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 Ministering Beyond Boundaries
For giving me once more chance To raise my voice, I sing it out loud I sing it all day, This song is my prayer I give to only you, It can’t compare To the gift from you, See He gave us His love He gave us His Son Jesus —from ‘Say Amen’ The words are familiar enough, but when you hear the unmistakeable tenor voice that brings this praise melody alive, you instantly know you’re hearing 'Say Amen'.  It may seem unusual that this Gospel song is the most requested number of one of R&B’s steadiest forces over the past decades. But Howard Hewett claims it up front, and certainly make no excuses."I would get run out of town if I didn’t sing that song in my set. Whether it’s in an arena, a theater or in a club, people want to hear 'Say Amen'. It’s always good to hear how the music touches people, because that’s what it’s all about. The song was recorded around 1986, almost 15 years ago. It’s a blessing, it’s even more popular now than it was back then." As a former member of the hit group Shalamar, with an established solo career, and as a strongly professing Christian, Howard Hewett made the obvious choice of including a remake of the song on his first exclusively Gospel project The Journey, just released on Harmony/Epic. "That song has ministered to me through the years, man. People come to me throughout the whole history of the song, saying how 'Say Amen' saved their life, or their marriage. Even for me through the years, there’s been some times when I’ve had some trials and tribulations, and the lyrics to 'Say Amen' have ministered to me also.' "The tedious thing, for lack of a better word, is to redo a song like 'Say Amen',because so many people love the original. Whenever I do a set, I always end with 'Say Amen', whether it’s live or to DAT, so we’re talking literally doing the song thousands and thousands and thousands of times through the years. We didn’t want to change it per se, but after doing the song live for the past 14 years, Monty [Seward] and I —we originally wrote the song together —we just redid it the way that we do it live. And after years of doing it, there’s natural changes that take place anyway, but they’re not really drastic changes."  The remake is the only one of the several Gospel gems that the Akron, Ohio native has featured on his R&B albums over the years, that re-surfaces on his Gospel album. It serves as a direct link to his mainstream material, which while not exclusively Gospel, has always lyrically emphasized relationship fidelity, honoring of each other and clean love balladry."This project is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I recorded 'Say Amen'. The song was the result of a promise I made to the Lord. Even years before I left the group Shalamar, I prayed and I said, ‘Lord when I’m by myself, when I leave the group, when I’m the one who’s responsible for what I sing, I promise I will always have at least one song on each album honoring your name.’ So then, ‘Say Amen’ came about as far as the first solo album." "Ever since then I wanted to do a complete project honoring God, honoring the Lord. This project, the thing about it was to find the right company to do it with. It says in Psalms 1:1, ‘Do not sit in the counsel of the wicked.’ I take that literally, as far as a project that completely honors the Lord. I wanted it to be with someone who understands that whole thing. Someone who understands the importance of the little mom and pop store down in the bible belt, and in the churches. I don’t just want this project to just end up on the Christian bookstore shelves. But I don’t want that market to be ignored either."
Hewett speaks of The Journey with a quietness and a peace that conveys the fact that it is a labor of love. But that’s not to say that it didn’t have its challenges. "Consciously and methodically I had to always make sure we were being biblically correct. The single that we shipped initially to Gospel radio was ‘Angel’ This was one of those songs where I went through three or four different sets of lyrics. Because there’s a dangerous area you can get into, the topic of angels, particularly where you’ve got this new age thing. Monty and I wrote the song, and we went through a lot of different lyrics, because I didn’t want to mislead anyone as far as the situation of worshipping angels. We don’t worship angels. Angels are messengers and they are to do His bidding on our behalf. We pray to God to guide his angels to help us. You have to be really clear about that." "What it ended up as was like a personal experience. I believe to this day that I had an encounter with one of God’s angels that intervened in my life when a bunch of crazy stuff was going down. There was a time in my life unlike any other time when shadows were falling over me. One day I found myself so helpless and locked in a place of fear. But then I heard a voice... There was this cat that I met at the time, and he just said, you know, 'In God lies your faith, not in man nor this place. So don’t let this fear destroy you.'" "So you know, we sometimes let circumstances destroy us rather than having faith in God’s mercy and grace, and in  the fact that he’s going to protect us at all times. We can fall into real crazy areas in our lives if we don’t live by faith."Collaborating with Hewett on the project are not only long time colleagues such as Monty Seward, but also some veterans in Gospel such as Michael Powell and Kevin Bond. "Yeah, the connect with Kevin came from Raina Bundy. Raina and Kevin have this musical history together. She sent me some of the stuff that he had previously written and produced, and I really dug it. I already had the idea for the title track, so Kevin sent me about four or five tracks that he had that were great, and were just really interesting to me. And we went from there. The last couple of years I knew I wanted to call the album 'The Journey' because that’s what it’s all about, each of us has our own journey. The way I write, my basic things are lyrics and melodies. So once I heard [this particular] track, of the four or five that Kevin sent me, it just jumped out. It has that mystical type of feel, or mood. Something that’s going on and on, with that piano line, an on-going thing. Our journey is an ongoing thing. We’re all chasing rainbow’s at times, Just when you think you have it, you turn around and it’s gone. It’s all a journey." "The focus of the project, lyrically, is a conglomeration of my thoughts, philosophies and messages that I’ve gotten through my life that I wanted to convey." Certainly, one listen to the new album tells you that Hewett hasn’t really strayed from his familiar sound. While it's immersed in today's production vibe, it’s also right in line with what we’ve come to expect from the man. We asked if he distinguished between the musical and the lyrical message. "Well I’ve always thought that music, melodies and lyrics are one of those things that all go together, they each have something to say. The three are so important. It’s important for the melody to respect the nuances of the music, and it’s very important lyrically for it to enhance all three of those." "My philosophy as far as a tune, or a complete song is concerned, is like this. It’s like a beautiful woman. When you see a beautiful woman, the first thing that attracts you to her is her beauty, whatever that is to you, because everyone has a different eye as to what
