TIMELINE

A MUSICAL/THEOLOGICAL TIME LINE for Jim Radford

1952 – I was born in Smithfield, North Carolina, to Oscar and Norma Lee Radford on October 30.

1956 – In September I heard Elvis Presley doing “Hound Dog” on Ed Sullivan. Went crazy. Loved music from Day One. Later in the 50s someone in my house—probably my sister, Amy Rhea—bought a copy of Chuck Berry’s and Chess Records’ “Too Much Monkey Business,” and “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man.” Played them incessantly. Too many great artists in 1950s and 60s music to try and list them all here.

1962 – While vacationing with my family in Asheville, NC, we picked up a radio station that was playing folk music, which at the time in New York’s Greenwich Village was just taking off. I was hearing and taking in songs by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom Paxton and others. I was sensing the power of this movement that was now afoot. I loved that music.

1964 – Stayed up late into the night (with the radio under the covers) to hear in the DJ’s rotation “Love Me Do” by the Beatles. Had to hear Ringo’s cymbal crash at the end of the harmonica solo before going to sleep. I didn’t realize until many years later that the cymbal crash did not come from Ringo, but, rather, from Andy White, an American session drummer who was called in by George Martin, the Beatles’ engineer, producer, and orchestrator. Ringo is actually playing the tambourine on that track. In any case, I didn’t sleep much in 1964.

1966 – Heard Ray Charles’s version of “What’d I Say.” Simply could not rest until I had learned the piano part, especially the solo. Talked my mother into buying me a Doric combo organ and a Fender Princeton amp. I was on my way. Saw that “The Supersonics” (friends I had grown up with) were the “special music” at a Junior High Football banquet. I played ball that year, and so I went to the banquet. Heard Johnny Brady – drums; Bruce Coats – bass; Gordon Woodruff – guitar; and Billy Prince – guitar, playing “Walk Don’t Run,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “Pipeline,” “Wipeout,” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Thought that I would die if I couldn’t play with those guys. “I have to do this.” was the consuming thought in my head for the next six years. Learned their songs, asked for an audition, joined the band, never looked back. I was done for. Nothing else mattered but music. Girls is another story, and one not told here. Hanging out with Johnny Brady I was introduced to the Stax label. He had a bunch of singles lying around his living room, and I would listen to them and pay attention to who wrote the songs. This Memphis-based company was the home of Rufus and Carla Thomas, Otis Redding, and many others. The studio band was comprised of Steve Cropper, Lewie Steinberg, Duck Dunn, Al Jackson, Jr. and Booker Taliaferro Jones. They went by the name of “Booker T and the MGs.” Loved those guys and the Stax sound.

1967 – I got a Fender Rhodes electric piano. Also, our band needed a bass player, so we bought a Fender piano bass. I played that. Discovered Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man (the way I love you) and those unbelievable white guys down at Muscle Shoals who played behind her. That’s when I first wanted to do what Spooner Oldham was doing—session player in a studio setting. Also developed a love for Buffalo Springfield (Our band did Stephen Stills’ “For What It’s Worth.”), and a few years later, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and many other California-based groups, particularly the so-called “country-rock” or “folk-rock” groups, such as the Byrds, Poco, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Commander Cody and His Lost Plant Airmen, New Riders of the Purple Sage, and many others.

1968 – When someone had access to a car and we could get to Raleigh, which was about thirty miles west of Selma, a bunch of us would go, and as soon as we got within broadcasting distance of WLLE Radio, we would switch over from WKIX, which is what most of the kids listened to. WLLE, or “WiLLiE,” as others affectionately called it, was a station (“570 on your AM dial”) that served the black community in the Raleigh area. Usually it was Johnny Brady who would say excitedly, “Turn it to WiLLiE. Sweet Bob is on the air.” We would hear strains of Bill Doggett’s “Hold It,” and we knew we were tuned in. WLLE played the best of Rhythm and Blues, and it was the only station around where one would hear Charles Brown. Years later I heard him playing piano in concert with Bonnie Raitt. Charles was nearing the end of his life, but he was able to travel with Bonnie’s band for a time. Charles Brown was great. Over the course of the year, we also managed to wear out the grooves of James Brown's double LP, "Live at the Apollo, Vol, II," from having listened to it so much. We all wished that we could play with James Brown. We went to hear him live whenever he played in Raleigh. Killer band.

