(Note: Simpson also continues in his longtime role as music director for the BYU Young Ambassadors. On the road he acts as the music mixer for the shows.)
I straightened the morning paper and hurried to tidy the house, expecting Dave, Bret and Abe to arrive at any moment.
Taking one last look around, I had a sudden idea. Remembering the portable recording kit I used to carry as part of my road gear during my long-ago KUTR interview-show years, I found it in the trunk of my car, unzipped the black case, extracted and plugged in the hot little Audio-Technica condenser microphone, and hid it in the leaves of a pothos plant growing in a basket in the center of the dining table where I planned we would all sit and talk.
My expected guests were BYU guys, singers I’d known for several years in the Young Ambassadors, “Center Street,” session gigs, etc. In my opinion they were top-of-the-line: musical, athletic, good-looking, hip, and yet wonderfully gospel-based. Dave Kimball and Bret Bryce and I had just finished touring Japan with the BYU Young Ambassadors. Abe Mills, their singing buddy, was a former Young Ambassador and a personality featured on the LDS program “Center Street.” They had sung and danced together the year before in the Young Ambassadors’ festive 30th Anniversary season, which had included a tour of the Southern States.
Now just back from a cross country summer-vacation drive full of predictable episodes of impromptu singing and meeting girls, I’d invited them over to tell me some tall tales from the road. I had two purposes in mind. First, I’d told the guys I was beginning to collect ideas for eventual stories that might include a trio or quartet of young singers, and I’d be good for a couple of lunches at Burgers Supreme if they’d share their road stories while they were still fresh. Second, and not exactly known to the guys yet, was an idea in the back of my mind that if they really decided they wanted to go on being a singing group, and make the necessary sacrifices and commitments, that I might be able to help present them to record labels and get them launched.
They showed up on schedule, we talked and laughed easily, and my hidden mic captured a wealth of story fragments for my improbable future as a writer of fiction. My favorite yarn began as they arrived in Knoxville, Bret’s home town. Members of his family had learned about a singing contest at a county fair northwest of there in the small town of Wartburg, Tennessee, where a decent cash prize was said to await the winner.
When they pulled into Wartburg and signed up for the contest, it confused the county fair folks, who had never had any non-residents actually show up to sing there. Abe, who is black, said he, too, was also something of a wild card in this all-white country town. One of the fair officials reportedly confided, without any trace of animosity, “We don’t see too many of your kind up this way.”
Even though Wartburg was warm and receptive to these guys who showed up to sing and didn’t even have a name, the judges couldn’t bring themselves to vote for anyone but the local hometown favorite, a guitar-strumming soloist. Our guys came in second.
But southern hospitality prevailed in Wartburg, and the judges hastily chipped in among themselves and sought additional contributions from friends and eventually presented Bret, Abe, and Dave with a hundred bucks for the trip home.
As the stories wound down at my dining table, the guys sang me their three songs from the county fair in Tennessee and also lent me some photos to scan. After the promised burgers, sodas, and fries, I thought how these guys really felt right to me: they could be the makings of a vocal group that could work together, stay together, weather the bumps, and spread a lot of light along the way. I ended up telling them I would do anything I could to help them toward a label deal.
I even liked the cosmopolitan way it would sound in an announcement or look on paper: Bret Bryce from Knoxville, Tennessee. Abe Mills, from St. Louis, Missouri, and Dave Kimball from Salt Lake City, Utah.
It turned out they were too fast for me, hooking up with a couple of talented additional guys, making some demos, talking business with a variety of producers in several styles, and beginning to accept some performance dates as a five-person group reminiscent of Backstreet Boys.
But then, toward the end of the summer, something happened, and my phone rang. It turned out, when all was said and done, that a singing career with gospel values at the center was what they wanted most after all, and they would welcome some contacting help in that world from me.
It gradually appeared they would market themselves as a foursome, with high-lead-singer and Idaho guy Justin Smith-another former Young Ambassador from the recent Japan tour–aboard.
Presenting these guys was a labor of love. First and foremost I believed in them. But I also had a lot of affection, musically, for the idea of guys singing harmony and be-bopping down the road together. I was way into it in the 50’s when The Hilltoppers, four guys from a little college in western Kentucky, were making and shipping records in the backroom of Randy’s Records in the little town of Gallatin, Tennessee and, unbelievably, hitting somewhere in the top-twenty on the pop charts with songs like “P.S. I Love You.” Come to think of it, they probably played Wartburg in their early days. Vocal foursomes like the Four Aces and Four Freshmen were scoring higher and more often than the Hilltoppers. These present guys, Dave, Bret, Abe and Justin had all been part of Alabama and Beach Boys tributes in Young Ambassadors’ shows and they brought down the house every night, all over the world.
In more contemporary music-history terms, hip-hop music and rap had sort of banished harmony singing from the charts in the 80s until Boyz II Men brought it back in the early 90s, and, once back, the audience hasn’t been able to get enough of it with Backstreet Boys, N’ Sync, 98 Degrees, etc. blending endlessly.
I thought there could be room in the LDS market for a hip, contemporary, yet values-based guy-group, promoted aggressively, and presented with today’s look and sound.
My favorite part of the pitches I made was a homemade VHS segment of the four guys-Abe, Justin, Dave, and Bret–in an intramural football game. I singled out a slick and complicated option pass play that involved all four of the guys. For me this was the symbol that said it all.
And now it’s year-end, and Jericho Road is firmly established.
Having been signed to and named by Deseret Book’s Shadow Mountain Records, they are produced by label-head Tyler Castleton with vocal coaching by Jenny Frogley and career guidance from Shadow Mountain’s Laurel Christensen. It seems to be a strong combination, and the group has just finished its first western-states road swing. CDs seem to be going out the door with respectable frequency at Deseret Book locations.
My favorite songs? Well, they’re all strong, and as we all knew going into this, each of the guys can step up and sing lead, and the ensemble sound of the four singers achieved by Castleton et al on this album is magical.
To hear the group’s potential as writers, check out the snappy song “Time.” For a ballad treat, don’t miss “For the Love of a Woman,” penned by Tyler Castleton and Staci Peters, and presented in a very different arrangement than previously cut by Martina McBride in Nashville, but equally lovely.
So is Jericho Road about Mormons making music or musicians making Mormon music? Both.
The predominant theme of the album is devotional, the sound is current pop, and the guys are contemporary role models parents can be very comfortable recommending to their kids. When pictures of Abe, Bret, Justin, and Dave go up on a kid’s wall, be assured that a musical walk along Jericho Road can only lead to good places.
