Description
Wide Angle is the eleventh and final studio album by the American singer and songwriter John Fischer, released on Urgent Records in 1992. (Remastered and re-issued in 1999 by Silent Planet Records as Some Folks’ World, featuring new cover artwork as well as three bonus tracks produced by David Miner.) The album was produced and engineered by Mark Heard. Background vocals provided by Julie Miller and Pam Dwinell-Miner.
Not having to engage in the often distasteful practice of flogging a new album every year has given Fischer the opportunity to publish several books, and being able to expand his ideas into the printed media served him well when it came time to return to penning a new album, which required a bit more brevity. On ‘Wide Angle’, Fischer has woven some of the lessons life and the Lord have taught him into a thoroughly engaging batch of tunes.
Fischer helped pioneer the Christian pop music industry over two decades ago, and during this time, he has wisely not strayed far from the folk/rock which is his forte. Producer Mark Heard, who has shown a great affinity for music derived from the Byrds/Beatles/Beach Boys triumvirate, has assembled a complimentary band to help Fischer sell his songs. The peerless rhythm section of David Raven (drums) and David Miner (bass) provide an excellent platform for backing vocalists Pam Dwinell-Miner and Julie Miller, who especially shines on «Cup of Cold Water» and the parable «Where Did They Go?». Heard plays just about every other instrument you can imagine, including autoharp, accordion, mandolin and organ. He even gets in some distorted electric licks in a few tunes which toughens the sound a bit. Tying all the tracks together is the 12-string Rickenbacker of Buddy Miller; this gives the album a retro feel, although with the 12-string being omnipresent on FM radio these days, you can’t really call the album completely anachronistic.
Fischer encourages his audience to exit their arm-chairs and pursue a more active faith. The title track, for instance, is a plea to have a broader view of the world; «Too Many Preachers» adjures to the listener to “find it for yourself;” «The Only Way» carries perhaps the simplest yet most elegant message on the album – “Jesus is the only way, but there’s more than one way to Jesus… and the ones who thought they owned the key/ Will find the door was open.” Russ Taff and Steve Green will probably not feel threatened by Fischer’s voice, but there’s an earthiness and compassion in his delivery which imbues John’s straight-forward lyrics with an earnestness too often missing from Christian music these days. [Bruce A. Brown, CCM, September 1992]
Some Folks’ World, Silent Planet Records 1999
Countless people are encouraged by the writings of John Fischer. He is well known for having authored four novels, six non-fiction books and his monthly column in this magazine. But some of his fans are unaware that before Fischer was writing books and magazine articles, he was writing music, a worker on the “shop floor” of the emerging contemporary Christian music scene, eventually releasing 11 albums between 1969 and 1992.
Even if fans did know Fischer’s roots, they may not have had a chance to hear much of it. ‘Some Folks’ World’ will change that. In 1992 the late Mark Heard produced Fischer’s last disc, ‘Wide Angle’, but right after the initial 2,000 copies were manufactured, the distribution company and the record label both went belly up. As one might imagine, that left the project hanging in the balance.
This year Fischer reassembled the all-star cast from that disc (David and Kate Miner, Buddy and Julie Miller and David Raven, among others) and recorded three new tracks with David Miner producing. In the meantime Buddy Miller brilliantly remastered ‘Wide Angle’, and the sum of the two adds up to ‘Some Folk’s World’.
The music is folksy, with lots of acoustic guitar, mandolin and accordion, and the album offers simple, yet substantial melodies supported by outstanding background vocals. The lyrics are reminiscent of Americana music – though geared toward alternately reflecting and challenging the Western culture of faith – and are chock full of Fischer’s trademark “straight to the heart” style. Clocking in at just over 58 minutes, this disc contains almost as much concentrated food for thought as his books. But then again, who’s surprised? [Laura Harris, CCM, January 2000]
CD tracklist:
01. Wide Angle – 4:04
02. Too Many Preachers – 4:03
03. The Only Way – 3:51
04. It All Comes Down to This – 3:38
05. A Witness – 4:31
06. O Rocker – 4:18
07. Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt – 2:55
08. Cup of Cold Water – 3:54
09. Where Did They Go? – 4:29
10. By My Spirit – 3:37
11. Down to the Water – 3:48
12. Not the Only One – 4:29
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and CD by Urgent Records. Re-issued in 1999 by Silent Planet Records, re-titled Some Folks’ World and featuring new cover artwork as well as three bonus tracks produced by David Miner; “Vanguard” (3:39), “Pass It Around” (3:13), and a cover of Mark Heard’s “Some Folk’s World” (4:04).
John Fischer Some Folks’ World (Silent Planet Records 1999)
A full-page advertisement for two new releases on Silent Planet Records, John Fischer’s Wide Angle and Jan Krist’s Love Big Us Small, was featured in the September 1999 issue of CCM Magazine.
The writing of the fiction Saint Ben took John Fischer away from writing new music for some time, and he recognizes part of that is “a sort of grieving” over the death of Mark Heard, who produced his last, 1992 release ‘Wide Angle’.
“It was so important for me to have found someone who could produce my music the way I wanted it – and then the Lord took him away. I felt very robbed; God and I had a bit of wrestling over this…” Despite a batch of well-received albums over the years, and a clutch of “classic” songs, John looks on ‘Wide Angle’ as the first recording on which he really felt free to be himself, really captured who he was.
“That was Mark’s expertise. I think I got stuck on some of my earlier projects trying to be marketable, trying to write hits, trying to be somebody I wasn’t. I don’t record enough where I know that much of what’s going on, and so I would be intimidated by producers, other musicians who would say this or that about my music. I always thought, ‘Gee that sounds good’, but down the road I think I was pulled away from who I really was. And so we went in as two older guys and we had a ball, and made music the way I always wanted to.” The title of the recording is an exhortation to believers to see the bigger picture, rather than focus in on small details. “There is this idea that if you are going to be a Christian you have to be very narrow-minded, you have to come down to these few little creeds. But it has been fed by a large subculture of people who call themselves Christians but who are maybe more tied to ideas than they are to Christ.
“This concerns me greatly, and so I continue to try to say, ‘Wait a minute. Jesus did say that the way was narrow that leads to light – but he never said that the mind that follows it is!’ All the way down through history we have had great thinkers – Aquinas, Lewis, Schaeffer – who have thought through their faith. I am concerned that people are not integrating spiritual things with life enough these days. We have become so compartmentalized… I think we have had the whole wrong approach to the world, at least in America, up until now. Our ideas are that we are at war with them. Yet my Bible says that God loved the world… that he sent his son not to condemn it but to save it.
“Now that’s a message of love, compassion, reaching out, caring for people – and yet you see the Christian community at war with the world, as if we have erected this huge wall and we are under siege and lobbing hand grenades at the enemy. How ever are we going to win people to the good news of the gospel when we are shooting them down? I think we need to open up the channels, find the places where we tie in with non-Christians – and there are many. We need new attitudes about the way we think about the world, and as artists we can create art from this attiude. I think we will then find our message will at least be heard. I don’t think people are necessarily turned off by religion or the gospel. They are turned off by phoniness , by people who are trying to sell them something. But something that comes off with integrity – ‘A River Runs Through It’ – a movie about fly fishing and Presbyterianism, a hot seller. You wouldn’t think these two items would be a real attraction, would you, yet they have – then the average person will at least give them the benefit of the doubt.”
[Excerpt from “John Fischer: The pioneering Jesus Music singer/songwriter and CCM’s Dark Horse” by Andy Butcher, published in Cross Rhythms magazine No. 18, Wednesday 1st December 1993]
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.