“Holy Ghost Fire” The Victory Travelers From their EP Amazing By Bob Marovich The drive-tempo “Holy Ghost Fire” has been in the Victory Travelers’ repertory for decades. Although the Chicago-based quartet has recorded it several times throughout the years, this latest version, from the group’s Amazing EP, presents the song as current congregations and program attendees are hearing it: extended and extraordinary. Deacon Reuben Burton, one of the quartet’s founding members, duets with Cherrod Gilbert on this no-nonsense rouser about the power of the Holy Ghost. The guitar encircles the singers with curlicue licks as they work themselves into a ...

“Oh How We Love YOU” Tiff Joy From the Tyscot Records CD Tiff Joy www.tyscot.com The second single from Tiff (“Amazing”) Joy’s eponymously titled album from 2015, “Oh How We Love YOU” finds the award-winning singer-songwriter leading an exuberant group of background vocalists on one of those rigorous praise pieces that may not be in the hymnbook but appears with regularity at gospel music programs. Written by a team of talented songwriters (Tiff Joy, Phillip and Angel Feaster, and Calvin Rodgers), “Oh How We Love YOU” has so much motive power, clapping along is almost compulsory. Destined to be a ...

Tiff Joy, as told to Bob Marovich: I knew I wanted to do something ministry-wise, but I didn’t know if it was going to be preaching or music. It was probably during my late years at Rich South High School in Richton Park, Illinois, when I started to connect with music and knew that it was something that I would do. I was with a group called Tony Tidwell & Uncommon Favor for a couple of years. We were going to do a record—we didn’t actually go through with it—but I wrote a song for the record called “Thank You.” ...