With the release of his mainstream album for Reprise RUSS TAFF has metamorphasised from a CCM veteran to a country music "newcomer". Tony Cummings reports.

Russ Taff

In a recent Billboard magazine Nashville based singer Janis Ian lamented that "no major will sign a singer who's over 40 any more." Ms Ian has clearly forgotten the signing of her friend Russ Taff to Warner Bros who are now with a big buck splash launching the veteran gospel singer into the mainstream country music market. Eyebrows were raised in CCM circles when Russ's move to country was announced. For though long acknowledged as one the THE great voices in Christendom, Russ' previous 14 albums (six with the Imperials, eight solo) had not shown any particular country music direction.

Was Russ merely trying to cash in on the country music boom? "Not so," the singer told CCM magazine." My dilemma was either go back to 'Medals' with that synth/bass/pop sound or try to find a place that would let me continue this journey that I had started musically, as well as spiritually. You've got to understand, it's incredibly important to me that there's someone out there who will let me continue to grow. In country, you have everything from David Ball, who is very traditional, to the Tractors, which is a rock 'n' roll band... Artistically, I had to try. Otherwise I'd wake up one day at 60 years old wishing to God that I had."

But this path is risky. "I've come in on ground zero here. At least in gospel, I have value; they know what my sales have been, but in country I'm a brand new act, totally unproven. I've lain awake a lot of late wondering if I've made the right decision. I've got a family to feed and a house to pay for."

Russ' house is very special to him. "The first thing we did when we bought this house was set aside enough money to buy a piano to put right there," said Russ, pointing to the cream-coloured grand in his parlour. Taff and his wife Tori have lived in the house in Nashville's Hillsboro-Belmont area for the past 11 years. They spent the previous eight visiting it when it belonged to gospel singer Cynthia Clawson and her husband Ragan, often staying up past midnight singing and swapping songs. "One day Ragan called me and said, 'We're moving to Kentucky; you're buying our house.' We didn't own a house. I didn't even know if we could afford a house."

The year Russ and lyricist wife Tori had moved in was Russ' breakthrough year with the 'Medals' album enjoying huge CCM sales. But within a year in a Buffalo hotel room Russ underwent a spiritual crisis. His music career progress, playing in a little Jesus Movement band in Hot Springs, Arkansas; joining the highly successful Imperials and being elevated to CCM stardom; a string of successful solo albums had led him to a place of spiritual bankruptcy, praying to a God he wasn't even sure was there. "I prayed, 'God, I'll move back to a small town; I'll lay brick; I'll do anything if you will bring your peace back to my heart. Years and years ago I knew that peace, but somewhere along the way I lost it. Years and years ago I had an idea who you were, but I don't know now. Please show me again that you love me, that you created me and that you called me. And if you will do that for me, I'll do anything, but I've got to find peace.'

"It came to a point of just complete surrender and breaking down. Just completely collapsing and saying, 'God, you
gotta help me.' That day I allowed myself to back up and be a child and say, 'I don't care what - I do believe.' And that laid the foundation for what was ahead. I knew at that moment that I was his child. I knew at that moment that he didn't care about my career. He didn't care about what I had done for him. That he just loved me. That my righteousness wasn't performance-based. I moved out of legalism and into grace.

"It was a major transformation for me because I had been promised all these things if I would just do these things. And I did 'em, and it didn't work. And as I began to move into grace I found that he was not impressed with my works."

The process of rebuilding his faith would be a slow and painful one. But he knew now that he had God's permission to sing about the range of emotions he was feeling. His mandate was simply to live in such a way as to glorify God and to make music with integrity. No longer feeling the pressure to make sure every song was an altar call, so to speak, Taff began the process of realising his musical vision.

"For the first time in my life, I was making an honest record, for me. I mean, 'Medals' was an honest record for who I was at the time, but as I began to see what I was supposed to do, I said, 'I don't care what it costs me. I don't care if I lose my house, my car, if I lose everything. What I'm feeling here I can never lose again, and I won't. I can never stand up in front and say something that was said to me - it's got to come out of my own experience.'"

For Russ, the honesty and freedom brought healing. To his audiences he would say, "I can't stand in front of you right now and say, 'I'm a Christian, my life is wonderful,' but I can stand in front of you and say, 'I'm a Christian and I don't understand a lot right now. There's a lot that I used to believe that I don't believe anymore....all those thoughts that I carried with me for years, I don't know how much of that is true anymore. But I do believe he is real. I do believe he died for me.'

"It's a sad thing to be 32 or 33 years old when you finally find faith for yourself. But it's your step. And for the first time in my life, I felt peace. I really felt peace."

Just as finding his faith again took time, so did the practical outworkings of that process, such as re-building relationships. A pastor once told him to find friends who only knew him as Russ. "Some people that I hang with have never seen me play. They just know me as Russ and they think I'm a pretty neat guy. Learning that people like you just because they like you sounds so simple, but it's powerful. Your self-worth isn't what you're doing, it's just who you are. It's a wonderful thing. It took so much pressure off me, just coming to realise that God truly loved me for me, not what I was doing for him."

Today, Russ' life is more centred, more secure. "First of all, I am a man who loves his wife and my real world is in my home. It's not the records, it's not the road, it's that sanctuary right there for me. And my relationship with God is there. And everything else, like my singing, is just what I do. It's not who I am. My self-esteem doesn't rise and fall by the records that I make or where my records are on the charts. My world is secure in that God loves me no matter what."

Fatherhood also helped him learn that God's love for him is unconditional. In 1992, Russ and Tori became parents for the first time. Of Madeleine Rose Taff Russ says, "I've never loved anything so much in my life. When I look down on that little bed I see me, sometimes. That's the way that I was. To see this little child that can do nothing for me, it has so helped me understand and bring into perspective my relationship with Jesus. That he just loves me. What can I do for him, really? But as I look at her and realise how much I love her, how much she means to me, and you multiply that by a million times with how much Jesus loves me, my mind just kind of tilts. I don't understand it. It's probably one of the most healing things that's ever happened to me. I've never known love like that, and it's so uncomplicated. There are no conditions on it.

"One of the things I like best about it is that it has required me to be a better man. Every morning I ask God to teach me to be the kind of man that can father her correctly. It causes me to raise my personal standards, for her."

Taff continued to evolve his music over the course of his next three solo albums, delighting critics but confusing fans with his apparent zigzag in musical direction. Now, after a three-year silence (except for last year's best-of which contained one new song), comes 'Winds Of Change', which will shortly be released in the UK through Reprise Records and to the Christian market through Warner Alliance.

The album itself was a bit of an ordeal, requiring 14 months in and out of the studio. At this point Taff is philosophical about the release delays (it was due out a year ago). "I believe God is in control of this. I have to believe that. Either God is everything, or he's nothing. And I choose to believe he's everything. And so because of that, I have to leave the outcome to him. You have to, or life will drive you nuts. The outcome is God's and I just have to make peace with a whole lot of things. God is in control, either he is or he isn't, and if he isn't, we're all in a lot of trouble!"