once we were able to start doing Basement Correctors and then doing some missions trips and things and completely self-funding them and being able to fund some other projects locally that were important to us, it was interesting. Instead of being on the receiving end of an offering, being able to be a giver in that. And that’s one of the things that Basement Correctors has allowed us to do, is to be able to invest in some missions things, invest into some other groups. That was really cool.
And so we’ve given away a lot of our stuff, sound equipment, or discounted it to where we could get it in the hands of people that would use it. The other day – and I’m sure they won’t mind me telling this – about the Three Heath Brothers, who we met out singing just at a church. They came out and sang a cappella for us, and I had like twenty-five lasers in my garage that we were going to build something to do with the Christmas tour, and then of course it never happened.
And I was like, well, I can’t even sell these things, but I don’t even know who would use them. And I was just watching a clip of the Three Heath Brothers, and I was like, those guys would use lasers. So I called them up, and they were like, “Yes, we’ll use lasers!” I knew it. And it’s just cool to be able to be on the giving end of some of those things in that season.
But Basement Correctors is still going very well. I’m not in the full-time day-to-day operations of it. I still help them with several aspects of it, but Andrew’s the leader there, and Chad is running a crew on there full-time, and they’re doing really well. More work than what we know what to do with. And if it rains like it has today, that’s even good. We don’t complain when it rains, ’cause lots of people get more wet basements and we get to go fix them.
Daniel J. Mount
So it’s interesting. When I look at the history of Southern Gospel, there are some individuals that God calls to spend a lifetime on the road, sometimes with one group, sometimes with multiple. And then there are some that God calls to spend a season on the road. That might be three years, it might be ten, it might be fifteen or twenty. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You know, God’s gifts and callings are irrevocable, but where God has people minister often changes through the years.
You look at what the twelve apostles did. Very few of them stayed and ministered in one location from Jesus’ birth until their death. John was all over the place. Peter went several places. According to some traditions, Thomas went all the way out to India. Paul not only ministered in a bunch of different places but had a bunch of different ministry partners through the years, Silas at one point, Barnabas at another, Timothy, Luke, and a few others. So I think that’s not a bad thing.
But how do you, when you look back at the eighteen years and some odd months the Ball Brothers were on the road, what do you think of the legacy as you look back? Do you wish things had gone on longer? Do you feel it went on exactly the right length of time? How do you think about it when you look back at those years?
Daniel Ball
Yeah, so it’s weird. It’s bittersweet. And the sweetness of it is seeing the legacy that lives on and maybe the things you’re able to help change or bring awareness to, or just show another path forward. I think maybe from the trailblazing aspect of it, some of the things that were hard for us might be easier for other groups, because we did some of the hard things, like invested in social media and switched over to streaming and kind of pushed that. And those things were hard for us to go through. It’s hard for everyone to go through.
But if you see somebody that’s kind of benefited off the pathway, then you look that we kind of fit in the line because we benefited off the pathway of people who trailblazed before us. The sadness of it is, I mean, I miss singing with the guys. It’s really, really weird to sing on a stage solo when you love the harmony and love that aspect of it. One of the benefits of it recently has been getting to see some of my kids starting to pick up music. My daughter Briley is very musical, and getting to be with her and tutor her through that because, unlike me, she has somebody that’s been around the music industry a little bit. And so like, hey, we can invest here and we need to learn this and don’t worry about these things, you know, teach her how to utilize her social media channels and to build a career from the ground up. So that’s been beneficial. But yeah, seasons change, and I think if you look at it ahead of time, it’s pretty scary.
I was thinking about it the other day because somebody was talking about God’s will for your life, and talking about a peace. And I think that peace is sometimes found within the chaos of God calling you to do something into the unknown. A lot of times our faith decreases whenever we have an exact plan and execution of what we’re going to do. When things are shaken up, a lot of times, is when you say, “You know, God, I still trust you, but I don’t know what I’m doing.”
And I think that’s a lot of times where faith comes back. And I think my faith in career and where God’s gonna place me has really grown and strengthened over the past few years because once you get eighteen and a half years in, you know what you’re getting up and doing every single day. You know how to book dates, you know how to record songs, you know how to do all these things. But then when it all changes, you have to pray a lot and say, “God, I’m still here, I’m still willing, but I don’t know what I’m doing.”
