This recording is something that I have been wanting to do for a few years now. I have done many demos of other music that I sing, but I have been wanting to do an album that is exclusively the style that filled my house growing up. This album is an homage to a few things: the hymns that I heard in churches I attended and sang in growing up, the car rides where I heard many diverse forms of Gospel music on the same cassette and eventually CD, and the many times the family has gotten together at a function and sang. I hope you enjoy this homage to my musical roots, Back to the Basics!

Notes from the Producer:

What can be said about Brent Kimball? I first met Brent during the production of a homegrown musical with timeless roots, Ramayana. In Ramayana, Brent played the leader of a group of goofy, yet lovable monkey-type characters called the Vanaras. Every night, Brent – complete with a swirly monkey tail – would stand at the edge of the stage and deliver a solo that would knock me and everyone in the room dead. Every scene he was in, he stole, even when he wasn’t trying – with that magnificent voice of his. At the time, I suspected Brent was incapable of giving a lackluster performance - after having the immense pleasure of working with Brent for a few weeks on Back to the Basics; I am certain of that fact.

Like the Ramayan, Brent is once again exploring another deeply timeless and deeply spiritual art form, gospel music. I come from a primarily pop and rock background, so what business do I have doing a gospel record? The answer is simple. If you trace the roots of American music such as rock ‘n roll, blues, soul, hip hop and jazz, they all lead back to that centuries old gospel tradition. Rock’s early innovators – your Jerry Lee Lewises, your Little Richardses, and so on – were intrinsically tied to the forms and aesthetic of gospel music. In other words, this is where we came from.

You may notice that familiar crackly scratchy sound that opens the record. This was Brent’s idea; however I fell in love with it immediately and ran with it. In my mind, I see it playing out thusly: gospel, an aural and oral tradition, has been passed down from generation to generation. It’s conceivable that many of the great gospel singers of the last 50 years learned how to do it - not from school or private lessons, but rather from listening and mimicking others. It’s likely these singers took an LP and ran it back over and over to learn these parts, thereby effectively wearing it out. In the opening few moments of “Where the Soul Never Dies,” you can hear the influences from that scratched LP transcending time itself and influencing the very modern recording that follows. In effect, Back to the Basics.