Monica Lisa StevensonLive in Atlanta
Puretonez Productions (2013)
By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog
As her new album, Live in Atlanta, demonstrates, Monica Lisa Stevenson and live performance go together like bacon and eggs.
An unrelenting pursuit of the gospel highway has honed Stevenson’s vocal and gospel performance skills to the point that she has even sang with the venerable Caravans, earning her the sobriquet of Fifth Caravan. She brings her A-game to this new album, recorded just south of Atlanta in Jonesboro, Georgia, starting with the opening track and current single, “Lead Me,” a funky but prayerful appeal for direction.
Thankfully, the praise tunes get unconventional treatments—“In His Presence” is done to a rock steady rhythm—but the “going to church” songs are what sell the album. “Hold On” teams Stevenson with the equally hard singing Angela Spivey. It’s a driving piece that urges the listener to “keep the faith,” though its tempo is so rapid that the title could also be a safety instruction. It is as fiery as her earlier single, “So Glad He Saved Me,” which is included on Live in Atlanta as a bonus track and still represents her finest work.
Interestingly, Stevenson’s arrangement of Eddie Williams’ classic Caravans song, “Lord Keep Me Day By Day,” has a smooth contemporary patina, though ever so slightly, as she peppers in old-school couplets such as “One of these mornings, it won’t be very long” in her penetrating growl. She uses the song’s message of God’s safe keeping to offer a testimony about an April 2010 automobile accident en route to Richmond, Virginia, which left two people dead while she and her road team escaped with only minor injuries.
Elder Tim White, an irrepressible ball of energy, joins Stevenson on the reprise of “It’s Your Time.” Their raspy duet is punctuated by shouts so hard, they would earn an appreciative nod from Clarence Fountain of the Blind Boys of Alabama.
Positioned in the midst of such vocally powerful tracks, “Right There” could be overlooked but it shouldn’t be, as it is an extraordinarily satisfying gospel song in the balladic tradition of Myrtle Jackson and James Cleveland.
In short, Live in Atlanta is a hallelujah good time.
Five of Five Stars
Picks: “Hold On,” “So Glad He Saved Me.”
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Written by : Bob Marovich
Bob Marovich is a gospel music historian, author, and radio host. Founder of Journal of Gospel Music blog (formally The Black Gospel Blog) and producer of the Gospel Memories Radio Show.
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One of my favorite songs was There is More In Store. It’s a great song for meditation, altar call, or an introduction to a sermon.