CHUCK GIRARD- Singer, Songwriter, Recording Artist, and Worship Leader
A Pioneer of Contemporary Christian Music, Member and Co-Founder of the CCM group 'LOVE SONG.'
A Pioneer of Contemporary Christian Music, Member and Co-Founder of the CCM group 'LOVE SONG.'
Sometimes Alleluia
My most famous song. This was my very first worship song ever.
In the early days when I first started out with the group Love Song, we didn't know how to say no. We thought if the phone rang, it was God, and sometimes played 2 or 3 times a day for weeks on end. Well, one weekend someone gave us the use of a cabin in a So. Calif. Resort area, and a bunch of us went up for a weekend of R&R. I'm not sure who all went, but it was winter time, and we sat around the fireplace the first night to just worship. I had a guitar and I began to think about the different ways in which we express our heart to God. "Sometimes Alleluia. sometimes praise the Lord," etc., and the chorus was born. I didn't think much about it then and basically just forgot about it.
A few years later when I was preparing to record the "Chuck Girard" album, I told my wife Karen that I wanted to put to worship song on the album. She reminded me about the little chorus we sang up at the cabin. I said "Naw..that’s too simple. I need a real song." Duh! At the time I didn't fully realize what a real worship song was, and wanted to write some unique kind of song about worship, I guess. Karen said, "No, I have a feeling about that song. You need to finish it."
I went to the piano and the verses were written in about 20 minutes. It came out as the final piece on the "Chuck Girard" album, and in this case, the rest truly is history. Many people recorded it over the years.
An interesting side note is that a few years later I was introduced to the sermons of Charles Spurgeon for the first time. I was reading through a sermon, and read the line "Oh let our joy be unconfined, let us sing with freedom unrestrained." This was a verbatim line that I had received from the Spirit when I wrote the verses of this song. You can imagine, it fairly blew me away.
Production note: On the studio recording of this song, which appeared on the "Chuck Girard" album we recorded the audience participation part at the end after the track was recorded. We took the rough mix down to a church in Long Beach, CA which had a high ceiling and good acoustics for the large vocal sound we needed. We got a congregation together specifically for the recording, and recorded them as they actually worshipped to the song. Ironically, when we did the live version a few years later which appeared on the live Love Song album, "Feel the Love", the live audience vocals proved to be unusable due to the leakage of other instruments, etc. We had to get a group of singers together to go into the studio to re-record the audience vocals to get separation for this recording. So the studio version had live vocals, and the live version had studio vocals. Kind of interesting.
Chuck
In the early days when I first started out with the group Love Song, we didn't know how to say no. We thought if the phone rang, it was God, and sometimes played 2 or 3 times a day for weeks on end. Well, one weekend someone gave us the use of a cabin in a So. Calif. Resort area, and a bunch of us went up for a weekend of R&R. I'm not sure who all went, but it was winter time, and we sat around the fireplace the first night to just worship. I had a guitar and I began to think about the different ways in which we express our heart to God. "Sometimes Alleluia. sometimes praise the Lord," etc., and the chorus was born. I didn't think much about it then and basically just forgot about it.
A few years later when I was preparing to record the "Chuck Girard" album, I told my wife Karen that I wanted to put to worship song on the album. She reminded me about the little chorus we sang up at the cabin. I said "Naw..that’s too simple. I need a real song." Duh! At the time I didn't fully realize what a real worship song was, and wanted to write some unique kind of song about worship, I guess. Karen said, "No, I have a feeling about that song. You need to finish it."
I went to the piano and the verses were written in about 20 minutes. It came out as the final piece on the "Chuck Girard" album, and in this case, the rest truly is history. Many people recorded it over the years.
An interesting side note is that a few years later I was introduced to the sermons of Charles Spurgeon for the first time. I was reading through a sermon, and read the line "Oh let our joy be unconfined, let us sing with freedom unrestrained." This was a verbatim line that I had received from the Spirit when I wrote the verses of this song. You can imagine, it fairly blew me away.
Production note: On the studio recording of this song, which appeared on the "Chuck Girard" album we recorded the audience participation part at the end after the track was recorded. We took the rough mix down to a church in Long Beach, CA which had a high ceiling and good acoustics for the large vocal sound we needed. We got a congregation together specifically for the recording, and recorded them as they actually worshipped to the song. Ironically, when we did the live version a few years later which appeared on the live Love Song album, "Feel the Love", the live audience vocals proved to be unusable due to the leakage of other instruments, etc. We had to get a group of singers together to go into the studio to re-record the audience vocals to get separation for this recording. So the studio version had live vocals, and the live version had studio vocals. Kind of interesting.
Chuck
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Chuck Girard's Music
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