And what was it like to be a musician and a new Christian in Southern California during the Jesus Movement? If you felt called to share the Gospel through music and testimony, there was plenty of opportunity. Bands were forming all the time. This was long before Nashville became the business and creative headquarters for CCM. There was no album distribution nor Christian radio airplay. Christian bookstores often refused to sell this outlaw music because it was suspicious. Instead, albums were sold out of the trunks of cars and at concert sites. It was an organic and spontaneous way of spreading the Word through music. Songwriting flourished, and literally every night of the week there was a church, coffee house, outreach, or event with a Bible study or sermon, and music. Church was not relegated to Sunday mornings. As I reflect, anticipation was also a key element in all of this. We simply couldn’ t wait to get to whatever was happening that night. There was life to what we were doing, and church growth happened due to evangelism alone.
These youth studies and events were apolitical as well, because the focus was on Jesus and what He did and what He was doing. Every day of the week, lives were literally being changed before our eyes. Damage done by the hedonism and excesses of the 60’ s was being miraculously touched by the hand of God. LoveSong modeled to us what could be, and how the presence of God could show up in everyday places.
I had heard Chuck Girard in the early 60s as a pre-teen listening to my transistor radio held against my ear late at night in bed. These were recordings initially by The Castells, and later The Hondells, both great early 60s vocal groups out of California. But less than six years later Chuck would emerge as a Christian, as part of LoveSong.
The songwriting and vocals of Chuck Girard, along with bandmates Tommy Coomes and Jay Truax, as well as the other group members John Mehler, and at times Fred Field, Phil Keaggy, or Bob Wall, changed Christian music, and really
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