And I think coming to that realization strengthens your faith again, even for me, 45 years old, going into this. And then seeing how God puts together the pieces of where he wants you to be and how he can use every single aspect of who you’ve been and still use it in a different way currently. And so that’s really what’s bridged the gap to where I am now, is none of that time was wasted learning any of those things, from how to promote a concert to how to set up a concert to the missions work that the Ball Brothers did over the years. And that’s really brought me to where I am now and what I get to do.
I still get to go out and sing some solo dates. I probably only will do about a dozen this year. I get to work with kids that are in need. When I was 13, I went on a missions trip to Romania that changed my life. I never thought of myself as not having a bunch, even though we lived in a two-room farmhouse with seven kids on a Central Illinois assistant pastor salary. I always knew that I was extremely blessed beyond my wildest imaginations because I had seen kids in orphanages that had absolutely nothing. And that God would put me in that position, I just knew that we could help other people. And so I’m gonna be able to use my platform now to be able to shine a light into some of the darkest places around the world.
And to be able to help some of those that are the most in need is every bit as fulfilling when I walk onto a stage now as when I did when the crowd was there to hear me sing. And I don’t sing on most of the concerts I go to now, but I get to go at the end of the night knowing that not only do I get to help encourage the people that are there, I get to help encourage people that never get to walk onto a stage, they never get to go to a concert, they never get to see or do any of those things. And we got to go to Africa a few months ago, to Kenya. They didn’t know who we were. They didn’t know who the Collingsworth Family was. And to watch Phil and Kim and Dawson and Olivia minister to those people – Kim Collingsworth, imagine her ministering without a piano. She didn’t sing a word the entire time we were there. She didn’t sit behind a piano the entire time that we were there, but it was every bit as effective in ministry. It’s just great to see that when God gives a heart for someone to reach people, it’s not necessarily because of their talent or ability. It’s because of the heart that’s behind that talent and ability.
And to see that kind of connection with some of the artists is one of the most exciting parts of what I get to do, because I get to take artists that haven’t been in and seen some of these areas in the world and show them how God can use their gifts, their talents and abilities, and just use themselves. And I think that’s something that every single person could do, is use themselves, use whatever God’s given you, whether that’s talent or ability or just the availability to be able to do something, and God can just keep using it forever.
Daniel J. Mount
So there are two things you mentioned I’d love to follow up on. One is your work helping artists, but I think let’s get to that in a couple of minutes. And before we do that, I believe it’s World Vision that you’re working with. How did you connect to work with and represent them? And how did you end up on the Collingsworth Family tour?
Daniel Ball
I’ve actually worked with ChildFund, and the Ball Brothers were with them and the Collingsworth Family was with ChildFund. So after the Ball Brothers came off the road and I was doing solo dates, there was a couple of times I needed to fill in. Their speaker wasn’t available, and as they should be, Phil was pretty particular about just having random people that he didn’t know jump on one of their buses and show up at their concerts.
And so whenever ChildFund presented him with the option of Daniel Ball, he’s like, “Hey, I know who that is. That would be a guy that we would appreciate to have out with us.” And so I came out a few times with them, and then their permanent speaker that was there moved to another tour, which happens sometimes in this because of scheduling and different things, availability and things that happen. And so they asked me to come on as their full-time. And they made the change to World Vision, which is also a wonderful organization.
And so I got to come in and last year did 85 concerts with them. Again this year, doing 85 concerts with them. I’ve worked with Holt International as well.
And just with the artists, I’ve been out with David Phelps and Guy Penrod and Selah and Sandi Patty and just all kinds of people. And some of them I sing, some of them I just speak on. But every single night we get to have children helped and be able to connect people who – there are a lot of people that would get involved when they look at the problem of worldwide poverty. It just seems like it’s a drop in the bucket. And when you look at it that way, it doesn’t seem like we can do much. But when you realize that it’s not a lot to change the life of one child, and in doing that, you’ll find that it changes your life as well.