1969 – While riding in a pickup with two of my friends in Selma, one of them, David Parrish, asked, “Have you guys heard of that music festival they’re doing at Woodstock in New York?” Of course we had. He went on to ask, “Do we want to go?” I said, “Heck, no. It’s too far away, and it’s probably not going to be any good.” I was a moron--that’s all I can say. During that year David, who certainly had one of the finest record collections on earth played for me the first songs I ever heard by Leonard Cohen. “Suzanne,” and “Joan of Arc” became permanent fixtures in my mind. How could one not love Leonard Cohen? Through listening to David’s record collection I was introduced to Dr. John, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons, and Doug Sahm. And it was somewhere around this time that I first heard the piano playing of Leon Russell. Leon was unreal (in the best sense) to me. I read stories of how he would go to Black Baptist choir conventions and gatherings just to listen and learn. My kind of guy.

1970 – Met Jeff Grimes – guitar and sax; Allan Vann – drums; and Syd Vann (Allan’s brother) – bass. We became the back-up band for “The Saints,” a Black vocal group. We played all over the Carolinas and Virginia in the summer of 1970, the year I graduated from High School. Did a lot of R&B by various artists.

1970-71 – Met Donnie Weaver, who had sung lead on “I’m a Girl Watcher,” a national hit for “The O'Kaysions” out of Raleigh, NC. Played in his band for three months while going to school.

1971 – Couldn’t stay focused in college. Too busy thinking about playing. Left Donnie’s group and moved to Greenville, NC—a university town— to form a band. We did a lot of Allman Brothers covers. I had heard the Brothers play at The Attic in Greenville, while they were still unknown, except to the many musicians who were living there. Through new musical relationships formed in that place I was made aware of a wider spectrum of first-rate songwriters including Brian Wilson, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, and Richard Thompson (who left Fairport Convention in early ‘71 to embark on a solo career).

1972 – I moved to Winston-Salem, NC. Started playing in a blues band. I had a Hammond M-3 organ and a Leslie 900 tone cabinet. We listened to a lot of Johnny and Edgar Winter, Ry Cooder, Dr. John, Canned Heat, Jimi Hendrix. I was discovering people like Steve Winwood, Nicky Hopkins (fabulous session pianist), and anybody who played with John Mayall. Became an admirer of the music of Todd Rundgren, whose harmonies and melodies continue to inspire me. Heard and loved Elton John’s first solo album and one when he was still Reginald Dwight and playing with Long John Baldry. Listened to a lot of Delaney and Bonnie and anyone else who came from or through Muscle Shoals.

1972 – Moved back to Greenville, NC, where I was invited by songwriter Tim Hildebrandt to play piano in Heartwood, a newly-formed country-rock group, one of the first in North Carolina. Heartwood went on to record three albums. I didn’t play on a single one of them, although I was the original pianist in the band. An encounter experience with Jesus preempted my musical career. In August, while helping a friend move, Jesus revealed Himself to me (mystical experiences and visions still happen) two weeks before we were to start recording the first project. Others who came and went into the house that Saturday evening where I had been helping my friend move had no idea why I was sitting on the floor and weeping. They never knew that it was in repentance for my sin. They were kind, and surrounded me in support, but they were left wondering what was happening to me. The next day I continued helping my friend move more furniture, but I started talking directly to Jesus, knowing for the first time that He was listening. Now my one consuming thought was getting back to my home in Selma, NC, to get my hands on a Bible that a Baptist Sunday School teacher gave me when I was a young teen. I told the guys in Heartwood that I was leaving the band, which, by the way, was the last real working band I ever played in. The doors to the music world were closed, and although I never stopped playing or loving music, the desire for doing anything in the world of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock-and-Roll” permanently left. I found Andre Crouch, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Keith Green, Phil Keaggy, Ken Medema, Joel Chernoff (Lamb), and a host of others who were playing real good and playing for God. That’s what I wanted to do.

