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Bob Carlisle
Biography
Bob Carlisle
When you've been around the neighborhood block a few years, you know it like the back of your own hand. You know where the ferocious dog lives, who has the nicest yard, all the sidewalk cracks by heart, and the exact spot on the tree where your friend Tommy wrecked his bike in the summer before your fifth grade year. But years from now, when you take a break from the complexities of your very adult life and come home to the old neighborhood, everything looks so small and feels so different. And yet you'll remember how much it meant.... For Bob Carlisle, who finished out the last few years of the century on an all time professional high, riding out the multi-platinum "Butterfly Kisses" tidal wave that began in 1997, the new millennium has found him getting back to the old neighborhood. Getting back to his musical roots. Rediscovering his vocal strength. Looking back on his life from a place of clarity, and seeing that the truth lies as much in the questions as in the answers. And seeing how experience, as much as success or failure, gives way to the truth. Nothing But The Truth , Carlisle's third album for Diadem Music, is a soulful, energetic reflection of that clarity, of the freedom he discovered digging around the old neighborhood. Picture it, if you will: There's young Bob, a skinny white kid out in the yard of his southern California home, minding his own business, raking the leaves, when a car full of Mexican-American musicians pulls up. "Hey kid, we heard you playing your guitar," one of the kids in the car yells. "You wanna be in a band?" "Sure, why not?," Bob answers. "Of course, if you're gonna play with us," the guy in the low rider says, "you gotta listen to this..." "Those guys anointed me with music that I had never heard, like Sly and the Family Stone, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Tower of Power... it was passionate stuff, and I fell in love with it," Bob says, remembering his introduction to soul music. "That is where I come from. Those are my roots. When everybody else in the late '60s and '70s was playing their Beatles albums backwards to try to find out whether or not Paul was dead, I was listening to Redding and Pickett. Tower of Power was my Beatles." For Nothing But The Truth , Bob Carlisle tapped Regie Hamm, the multi-Dove award winning songwriter (Point of Grace, Jaci Velasquez) & producer (Clay Crosse) who resurrected Carlisle's blue collar soul and reminded him of how much fun the recording process can be. In the process, Carlisle rediscovered just how muscular his voice could be, and this album will no doubt remind listeners that within this silky balladeer beats the heart of a real soul man. Hamm brings a modern, yet earthy, energy to the project that delivers song after song with impeccable sonic fidelity and makes Carlisle's strength as a world class singer never more apparent. These songs are some of the most autobiographical of Carlisle's 20-plus year career in Christian music. From the confessional nature found in "Forgiveness," to the highly personal, questioning of God's will in "River of Peace," to the exclamation of God's faithfulness in the title cut; these songs are cut from the cloth of experience. And it is perhaps for that reason that they are so convincingly revealing of who Bob Carlisle really is as a man, a husband, a father and a child of God. "As I look in the mirror and see the gray hairs and the laugh lines, I start thinking about my life," he says, talking about "After All," which he classifies as a middle- aged man's lament. "It's almost a perspective that you canít have unless you have lived awhile with Jesus. Iíve been a Christian for almost 30 years, and as I look back on my life I am overwhelmed by the fact that God has been with me every step of the way." "And when you see that," Bob adds, "you start to realize that this life is not about me, it's about Him. Through disappointments, detours, success and failureóGod remains faithful. He is not going anywhere. He is going to continue the work He has begun in me. He will be there after all." Also included on Nothing But The Truth are two immensely appealing coversóone, a very soulful version of Amy Grant's pop hit "Baby, Baby." "I've wanted to record that song from the first time I heard it. Of course, I've taken a somewhat different approach...," Bob smiles. The other, a cover of England Dan and John Ford Coley's "Love is the Answer" reunites the "Self Righteous Brothers"óBob and good friend Bryan Duncanófor their first duet in years. Simply stated, Nothing But The Truth is about as close to the truth of who Bob Carlisle isópersonally and musicallyóas one can get. " I suppose it might surprise some people, but I think I am finally understanding that it is my job to tell the truthóat least about myself. So, this is who I am. Not always a pretty picture but an earnest attempt to tell it like it is." They say "the Truth will set you free," and Bob Carlisle would definitely agree. "There is a tendency to think, when as a songwriter you are desperately trying to write songs that connect with people, that if you say the right thing and sing the right lyrics you'll be awarded the status of "professional Christian." I donít feel like I'm in that place anymore. I am at a place of freedom now. I have the freedom to write and sing about things that I am passionate about, the freedom in Christ to sing about anything I want to." "With this new album I have exercised that freedomówhich feels awfully good, and that," Bob emphasizes with a smile, "is nothing but the truth." |
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