And so I really like going to the concerts now and having someone that sponsored a child maybe two years ago or five years ago say, “Hey, my little girl’s done this and I want to show you a picture.” And I love hearing that every single night. It’s a very, very fulfilling thing in ministry. There’s a lot of hours, a lot of travel, and that kind of part of it gets old, but hearing the stories of what God’s still doing in people’s lives never gets old.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat. The Collingsworth Family, what they’re doing right now is so fascinating to me, how there is – I don’t even know if Gaither brings four buses where he goes. With all the different artists who come, some of them will come in their own buses, so maybe he does.
But outside of Gaither, there’s definitely nobody else in Southern Gospel who’s taking four buses to every date. They named them after the Happy Goodmans, as I understand, Howard, Vestal, Sam, and Rusty, the buses. Just from that perspective, the level of production they do is something that I don’t think, outside of Gaither Homecomings at points, has just never been seen. What’s it like being part of a production at that scale?
Daniel Ball
Well, it’s awesome, and I’m gonna break some news because I’m pretty sure pretty soon there’s going to be five buses on the road. They’re adding another. At least I’ve heard. You can cut it if it doesn’t happen, but I’ve heard five buses might be coming on the road.
And all together between, you know, there’s drivers and there is tech crew guys and stage managers and myself, I’m out on the tour sometimes in the buses, sometimes driving separate. My wife Tasha goes with me sometimes, and Briley and Lincoln, our two youngest that are 14 and 16, they come and help with the World Vision stuff. So everybody, nannies, everybody, there’s I think close to 30 people on that tour.
And I will say this about the Collingsworth Family. There is no one in this world that I have been around that works harder than every single one of them. And so when they come and put on a concert, it is going to be first class from the second they get there till the second they leave. Not only in the preparation and things that have been done ahead of time, well before they ever walk in there, but they’re getting in there at 8 a.m. to start setting up for that concert and more than likely won’t roll the buses out until probably about 1 a.m. And so you do the math, you’re getting seven hours of sleep if you’re lucky, and you’re trying to eat in between there. But some of the happiest and most joyful people that you will ever be around. Even the kids – the kids have adjusted well to life on the road.
And they do their traveling in spurts. So they’re not out 365 days a year. It’s only 85 concerts, and it’s done on a – they’ll do Monday, Tuesday, off, Wednesday, do Thursday, Friday, Saturday, stay out two-week stints, and then back home, which is great to be able to be plugged into a home church and not have the children out for really long lengths of time. And so they’ve really kind of reinvented the way that people tour and travel. And I’ve been able to come in and just really enjoy it and get to see it close up. But it’s first class. If you’ve never been to a Collingsworth Family concert, come to it. The production’s wonderful. There have been people that have come that I’ve invited that have never been to a Southern Gospel concert or anything, and they will be blessed by the first-class production that it is. God’s glorified in everything that they do, but their talent is off the charts. I mean, getting to hear these people sing night after night after night, it makes me glad that I retired because I cannot keep up with what they do every single night. They’re really, really good at what they do.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah, it is.
You know, it’s cool. One thing they do is they’ll do some really tight, intricate harmonies also that people who are fans of the Ball Brothers can appreciate. So that’s one – it’s not the only thing they do, but it’s one aspect of what they do.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. It’s funny. On the Christmas tour last year, Phil came to me and said, “Hey Daniel, my voice is going, so learn my part,” just joking, and he was fine. He was fine to do the concert. But then I’m just sitting backstage listening to all the tight harmonies that they’re doing, and I’m thinking, my goodness, that’s pretty hard. You know, I better pay attention because if that ever came up, it’s not easy just to go step in anywhere in there and to be able to follow along with what it is that they do, because it’s awesome.
Daniel J. Mount
Yeah. All right. I do want to talk about your work with artists and helping people with social media and that kind of thing. But before I do that, I want to make sure I don’t forget to ask. We talked about what you and Andrew and Chad are doing, but I think that people who knew the Ball Brothers through the years would love to also hear what some of the other members are up to these days. Stephen, Josh, Cody McVey, I know I’m forgetting some people, but definitely those are three of the names that come to mind that I haven’t talked about specifically, what they’re up to lately.
Daniel Ball
Yeah.
Yeah, so there’s been a lot of guys in over the years. The two brothers, Stephen and Josh, are actually now working with Basement Correctors. So they’ve come back to the family business and are working with us there.
