Janice Brown – I Am Still Holding On

Janice Brown

Freedom Records (2013)

By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog

In 2009, Alice “Al MacWill” Williams introduced “urban country gospel,” an amalgam of soul and country that in some ways evoked Ray Charles’ 1960s experiments with C&W and R&B.

On the other hand, Janice Brown, of “Rough Side of the Mountain” fame, takes the gospel-country combo all the way on her new solo album, I Am Still Holding On.  Fiddle, guitar picking, steel guitar, and dobro meet warbling B3 and the rolling gospel beat on the nine-song CD.

The album gets Music Row-quality production, courtesy of Monte Stephens, Brown’s husband, meaning the instruments sound three-dimensional.  None of them, however, can overpower Brown’s muscular vocals, which helped place her and Rev. F.C. Barnes’s evangelical songs atop the gospel charts thirty years ago.

The finest moments on I Am Still Holding On are the revival-style selections, such as “Thy Word,” “He’s Got It All In Control,” and “God Can Still Work it Out,” where Brown teasingly tosses in some of Dianne Williams’ legendary couplets from the Warriors’ classic “He Can Work It Out.” 

Another high point is “I’m Here,” a lovely countrified gospel ballad that invites listeners to enter into the comforting arms of Jesus.  If strings aren’t your thing, the title track is dominated by the more traditional gospel accompaniment of piano, though an introspective dobro punctuates the pauses.

I Am Still Holding On argues that country and gospel are not as foreign to one another as is often assumed.  Keep in mind that the gospel favorite “It Is No Secret” came from the pen of Stuart Hamblen, one of the first singing cowboys.  Prof. Dorsey’s “Peace in the Valley” has had as many country covers as gospel ones.  Given that the earliest gospel composers of the 20^th century lived in or migrated from the south, where string bands held sway over dance floors, it’s no surprise there’s a little twang in the sacred song catalog.

I was waiting to hear an extended gospel sodbuster at the end, a quartet vamp with a Bob Wills underpinning, but alas, that will have to wait for another album.  

Simply put, I Am Still Holding On is WSM Nashville meets WDIA Memphis on the road to the Grand Ole Gospel Opry.