Hey, just a quick reminder before we start the show today that tickets are now on sale

for our first live show in Brooklyn, New York on November the 19th, 730 PM.

We're going to be covering the movie God's Not Dead.

And you can get tickets for that at GoodChristianFun.com.

And we hope to see you there.

This is a Headgun Podcast.

If the history of contemporary Christian music is built on a few pillars,

this one is made of a creamy marble, defined, cleft, strong and endearing.

Born in West Virginia, Michael Whitaker Smith moved to Nashville at age 21 to pursue a career

in music after about with what he describes as substance abuse that might have just been he

smoked pot once. The path emerged in the form of a keyboardist position for a Christian band

called Higher Ground. Concurrent to this, Smith was a working songwriter for some of Christian

music's biggest names at the time like Sandy Paddy, Bill Gather and one Miss Amy Grant.

In 1982, Smith left Higher Ground for even Higher Ground.

As a touring keyboardist in Amy's band, forging a creative relationship between the two

that still exists today. In the following year, 1983, he released his own solo album and became

Grant's opening act. On his debut album, you can see all the beginning strands of where his

surprising yet inevitable career would take him. You can hear the stifled composer on the

instrumental tracks like Sinada and D Major, the pop star turned worship leader on Great as the

Lord and America's camp counselor on Friends. Friends, a runaway anthem that took Michael and his

wife Debbie Smith about 10 minutes to write, has all-time canon status in CCM. It is to Christian

graduations, funerals, weddings and last days of camp as we will rock you as to sporting events.

...