My dad, who traveled as our bus driver and sound man for years, is the senior adults pastor at First Baptist Atlanta, which was Charles Stanley’s church. And so he is there.
Let’s see, Cody is working at a church in Atlanta and does still orchestrations and arrangements and has worked on a lot of Southern Gospel artists’ orchestrations, but also some secular artists as well. I believe recently he’s done some things with Josh Groban and some names like that and some really big production stuff. So he’s really staying in and doing that. So all the guys are staying busy and doing really, really well.
Daniel J. Mount
Great! Cody was on staff at First Baptist Atlanta for a while too, if I’m not mistaken.
Daniel Ball
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for I think almost ten years or maybe a little over ten years. And he recently moved to another role that allows him a little bit more time to be able to go to Nashville and do some of that stuff. So when you’re leading those orchestra sessions and stuff, a lot of times you gotta actually be there in person doing it. And so it’s hard to keep on the role of, you know, ninety hours a week to the church and have time left over to do that.
Daniel J. Mount
That’s great.
Yeah. All right. So just moving toward wrapping up, I would love it if you can share what you do to help artists and maybe other ministries with their social media. Both from a standpoint of, for fans, it might be interesting to hear, but I know there’s some artists too and people involved in other ministries who listen to this, and maybe you can kind of explain if you’re in this or that sort of position, you might be the right sort of place for me to help you out.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. One thing that I’ve always tried to do, and I appreciate this about you as well, is kind of be an open book. If you find something that helps along, there’s no gatekeeping, there’s no secret-keeping. It’s like, hey, if this is helping me, maybe it’ll help you. And so a lot of artists over the years, I’ve been able to help them with their social media kind of in the background and promotion. And so I do that just to anybody that calls or reaches out to me on social media and says, “Hey, I need help with this.” I might not have the answer, but I might be able to give you something that might help you. And so that’s available just to anyone that watches this, whether it’s a ministry or whatever. It’s led to some pretty interesting relationships over the years.
Currently I’m working with Miss Bev Vance Akins, which is J.D. Vance’s mother, who was a drug addict for years and in the movie Hillbilly Elegy told her story. She’s been clean and sober now for 11 years and, in a complete turnaround, an unlikely turnaround, she is now a featured speaker at many addiction recovery ministries programs. Because her son’s the vice president and she was put up there at the inauguration, it’s a role that I don’t think she ever sought or thought that she would be in. And so I’m helping her. She’s writing a book, and so I’m helping her finish that up. I’m helping her build out her social media, and that has been – she’s a great and wonderful person, first of all, but secondly to know that I could use my skill set to kind of help her get her ministry to where it needs to be has been a lot. It’s a lot of work.
So that’s what I’ve been doing. I’m also helping in concert promotion, mainly on the digital side. It’s kind of changed over the past few years. And so I work a lot with iTickets and some of their artists and being able to do Meta ad buys and, not to get too technical with it, but you know, know the back-end stuff on there. And then just other artists that might have a viral video pop up here or there or have a question about how do I get started.
This is the one piece of advice that I just give everyone, is don’t stay paralyzed in fear of doing it right or wrong. Just do. And if you do things, you’re gonna learn, hey, that was right or wrong, or you’ll get traction on it if you’re moving. If you’re just sitting there waiting to have all the right camera equipment or all the right tools, none of that stuff’s gonna matter. Get out there and share your heart, and it will resonate with an audience. And there’s plenty of platforms to do that. Just keep putting it out there, and you’ll learn and you’ll find and you’ll grow, and God will bless it.
Daniel J. Mount
Neat. And it means something coming from you also because I had just recently – I may have even already reached out to you about doing this conversation – I had a reel pop up from seven years ago on Facebook where you mentioned that in the last twenty-four months, the Ball Brothers had reached one billion people organically. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of people, no matter how you break it down.
Daniel Ball
It is. Yeah, and it’s crazy. Social media constantly changes, and there’s always new opportunity that was there. And so if you have the right message on the right platform at the right time, that’s what goes viral. And sometimes the platforms that we’re scared of at first – everyone was scared of YouTube at first, and then we figured out how to utilize it and work it. And same thing with Facebook and same thing with Instagram, and I still haven’t figured out TikTok, but I’m sure some people are gonna figure that out and be able to use it to reach a lot of people as well.
