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Half Mile Home: “Real Men, Real Issues, Real God”
By Bob Marovich for The Black Gospel Blog.
If Americans heading to the polling stations today need church music and inspiration to make their choice, Half Mile Home has the goods.
Church Musik & Inspiration is the title of the Ohio-based gospel group’s latest release. Lead vocalist, drummer, and songwriter Terence Burton, and his pianist-producer brother, Todd “Ty Traxx” Burton, talked with TBGB about the new album and their musical journey.
From Akron, Ohio, the brothers Burton attended a non-denominational church that was Pentecostal in flavor. “We came out of a real foot-stomping atmosphere,” Terence said. “We grew up in ‘shut-ins,’ where people stay at the church, sleep at the church, from Friday to Sunday, and pray.”
Given the primacy of Akron and Dayton in the soul-funk movement of the 1970s and 1980s, it comes as little surprise that the Burton brothers launched their professional musical career not as a gospel group but as part of an R&B ensemble called 1-900. Formed by Jodeci’s DeVonte Swing, whose father organized gospel’s Don DeGrate Delegation, 1-900 signed with Solar Records and released their self-titled album in 2004. They toured the country on the success of their single, “Come On Over Tonight.”
DeVonte’s concept for the group was that it deliver songs as provocative as the 1-900 telephone services popular at the time. “It didn’t turn out that way,” Terence explained. “My brother and I grew up as church boys, so it wasn’t as provocative as DeVonte planned it, but it was still a really great album.”
When Solar Records foundered and 1-900 broke up, the brothers recruited vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist Darryl Brownlee and started another R&B group called After the Rain.
“We were just getting off a tour as After the Rain,” Terence recalled, “and I really wanted to sing for the Lord, because this is what we do with our eyes closed. It’s what we really love to do. I leaned over to my brother and said, ‘Hey, man, I’m done. When we get home, I want to take some time and concentrate on coming out with a gospel project.’ He agreed.” The Burtons let everybody on the bus know what they planned to do, and the team was all in.
Terence then sought a name for the group that “would stand out, be unique and seal the deal.” God gave him a sign. Literally. “I looked out the window and saw a sign indicating a half-mile to the exit that would take us home. “I said to Todd, ‘Hey, that’s our name.’ He said, ‘What? Half Mile To Our Exit?’ ‘No, Half Mile Home!’”
Half Mile Home signed with Malaco in 2004 and released their debut gospel album, The Movement, which featured the popular single, “Do It Again.” They released Change My Lyfe in 2010. The Black Gospel Blog found Change My Lyfe to be a “firecracker of a record.”
“A lot of that comes from our experience in the secular, or mainstream, world,” Terence said. “During that time, I ran into some really great people, such as Raphael Saddiq and Tony! Toni! Tone! I got a chance to work with Kenny ‘Babyface’ Edmonds. I’m also a big fan of Commissioned—I’m probably the biggest fan of Commissioned your readers have ever known—and if you mix all of that up with knowing what I know in the Bible, God blessed us with this style of music.”
Todd said the concept behind Church Musik & Inspiration was collaboration. “There are three of us in the group, and we collectively put our styles of music together. I love praise team, choir-type music. Terence likes rock, pick-me-up type of music, and Deaken [Darryl], he’s pretty much a quartetter, so we got some quartet music on the CD. That’s how we came up with the title, Church Musik & Inspiration: we got church music on there and other styles of music that come to inspire.”
The group’s current single is “So Good,” a gospelization of Billy Preston’s 1974 hit, “Nothing From Nothing.”
“’Nothing But Nothing’ was out before we were born,” said Terence, “but it came across our radar screen, I believe, because God wanted us to hear it. God wants us to remind people of the hope that, no matter what the situation, He is still good. No matter who is going to be the President, God will still be God. God all the time. We were looking for a song that was fun and would liven up the crowd. It fit so perfectly and people love it.”
Other songs on the album that the Burtons feel especially strongly about include “Super Jesus.” “A lot of people know the popular superheroes of today,” Todd said. “We’ve got Batman, Spider-Man, but when you think about Jesus, he walked on water, raised people from the dead, he could do whatever he wanted to do. When you think of all the miracles that Jesus did, he is a real superhero!”
One selection making a reappearance, of sorts, on Church Musik & Inspiration, is the title track of Change My Lyfe. The group performed the song live this past summer and “it was so awesome we thought we’d put a live version on the new album,” Terence said. Todd added that “Change My Lyfe” is “one of the most inspirational songs I’ve ever heard. I fell in love with ‘Change My Lyfe’ the first time I heard it.”
The group is currently on the road promoting the album, doing in-store promotions, radio interviews, and giveaways. The Burtons are also tending to their own businesses—both are entrepreneurs with enterprises outside the music industry—and spending as much time as they can with their families.
“We’re real men singing about real issues and promoting and singing and praising a real God,” Terence said. “And we want you to really have a good time when you listen to the music. We want to inspire you and encourage you that there’s hope. That’s Half Mile Home.”
For more information, visit www.halfmilehome.com.
Watch the video for “So Good.”
2012-11-06 12:40:53
Source: http://www.theblackgospelblog.com/2012/11/half-mile-home-real-men-real-issues.html
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