1973 – After a five year hiatus, I started attending church again, a Free Will Baptist congregation called Hopewell in Smithfield, NC. From 1971 to 1974, I worked as brick mason’s assistant, a licensed wastewater treatment plant operator, and began house painting, and later, hanging wall paper, both for commercial companies and on my own. Discovered C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, and devoured that book. That led to Mere Christianity and practically all Lewis ever published. Read everything I could get my hands on that had to do with relationship with Jesus, and I sought out others who had similar experiences. Back in my home town, almost everyone, including my mother, family, friends I had grown up with, thought I was out of my mind. The word on the street that got back to me was, “Jim used to be on drugs. Now he’s a religious fanatic.” I wore out several Bibles in the first two years.

1975 – In August (evidently August has been a good month for me) met Earl Tyson, an evangelist who came from Scottsville, Virginia, to Brietz United Methodist Church (no longer in existence but located then on Railroad Street in Selma) to do a week of revival services. I had become friends with the pastor, R.G. Gurley, who asked me to fill in for the pianist, who was home sick with the flu. I became acquainted with Earl during that week, and on his last day there he invited me to come up to Virginia to visit. I told him that I was self-employed, working six days a week, and that I was too busy to come anytime in the immediate future. He asked me what kind of work I did, and I told him that I was a house painter. He said, “I’ve been asking the Lord for a house painter for the last six months. When can you come?” I told him not until sometime in October or November. He said that he would call the last week in October. I never thought he actually would—I thought his intentions were good, but…. he did call, and I drove up to Scottsville one week before I turned 23. The Tysons gave me a surprise birthday party. I fell in love with all of them. Years later, while spending three years on the road with him as a musician/evangelist, Earl would introduce me to the people as “…Jim Radford, my son-in-law. He came to paint my house, stayed five years, and married my daughter.”

1976 – Earl called down to NC in January and asked if I wanted to go with him on a two-week preaching trip to Iowa and Kansas. I said sure, and neither of us knew at that time that the trip to the Midwest was the beginning of my first two-and-a-half year stint with his ministry of evangelism.

1976 – In the Summer, while up on a scaffold repairing plaster for Earl and Betty Tyson in the two hundred year-old house they were restoring, I heard the “stirrings” (theologian Jacques Maritain called them “Intuitive Pulsions,” a kind of pre-conscious stage in which a “germ” of music, poetry, or art begins forming) of a melody. I jumped off the scaffold, went into the living room, where the Tysons had a piano, and began figuring out the music for the first complete song I ever wrote as a Christian, “I Am the Way.” I played it for Earl when he got home. He began taking me with him to gatherings in the Fall of that year.

1977 – Wrote “They that Wait upon the Lord,” “I Have Engraven You” (Sing, O Heavens, and Be Joyful, O Earth”), the “He Who Follows Me” medley. Began doing arrangements of hymns: Charles Wesley’s “O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done,” “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” and John Newton’s “How Tedious and Tasteless the Hours.” Wrote the musical motif and the title of the song that didn’t become “Sons and Daughters of the Kingdom” until twenty-one years later.

1979 – Wrote "Thus Says the Lord,”“Who Says?” and “Now All that I Can Do (is give you my heart).” “Now All that I Can Do” was then entitled, “Now I’m Not Giving Anyone Else My Heart,” but that always sounded disingenuous to me. That song didn’t really work until I changed the words in 2006. It works now. I left Earl’s ministry—with his blessing—to attend college to prepare for the ordained ministry, which the Spirit of God began communicating to me in the word, “Prepare.” Bob Poulk, a pastor friend of mine, and unbeknownst to me until he mentioned it, was hearing that word while praying for me. The Spirit even told me, as I was driving across NC from Asheboro to Selma, where I was to go. Actually, while I was driving and praying about school, the words, “Religion and Philosophy” exploded in my mind. I said, “Lord, are you telling me that there is a school that has a degree by that name?” On the strength of that, I drove straight to the office of the Guidance Counselor of the High School I attended and asked, “Is there a college anywhere in the state that offers a dual degree called “Religion and Philosophy?” The Guidance Counselor looked it up and said, “Only one. Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, NC” (they are now “Barton College”). I visited the campus and sat in during a philosophy class taught by Eugene Purcell, who, out-of-the-blue began talking about his graduate school days at Duke and his association with Rufus Moseley (an academic mystic, educator, and author, who was a pivotal influence for me). I knew I would be going there. I began the Fall semester at AC. Took music composition and piano as elective courses.