And some of the younger people, you know, they’re able to come in and, you know, if you told them that we grew up on MySpace, they would say, “What?” They don’t know what it is. But one of the beneficial things about that is if you are able to build on a platform, those are real people behind those numbers. And even if that platform goes away, the impact is still real and they’ll still find you. And so I think that’s one of the cool things now, just getting to see some people. There are people that come up at concerts now when I’m out with the Collingsworth Family and say, “Hey, I never came to a Ball Brothers concert. You never came to Wyoming,” or wherever they happen to see us at, “but I’ve listened to your music for years and it’s been a blessing.”
But, you know, then again, it’s not about the numbers of it. Some of the most impactful things that I’ve personally seen online are maybe someone that’s just very sincere that doesn’t have a billion views, and that’s not always the marker for what’s impactful or what’s moving people’s lives. And so I think a lot of times we get caught up in the metrics of how many likes it has or how many people viewed it. But if it’s in ministry, it’ll get in front of the right eyes and it’ll be in front of the right people and you make the right connections and God will use it.
Daniel J. Mount
You mentioned not being scared of what’s coming next, and that reminded me of a post you made just within the last week or two about AI on Facebook, ’cause you said you’re basically talking about anyone treating AI like a threat to defend against rather than an opportunity to step into. And I would say almost every conversation I’ve seen in Southern Gospel about AI is the threat to defend against. And in a Southern Gospel or a Christian ministry context, what’s the optimistic side of that? ‘Cause, you know, you’ve worked in this world, you’ve seen this world, you know this world. What are some of the optimistic uses of AI in this context?
Daniel Ball
Sure. Well, backing up a little bit with Southern Gospel, rather than a threat to defend against, I mean, we’ve had artists that were gonna boycott Chevy because they were taking out CD players. Instead of realizing that the technology had become obsolete, they thought they were gonna fight against a car company. That’s a lot of times the wrong battles for us to spend our time and energy in. When we do that as leaders, a lot of times we just become irrelevant really quick because what we’re saying is, quite honestly, dumb. So we have to be really careful whenever we choose a battle that it’s backed up and it’s not something that we’re eventually going to use.
Every single artist that was against streaming music ten years ago now has their stuff on streaming because they had to. We just came to the realization of it way faster than what everyone else allowed to do. And a lot of times it’s nothing more than a financial perspective of they’re trying to protect what they’ve invested instead of trusting that there will be revenue opportunities for it somewhere else down the line. And while I don’t like the dehumanization of music, for every artist that’s ever used a synthesizer instead of a player, you’ve already replaced somebody with that. And they’ve been fine to do that for years, and studio musicians and anywhere we can save or do. But then if it’s your job that gets replaced, then all of a sudden you have righteous indignation against it, but you didn’t all the way down the line.
What I found with technology is that it follows the path of least resistance. And so what that means is we don’t get to change the appetite for it. We can just see the opportunities on where it’s going ahead. Nobody saved telephone books because they’re not there anymore. No one saved ice delivery companies because they’re not there anymore. No one saved Kodak film because in most ways it’s not utilized the same anymore. But for every single one of those places that are not there anymore, there was another huge opportunity that was opened, and people figured it out ahead of time.
And so I think with AI, it’s not that I don’t have apprehensions against it or just blind trust in whatever they throw out in front of us, but I’m gonna look at it and say, what opportunities can I garner out of it? What I’ve been able to do with AI over the past year is the promotion that I’m doing. I’m about a hundred percent more efficient than what I’ve ever been before in doing some of the tasks that I’m able to do online. It didn’t replace me. It made me a hundred times more valuable to the task that I’m doing. I’ve been able to do stuff like code the back end of systems that I would have never been able to do before because I needed a program to work or operate in a certain way. I needed a ticketing software to be able to do a certain thing. And so while everyone’s out complaining about it, I’m figuring out how to utilize that and actually put it into practice to do things that were not even humanly possible just months ago.
