Review

The newest offering from Vineyard Music group is the CD entitled, "Home Again". This disc is an attempt to capture the live feel of small group worship. It employs some twenty-three "small-group-singers" in the pared down arrangements. Two veteran worship leaders, Sheri Keller and Randy Butler lend their talents and hearts to this project. Imagine yourself in a living room with a couple of acoustic guitars, djembe, Randy and Sheri leading worship and you get a pretty good idea of how this CD feels. Of course since they moved the original idea from the living room to recording studio you get a few extras like accordion, a bit of B3 and bass guitar. You also get a much better sounding disc than if you recorded in the living room.

As a guitar player I can really appreciate the simplicity and yet strength of some of the acoustic driven arrangements. Often times when you lead worship for small groups you tend to play mostly slow tempo tunes, and while "Home Again" has plenty of those songs it also has a couple of songs that have some good energy and groove to them. Take for instance the Kevin Prosch standard, "Show Your Power". This is a song that many of us have done for years and then kind of shelved, but the band has come up with a very nice arrangement that while simple, really grooves and breathes. "Stand Back", a song penned by Scott Underwood also has a bit of a drive to is as well with the acoustic guitar using a drop D tuning to give it some "guts".

Another song that comes off really well is Terry Butler's classic, Psalm 19 taken directly from the Bible. This song really becomes a heart cry for the CD and with Sheri Keller lending her unique vocals to it, it just kind of soars right off the disc into our hearts. My favorite song on the CD is an acoustic cover of the recently popular song "Dwell". If you loved the "Dwell" CD that Vineyard released last year as I did, you will really enjoy Randy and Sheri teaming up on this track.

The obvious strength for this recording is that it was specifically designed to be used in small groups. Not to say that you can't pick it up and listen to it in you car, as it will spin well there too, but it is designed for the small group. As I mentioned earlier there are a ton of "backing" vocalists on Home Again which I think will really encourage small groups to sing along and worship God. If you put this CD into a computer you can also print off the lyrics for every song. They are set in a format that will work well for small group leaders so that they do not need to hand out 8 pieces of paper for 8 different songs. You can also use this CD as a training tool if you lead worship or aspire to lead worship for small groups, as there are PDF files of all the charts for all 8 songs. You can print out all of the songs and play your guitar right along to the CD.

If you are looking to find new songs for your small group or congregation, this is probably not the CD for you as there are no "new" songs released for this project. All but one of the songs were published by Vineyard Music group throughout the 90's. The only other weakness that I see is flow from one track to the next. I would like to see the producers address flow in the next volume in the series (as this is volume 1). Before I became a full-time worship leader for a large congregation, I led worship for small groups for years and still lead worship in a small group to this day after nearly 18 years of leading worship. One of the keys that I learned that is so important in leading, especially for a small group, is flow. When you have "dead-air" between tracks or live songs, there can be a real disconnecting from the worship experience. With a bit more planning on the song selection and arrangements, I think that the folks at Vineyard could build this into the disc so that it might be even more effective in helping small groups!

Review by Bryan Bloom