1980 – Began the pastoral ministry in Madison, Virginia, in four small United Methodist churches in the mountains (388 members total). Teresa and I were both in school, she at the University of Virginia, and I was then at Piedmont Virginia Community College. All the years I spent in Virginia from 1975 on, I had never declared state residency, and therefore could not afford the out-of-state tuition fees at UVA, although I had applied and been accepted. I did a year at Piedmont while establishing the requirement of living in the state as a Virginia resident for 12 months, and transferred to UVA in the Fall of 1982.

1982 – Wrote “Give Thanks,”“What Adam’s Done,” “The Lifeline,” “Jesus Reigns Alone,” and “Gave Myself Away.” At the end of two years of pastoral ministry, I was feeling that I would not continue in school, and that I would pursue what I believed I was called to do: ministry in a music context. I made plans to travel again with Earl Tyson, which I did for the next eighteen months. I was miserable. The ministry itself was great, but I had such a sense of un-fulfillment—something Teresa’s uncle, Tommy Tyson, called “Divine Discontent.” Not finishing school left me with a continual feeling of incompleteness. Met John Ashley, a fellow pastor on the Charlottesville District, and who loves music himself. He plays mandolin and is a fan of Neil Young. John introduced me to Paul Brier, the owner and engineer of Virginia Arts Recording Studio. Virginia Arts at that time was located near Orange, VA. Paul is a multi-instrumentalist and composer. While I was there he asked if I would play on a couple of songs for a guitarist in Washington, D.C. who was coming later to do his tracks. Paul explained that “the guitarist” preferred that the tracks be done ahead of his scheduled time in the studio and that he didn’t like other musicians being around when he did his. As it turned out, the guitarist was Danny Gatton (go to YouTube and listen to his performance on Austin City Limits. You’ll get a sense of why he was called the “the god of the Telecaster.”). In the past, Danny and Paul had played together. Paul also was from the Washington, D.C. area. Thirty years later, while he was visiting at my home, I first learned of the identity of “the guitarist.” “By the way,” said Paul at one point, “I came across those two tracks you did with Danny Gatton.” Somewhat flabbergasted, I said, “When did I ever play with Danny Gatton? I believe I would remembered that.” He said, “Don’t you remember? At the studio in Orange?” Evidently he simply forgot to mention Danny’s name back then.

1983 – My wife, Teresa, after graduation in 1981 from UVA’s School of Nursing, spent two years on staff at the UVA Medical Center as a Labor and Delivery nurse. At the time, abortions were done on the Labor and Delivery floor, to the consternation of several of the nurses who worked there. They had trained to birth babies, not abort them. But because the Medical Center was a state institution, not providing abortions was not an option. The nurses, however, were not specifically required to participate in the procedure itself. Teresa was one of a few who refused to be a part. But they all would dutifully perform their responsibilities to their patients in spite of their own personal internal conflicts. The nurses had to deal with the aborted babies and care for the mothers before and after. Teresa began searching for an alternative. That year she founded Emmaus with Child, a ministry for women in crisis pregnancies. She located a facility in our area that had been built as a home for homeless boys by a local Episcopal priest, who was moving into the political world and departing from that particular ministry. His administrative board ran an article in the newspaper making public the announcement that they would hear proposals for the use of their buildings for groups or ministries with compatible aims. Teresa, her mom, and I appeared before the Trosdale board with a plan to take in women who had no options other than to abort and who had no other place to go. The board allowed us to lease one of their two homes. We formed our own administrative board, and Teresa and I oversaw the ministry, living there for three of the twenty years that we were operational. After we and the kids moved to Halifax in 1985 in order to pursue the calling to the pastoral ministry, other young couples/families stepped in to serve as directors. Later, in 2003, after a review with group home consultants we hired to evaluate EWC, it was felt, along with our board’s mutual agreement and blessing that we should cease to continue. This was largely because young women were no longer applying for help. The stigma of being pregnant without being married lessened in the society at large and the availability of resources that did not exist when we began were the factors in motivating us to close the doors. And so we did and thus ended that twenty-year chapter in our lives.