And so I think if we really look at it with those kind of opportunities, it could make us, every human, much more efficient than what we’ve ever been before. And that’s what technology should do. Technology that works well should make us more efficient at what it is that we do. I’m not scared of it because I feel like I’m smart enough to figure out how to use that to my advantage. Whenever people get really scared of it, it’s from a mindset of they’re not going to learn, they’re not going to evolve in their knowledge. And that’s a scary place to be in because you’re probably not going to be able to turn the tide against it, but you will become irrelevant very quickly.
Daniel J. Mount
Well said. You know, the core of Southern Gospel, going back before the Blackwood Brothers and Statesmen to the Speer Family in the 1920s and before, the core of it has been about three, four singers, maybe some musicians, on stage singing to people and hugging their necks afterward. AI’s not gonna go hug people’s necks at a concert table after a concert. It could imperil a particular job in the record industry, but it’s not going to replace the person-to-person connection that has been at the heart of what the Southern Gospel live experience has been since its earliest days. It can’t replace that. But it can make the people who do it do their work more efficiently in a variety of ways.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. And it makes authenticity more of a commodity than whatever it was before because those human emotions that you go to seek out, the connection, it’s never going to be there with a computer. And so the more things that are real, the better. That’s even why social media content, the more authenticity you have in what you do is better because it further separates you from something that somebody could create in AI. A perfect example would be if you do a photo, not trying to do a bunch of filters and things on it, trying to make it look real because AI can make the perfect photo, but only you can make an authentic photo. And humans can spot out the difference between those things.
So for every roadblock that it comes in, there are opportunities on the backside of that. So you’re kind of watching where it’s going and where the opportunities are gonna be created and how people are utilizing this. I mean, I’m using it for all kinds of stuff. I’m using it while I’m out on the road trying to figure out what I’m gonna eat. I’m like, I’ve burned up this many calories a day and I’m going by Chick-fil-A, what can I eat? It’s like nine nuggets and three – like I’ve never even known I could even look this stuff up before. And AI is just like telling me. Like, take a picture of something. What is this? I found a snake the other day. What is this? That could be helpful, you know. It’s great stuff.
Daniel J. Mount
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. There are so many more things I could talk to you about. I think you’re one of the most interesting people in this music. But just for the sake of time, I’ll wrap it up. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about, be it anything through the years of the Ball Brothers, or anything else you’d like to promote, how people can get in touch with you for solo concerts, help with social media, anything else along those lines? Anything else you’d like to talk about?
Daniel Ball
Yeah, so you can just look me up, Daniel Ball, on any social media platform. I’m on Facebook and Instagram. Daniel Ball Music is my music page, and it’s on Facebook and Instagram. I have a website, DanielBallMusic.com. Of course, you can still look up the Ball Brothers and stream and listen to all of our music that we’ve recorded over the years.
And Daniel, I want to say thank you for what you’ve done. As much as I see myself as a trailblazer, you were there from the journalistic side offering an alternative voice that wasn’t there. And for me personally, and places like the Ball Brothers, in eighteen and a half years, I think we had one Singing News article about the Ball Brothers in eighteen and a half years of being in that ministry, but yet featured multiple times on Southern Gospel Blog over the years, and we got to say something, we got to do something. And I think that kind of rewrote the history of even what was possible from another end. While we were doing it on the stage, you were doing it from the journalistic side. So thank you for what you’ve done and what you continue to be able to do for this genre.
Daniel J. Mount
It’s very kind. Thank you so much. Yeah, after writing more than three thousand posts in eight years, I needed a break. I’d said all I had to say. But I’m really glad to be back talking to people again because, in this context, with podcasts being where things are right now, I don’t have to be offering up too many of my own opinions. I can just get somebody else talking and hear what somebody else has to say again. So it’s been great. I don’t think anybody’ll get mad at you from this.
Daniel Ball
Yeah. Ha ha. Make them get mad at me, thanks!
Daniel J. Mount
I think it’s been good! It’s been good. You’ve been very generous with your time. Thank you so much for coming on this evening. Thank you. And to the listener, I would say thank you for listening to Southern Gospel Journal. You can keep up with the latest episodes on your favorite podcast platform, Facebook, YouTube, or on SouthernGospelJournal.com. Thanks for listening.
Daniel Ball
Thanks for having me on.