Brent Jones – Praise in the Choir Stand

Brent Jones
Praise in the Choir Stand
JDI Entertainment (release date: April 8, 2025)

By Robert M. Marovich

“The Lord anointed me to take the sound of R&B and bring it to Sunday morning,” industry veteran Brent Jones tells the audience that has assembled to participate in the live recording of his new album. “I don’t know why he anointed me for that…but I just accept the call.”

Proof of that is the product of that program. Recorded live at Friendship Baptist in Yorba Linda, California, Brent Jones and the Best Life Choir’s rafter-raising Praise in the Choir Stand offers Sunday morning gospel chock full of R&B influences.

There’s a swaggering confidence in Jones’s voice, a gospel impresario on the best of terms with the musicians, singers, and the congregation. The full-throated Best Life Choir—which is so good, it should have received co-billing on the album cover—thunders its support like an ‘80s mass choir, especially on the title track.

As far as Jones’s mission to take R&B to church, “You Don’t Know, Like I Know” bumps along on a pounding pulse electric funk as the choir repeats the stock lyric, “You don’t know, like I know, what the Lord has done for me.” Guest artist Prez Blackmon provides a fine lead on the choir’s voluminous and beseeching “Smooth Out the Rough Edges.” Even Fellowship Baptist’s music minister Sonya Griffin gets into the act on “Smooth Out,” adding her jazzy vocals to the nearly nine-minute piece. Holy stepping, now a thing, finds its way into the recording on the final song, “Goodtime.”

Then there’s the church rouser “No Brag, Just Blessed,” which features Kim Johnson’s evangelistic delivery as the choir delivers cascading harmonies and a special section evocative of Ricky Dillard and New G.

Jones is sole composer of all but one of the album selections (a snippet of the Gap Band’s 1981 “Yearning For Your Love” is the sole exception). He also quotes from “Don’t Wait Till Midnight,” from his Brent Jones and T.P. Mobb days.

Like Jones’ previous release Live Your Best Life, Praise in the Choir Stand offers the spiritual and physical thrill of a live gospel program.

Four of Five Stars

Picks: “Praise in the Choir Stand,” “No Brag, Just Blessed.”