1985 – I give up. I surrendered to the call to school, to seminary, and to the ordained ministry. When I contacted the Board of Ordained Ministry (the powers-that-be in the United Methodist Church) and appeared before them, they said, “You want a church in June? You didn’t ask us to, but we have kept your license active and current these last three years.” So in June 1985 my family and I moved to Halifax, VA I began serving Halifax UMC.

1986 – I graduated from Longwood College (now Longwood University) with a BA in Music. I began seminary at Duke Divinity School in Durham, NC that same year.

1989 – Wrote “When Jesus Returns,” “I Will Proclaim the Name of the Lord,” “Give Thanks,” “He Gave Them Power,” and “Thus Says the Lord.” Graduated from Duke Divinity School. One year earlier I recorded “What Adam’s Done” and “Jesus Reigns Alone” with Paul Brier at Virginia Arts Recording Studio, which had been relocated from Orange to an old house on Stewart Street in Charlottesville.

1991 – Was ordained an Elder in the United Methodist Church. Appointed to Bethlehem UMC in Nelson County, VA. Stayed only one year, during which I applied to the Board of Ordained Ministry for the appointment of Conference Evangelist. They granted my request. Functioned in that capacity for two years.

1992 – Began serving what I thought was an interim pastorate in a circuit (three churches) in Buckingham County. I had intended to stay only six months, but that ended up as six years. I gave up the Evangelism appointment, which saddened me a great deal. I was forty years of age, and I began to feel that the musical side of my life would never be realized, although I knew in my heart-of-hearts that somehow it would be brought to fruition.

1994 – Learned of a band in Charlottesville, VA made up of three players who were in the praise bands of their respective churches. I contacted Eric Heinsohn, the leader and guitarist (this was The Eric Heinsohn Band), and told him that I had not played in over twenty years, and that I was interested in starting again. His group had bass and drums, but no keyboards. We got along fine from the first day we practiced together. We played twice a month in venues around Charlottesville.

1995 – Quit the band. Pastoring three churches and building a house while trying to practice once a week and play twice a month became too difficult, time-wise. We completed the home we are living in now in 1996.

1997 – Appointed to the James River Charge, three more small UMC churches. Settled into the life of a pastoral minister.

2005 – A group of younger adults wanted to do a contemporary worship service at the church on Sunday evenings that would be informal and testimony-oriented. They called it “Sunday Night Live.” I and Vernon Snoddy, one of the attendees at Centenary UMC who had played drums twenty years earlier, began practicing. Just the two of us for a while, but then we acquired our Board chairman, Steve Dorrier, who played bass. He had a friend, Wanye Huskey, who played guitar, and who lived just down the road from the church. Suddenly we were a praise and worship band. We all had played professionally at one time or the other, and we were all in our fifties.

2006 – With a new notational software program called “Finale,” I began writing out my songs, beginning with “Give Thanks,” “The Lifeline,” and “What Adam’s Done.” Songs I had written, but not performed, twenty-five and thirty years earlier, began coming back to my remembrance. I started re-learning and notating them.

2007 – After attending and playing for a retreat in Williamsburg, I was in my study/practice room, and onto the floor had fallen a John Milton poem, a sonnet, that had been on my bulletin board for at least twelve years. When I looked at it, I saw how the fourteen-line poem could be structured into verses that would make a song. I was able to write “On His Blindness” in about twenty minutes. This was the first song I had written in many years. Wrote the music for “Mender of Broken Hearts” sometime around then. The words would not come until three years later.

2009 – I left the James River Charge and the Farmville District for two small churches in the Harrisonburg District in the Shenandoah Valley, Donovan Memorial in Singers Glen, VA, and Cherry Grove UMC in Cherry Grove, VA. Ironically, Cherry Grove was the birthplace of Anthony Showalter, the lyricist for “What a Fellowship,” the first song in the medley of the same name. Singers Glen, historically, is known as “the birthplace of sacred music in the South.” I was sensing, even before moving there, that the door(s) into the world of recording would open to me. I met Robby Meadows, who owned and operated a recording studio in Harrisonburg. He had friends who were Nashville session players, and who would come up, at Robby’s invitation, and do sessions for his clients, me being one.