"It’s the same thing with a song. The first thing that pulls you in is the music. Even if it’s a dance song, with the groove, the beat, the whole thing. With the ballad, the mid-tempo, where it puts you mood-wise, that’s what pulls you in. Then you get into the lyrics of the song." "The first thing is the music, then second thing is the melody, the last thing is the lyrics. And if the lyrics can stand up to the melody and the music, then you’ve got a powerful song." With the power of song that Hewett is capable of, whether it be in songs such as 'Say Amen', 'To Thee I Pray' or the several that appear on The Journey, there will no doubt be some that express their puzzlement about Hewett’s calling in life, seeing that his musical expression moves from the world of R&B to Gospel and back. But let there be no doubt, Hewett is very clear on where he stands: "I’m not a Gospel artist. And I’m not one of those raunchy R&B artists either. A long time ago I stopped calling my R&B music secular. Because if you really look at the definition of secular, it’s deep. The dictionary defines it with words like ‘heathen, ungodly and without God.’ And I don’t think anything I’ve ever done in my career has been without God. I’m not one of those artists that goes ‘shake your booty down’ and that whole thing. I feel a lot more respectful as far as women are concerned, as far as family is concerned. I’ve taken it to be a personal responsibility of mine." "And I’m not by any means an advocate of censorship. Because I think censorship is a dangerous two-edge sword. If someone speaks up and says that ‘they can’t say this or that’, then who’s to say that later someone will [build on that] and say that ‘we don’t think that you should be talking about God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in your songs.’ Censorship is just a real dangerous can of worms to open it up, a Pandora’s box...it would be a real bad thing all the way around." "[Let’s not] limit being able to praise the Lord, to praise God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Let’s not limit that only to people who are labeled as ‘Gospel artists’."  "I am a Christian artist. Whenever I do personal appearances, I always sing ‘Say Amen’, or else a medley of Gospel tunes that I’ve done over the years. My band and I have put together a real nice medley of stuff, like 'Call His Name', 'To Thee I Pray' and 'Jesus'.Through the years I’ve had atheists come up to me, I’ve had Jehovah’s Witnesses come up to me, I’ve had ‘Science of the Third Mind’ or whatever come up to me after shows. I remember a couple of atheists come up to me saying, 'we were having such a great time, and then you started talking about God, what was that all about?'" And that’s my opportunity to plant a seed. I'm not saying that it would take root right away, but God says that his Word will not return void. If I was a ‘Gospel artist’, then those same people may not even have been there. "It says in the Bible that a physician is not needed among well people. I think that there is a calling for everybody. And hopefully this new wave of Gospel music will be a little bit more open, more so than [we found with] the old school situation. More open to R&B artists confessing and saying without hesitation, ''Hey I love the Lord, and He is where my strength comes from'". "Now, I do have a problem a lot of the times when on a album someone is talking about women in a derogatory way, and using foul language throughout, and then at the end saying 'I want to thank God for giving me an opportunity for making this happen'. I don’t think God had anything to do with it!! I think there has to be more of a responsibility. Because [without it], it lends to leading somebody astray. Like it says in the Word, we are responsible for our brothers, we are responsible for what we say, from fleeing even the appearance of sin." "And I’m not saying I’m perfect. Nobody’s perfect. Believe me, I fall flat on my face and skid down the sidewalk like everybody else does. But I pick myself up. That’s one of my favorite heart songs right now, in the last month or so." "What I would say is that, if you look at the whole ministry of our Lord, there’s just few times in his three and half years of ministry, you see him actually in the church, preaching in the synagogue. Most of the time He’s with the people. Even his first miracle, he was at a three-day party. He was out there with the people. He was just hanging out, he was just there, turning the water into wine. So, let’s be more open, let’s be more receptive, not so rigid as far as certain things are concerned." "There’s a lot of things that we have to be concise with as far as the Bible is concerned, but don’t limit the freedom and the expression of some people to praise the Lord. Because you don’t know who that person is, and what that person can say!"  "‘Say Amen’ has ministered to so many people, and has brought so many to the fold, to the Lord, and these are just the people who have come to me and made me aware of it. I don’t know how many more are out there."Aside from the extensive promotionals that Hewett is immersing himself in to get the word out about The Journey, there is still more on the Gospel horizon for him. "I’m meeting some people about a Best of CD, so we’re putting that together, and I’ll probably start on the next R&B album in the next couple months. But I also wrote a Gospel play called “Say Amen”. I’m in the process of getting the right finances for that, and that’s a project that I’m really excited about."
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Joining forces with Kevin Bond, Michael Powell, Tony Prendatt, Freedom Lyles and others, Howard Hewett presents his journey on Harmony/Epic
His own website brings together his personal musings, reflections and thoughts, as well as information on his tour schedule, photo galleries and lots more.