Who is Titus Showers? The Answer Is On His New EP

By Bob Marovich

If the leaders of Hammond, Louisiana, ever decided to change the town’s name, one contender in the running would be Showers, Louisiana.

This Tangipahoa Parish town with a census of about 21,000 residents boasts no less than seven businesses owned and operated by members of the Showers Family.

Gospel fans also know the Showers as a popular family band. The singing group, which made its national recording debut in 2009, is but one example of the family’s commitment to religious ministry. Family patriarch Dr. Bobby R. Showers Sr. pastors Rose Valley Missionary Baptist Church in nearby Roseland. Long ago, several of Dr. Showers’ relatives formed a gospel group called the Showers Singers of Monticello, Mississippi.

The Showers, consisting of siblings Regina, Angela, Tiffany, Ciara, Tabitha, Melody, Bobby, Timothy, Titus, and Thaddeus, earned En-Sound and Rhythm of Gospel Awards and sang on BET’s Bobby Jones Gospel.

Titus Showers, deciding to try his hand as a solo artist, recorded Who? His debut solo EP for A & P Records, a family enterprise led by his sister Regina Showers Gordon, was released in early May.

To Titus’s astonishment, the EP debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Gospel Albums Consumption chart and # 1 on the Nielsen Top Gospel Album Sales chart.

Titus learned about his album’s meteoric rise to the top while at a Who? listening party at the New York City offices of BMI. “I was on the 17th floor of the World Trade Center,” Titus told the Journal of Gospel Music, “and my publicist, Mr. Jason Hardy, gave me a call and said that I had the number one gospel charting album in the country. I was overwhelmed. I started crying and giving the Lord thanks for taking a little country boy and putting him in the number one position.”

Quite a feat for the “little country boy” who never intended to go solo. “It was something ordained by God,” he explained. “As [The Showers] were singing around the country, the Lord kept blessing me to minister to the people. The girls are now married, my brothers have their wives, and I really wanted this more than anyone else in the family. Although my parents didn’t want me to go solo, they are behind my decision 100 percent, and The Showers are behind me one hundred thousand percent!”

After the EP hit Billboard, Titus’s phone began ringing off the hook. “I have a great management team, a great record company, a great radio promoter in Mr. Kendall Duffie,” Titus said. “They are taking good care of me and placing me in the right hands of the people who want to hear Who?. People know who Titus Showers is now and who I represent.”

The title, incidentally, comes from Matthew 16:13-16, when Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was. “I want the world to know who Jesus is and, in the process, you will find out who Titus Showers is,” the singer said.

Two of the EP’s seven cuts, the Deon Kipping-penned “Better” and “Immediately,” will sound familiar to Showers fans, as they are updated versions of the group’s Billboard-charting singles from 2015. As far as the new songs, Titus wrote the lyrics in the aftermath of the March 2017 fire that consumed the family home where Pastor and Mrs. Bobby Showers raised their ten children.

“After my parents lost their home and possessions in a fire,” Titus said, “the Lord kept waking me up in the middle of the night. I’d get on my phone and start writing. I sent the lyrics to Lucius [Hoskins], who writes the music. He made this great record. From tragedy to triumph.”

The current single, “In His Name,” is a Titus/Lucius collaboration. The lyrics express Titus’s emotions during those dark days after the house fire. “I like writing in an emotional place,” he said, “because that’s where you make your great records. And I want people to know that whatever your heart’s desire is, if you call on the name Jesus, He’s willing to give you the desires of your heart.”

The song’s video was filmed on location in Hammond by director Terrence Crowley, who also helmed the Showers’ 2017 video “I Need You Lord,” which opened with images of the house fire.

In addition to Hoskins, Who? features vocal production from gospel star Tasha Page Lockhart. Titus met Tasha through his A&R man, Matt Ables. Sean Keys produced “Love,” a song Titus said expresses his belief that “we need love with all the hatred and racism that goes on.”

While background vocals come courtesy of several Showers family members, Canton Jones and Keyondra Lockett are two of the EP’s featured vocalists. Though Lockett, a native of Louisiana, made her way to the EP through Ables, Titus had met her while working with The Showers. “It was an honor to have her be a feature on this record.”

For Titus, singing is all about Jesus and the audience, so he takes the time to respond to each of his fans.

“I don’t take anything lightly, so anytime somebody tells me they like my record, I respond to them. It becomes overwhelming, but I want to give them a big God bless you because I’m humbled by somebody being blessed by what God has given me. So if it takes me all day or all week to comment, I will make sure I take the time. That’s my biggest thing: to give God the honor and to the consumer who makes you who you are. We are nothing without the consumer. You can’t get too high-minded because we’re nothing without God and we are nothing without the people.”

In addition to hitting the road to promote the EP and fulfill the increased number of singing engagements rolling in, Titus is busy writing new material for future projects. “We’ll probably do [the next album] live,” he said.

But for now, the focus is on Who?. “We’re gonna ride ‘In His Name’ until the wheels fall off,” Titus laughed.

Whenever he is back in Hammond, Titus serves as COO of one of the family’s enterprises: O & M Family Care, a community-based mental health care agency (his brother Timothy is CEO). And as for The Showers as a family band, Titus assures me they are still very much singing together.

“The person who misses me most is my father,” Titus said, “because wherever he would travel preaching, I would support him. I am where I am today because of my father.”

Notwithstanding the accolades surrounding Who?, Titus Showers maintains grounded. “I want to remain a humble kid who is spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what Who? is all about – it’s all about Him.”

For more information, visit: www.IAmTitusShowers.com.

For booking information, email: Titus@creativeclassic.com.