Lynda Randle – By the Riverside

Lynda Randle
By the Riverside
Gaither Music Group (Released January 3, 2025)

Guest review by David McGee

Growing up as the daughter of an inner-city Washington, DC evangelist, Lynda Randle went from a rambunctious childhood to being a devout Christian by the time she was 12. While attending an all-white Christian high school, she joined the school choir, during which experience she says she found her true calling: “God was preparing me then for what I know to be His will for me now. Bridging gaps,” she says in her online biography.

“I know that God has definitely placed a call upon my life to help tear down the walls between the races that have been built over the years and in their place build bridges,” she says. “There is a great need today for bridge-builders and still a greater need to help people cross over.”

In 1998, she was discovered by southern gospel icon Bill Gaither and invited to join the long running Gaither Homecoming family; two years later she released her first album, Timeless, and now has more than 20 albums and DVD releases in her catalogue. As far as building bridges goes, she’s been doing that by covering the gospel waterfront in song, from the timeless evergreens to original songs in roots styles ranging from gospel blues to ‘70s pop, and in her personal accounts of faith working in her own life. Now residing in Liberty, Missouri, with her husband, Pastor Michael Randle of the Mosaic Bible Fellowship, and two daughters, Randle tours periodically in addition to appearing on the Gaither telecasts and continues to record prolifically. That her most celebrated album is the 2005 Dove Award-winning A Tribute to Mahalia Jackson (Traditional Gospel Album of the Year) is perhaps unsurprising, since Ms. Randle might arguably be the contemporary gospel singer who most closely resembles the towering Mahalia, both in the commanding power of her voice and the moral authority informing her earthy testimonies in song.

By the Riverside is the latest exhibit in support of this assertion, a ten-song house wrecker that comes straight out of the country church, with the artist backed by a Mildred Falls-like piano, organ, banjo, mandolin, and an occasional steel guitar in decidedly roots country soundscapes. Five of the ten tracks are reprised from her 2023 EP, By the Riverside, all bringing captivating messages of salvation, such as the well-worn celebratory title track, an African-American spiritual predating the Civil War; an infectious, driving shuffle take on the A.J. Showalter-Elisha Hoffman standard dating from 1887, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” with Randle, swinging free and easy, confidently confessing her life affirming confidence in divine guidance; and a downright funky workout complete with a lively organ percolating throughout, frisky percussion and call-and-response passages that add emphatic gravitas to lyrics such as “when I’m down on my knees that’s when I’m closest to Heaven…,” on the 1970 Anne Murray hit, “Put Your Hand in the Hand” (penned by her fellow Canadian Gene Maclellan, who also wrote the tender pop classic, “Snowbird,” Ms. Murray’s career launching smash).

The other knockout punches: a stirring Randle original, “His Peace Covers Me,” an introspective, acoustic-based meditation in which Randle blurs the thin line between gospel testifying and blues balladry, followed by a transcendent country gospel reading of Tracy G. Dartt’s “God on the Mountain,” with banjo, mandolin, steel, and a magnificent multitracked chorus shadowing Randle, who’s on a whole other plane, extolling God’s unceasing faithfulness (“God of the day is still God in the night”). Country strains define both a bouncy take on Dolly Parton’s “The Seeker” and the stirring, reverent plea of the Marijohn Wilkin-Kris Kristofferson 1974 evergreen, “One Day at a Time.” Behold Lynda Randle, building bridges as she summits and reports from the mountaintop.

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David McGee is the founder/publisher/editor of the online publication Deep Roots (“Roots Music & Meaningful Matters”), author of three biographies (including Go, Cat, Go! The Life and Times of Carl Perkins, The King of Rockabilly), former assistant curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and from 1975-2000 a Rolling Stone staff and freelance writer and editor.