Listen to it now!
Introduction:
Sometime ago (not sure when; you know how it goes when you get Old) I came across this CD of Instrumental Hymns. Like Rick Foster, Chip Mergott is quite the Guitar Player. And though quite prolific, this is the only one I have currently. I may check out more in the future, but decided to include this one in my Worship Music Albums for Sunday Afternoons. Included below are some Paragraphs from various writers over the years.
Enjoy!
Though he’s been making music for decades — often prolifically so, considering a single fall season not too long ago that generated five CDs and a writing stint that once birthed 30 songs in 40 days — singer-songwriter Chip Mergott took ample time with his most recent release. “I Love to Tell the Story,” which he recorded at Point Pleasant Baptist Church in Point Pleasant, is 20 years in the making. Mergott will celebrate the release with a performance Saturday at Solid Rock Cafe in Chalfont, performing with his wife Annie Bauerlein, also a singer-songwriter. He will intersperse his delivery of the album’s songs with some stories, of course, perhaps including this one:
Twenty years ago, Mergott was living on a farm in New Jersey, recovering from a drinking problem and despairing over the commercial failure of his third album, “My Home Isn’t in This World,” when his creative fire, for the first time in his adult life, seemed to desert him. He stopped writing songs.
Then came “Maybe I Was Born to be a Witness,” a surprising gift from the silence that he seized as a mission statement and invitation to return to fertile musical ground. He began working on a new album, writing at night, tending the farm at day. It would have been finished, save that final song, which perplexingly eluded him.
And so he continued with the business of living, putting out other albums, getting married, having a son, but that unfinished album remained a ghost at the edge of his consciousness. Then one day, his nostalgic musings about the project prompted him to dust off his old four-track recorder. He set up a few mics in the parsonage of the church, and that final song was born. He’ll share his warm, earnest folk collection and invite some special guests to join him onstage at his Saturday performance, where there will also be giveaways.
Chip Mergott and Alan LeBoeuf are both Watchung Hills Regional High School alumni who have each had successful musical careers. Chip Mergott, a former resident of Watchung, was discovered by Bonnie Raitt, and subsequently signed to a major label early in his career. Raitt has described Chip as “one of my favorite songwriters.” His “Mergott Music Minute” is currently heard on WDVR, WPRB (“Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio”) among other stations, and is a weekly feature in The Bucks County Herald. He’s been teaching music privately in Hunterdon County, N.J. and Bucks County, P.A. for over 20 years, and has recently authored his first book “How to Play the Guitar in One Hour.”
The Songs from the Album are listed below and are Hymns that I’m sure you are familiar with. Feel free to visit my YouTube Page where I post all my Music. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf0d6iDb5RQ3PBSVAT88vqQ/playlists
- Amazing Grace
- Blessed Assurance
- Softly and Tenderly
- Jesus Loves Me
- Just as I Am
- I Love to Tell the Story
- When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
- What a Friend We Have in Jesus
- It Is Well with My Soul
- The Old Rugged Cross
- Nearer My God to Thee