2010 – I recorded with Jeremy Medkiff – guitar; Rick Murray – drums, and Robby Meadows – bass, “Wannabe,” “Mender of Broken Hearts,” “The Lifeline,” “Constant Communion,” and “Take His Hand.” Wrote “Cain and Abel” in June. Earlier in the Spring I met Will McFarlane, who at the time was Minister of Music in the Chapel Hill Bible Church, in Chapel Hill, NC. Will had been on staff for two years, and was in the process of moving back to Muscle Shoals, from where he had come to take the position in NC. My friend of sixteen years, Jonathan Hornsby, lyricist for his brother, Bruce’s “Mandolin Rain,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” and many others, and I drove down and spent the afternoon with Will. Will said that he would play on my songs. I asked him if he knew of any back-up singers. He said, “I know two of the best: Cindy Richardson Walker and Marie Lewey.” He was right. When I listen to them, I hear angels singing.

2011 – In January I recorded, with Robby and Joel Key, Nashville producer and session player/leader, “Thus Says the Lord” and three others. Joel has played on a bunch more since then. Out in front of a Harrisonburg grocery store, I asked God who I could get to play cello on “Mender of Broken Hearts.” “Christian Howes,” was the immediate response (not words per se, but something I perceived in my spirit), even though I wasn’t actually expecting an answer. “Christian Howes?” I asked, amazed to say the least. “He doesn’t play cello. He plays jazz violin.” I had heard Christian playing with Les Paul at the Iridium Jazz Club in Manhattan, New York City, six years earlier, but it had never entered my mind to actually contact him. He was Downbeat Magazine’s 2011 winner for best up-and-coming violinist. When I emailed him, it turned out that he was willing and able to provide any necessary strings, and he was very gracious to me. He said, “I have a young man in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who was one of my students at Berklee. His name is Christopher Marion. I’ll get him to play cello on ‘Mender of Broken Hearts.’ And I’ll be happy to play violin on ‘Who Says?’” And they did, indeed, compose and perform beautiful parts on those songs. Christopher, who has since moved to Nashville, did all the strings and arrangements on several of the pieces. Sometime thereafter I drove to Virginia Beach, where Christian was conducting a violin workshop for a high school orchestra. We went to dinner afterwards and talked more about music. It was Christian who put me on to Hamilton Hardin, a multi-instrumentalist who now lives in Memphis, Tennessee, working daily with David Porter, the songwriting partner of Isaac Hayes (“I’m a Soul Man,” “Hold On, I’m Comin”). Hamilton is a musical genius and a wonderful horn player. Any horn. Any instrument.

2012 – I released my first project (it lists a 2013 date, but I actually finished it in December). A barrage of songs were written: “Your Life Is in My Life,” “A Kingdom of Your Own,” “Higher, Prior Call,” “A Place to Stand,” “Incarnation 2,” “He’s Broken Down the Wall,” and others. Most of those appeared on the second project, “Bound to Be Free.”

2013 – Released “Bound to Be Free.” Began doing regular sessions at Alive Studios with Robby, Rick, Joel, and Jeremy when the opportunity arose. Woke up one morning to realize that my time in the ordained ministry was at an end. I felt “released” by God from my obligation to serve in the context of pastoral ministry in an institutional setting.

2014 – Took early retirement and moved back to Scottsville. In December, while drinking coffee in a Barnes and Noble bookstore Starbucks, on my laptop I was doing background research for a Perspective article on the 2nd Chapter of Acts when I noticed a webpage that had featured an interview with Matthew Ward. The webpage was from a ministry called “Cross Rhythms.” I had never heard of them, but the article on Matthew Ward was comprehensive and in-depth, and I went to the Cross Rhythms website, where I learned about the mission and the founding of its radio ministry. Especially appealing to me was their emphasis on people who were not connected with churches per se and Cross Rhythm’s supportive role regarding Christian artists. On a whim I sent a “To Whom It Concerns” email introducing myself and requesting reviews of my projects. Within thirty minutes some nice person named Maxine Cummings responded with a gracious invitation to send the projects directly to her. She went on to offer to write and post an artist profile.

2015 – Finished the third project, “Draw the Line/Blur the Line.” Contacted online Lins Honeyman, the Scottish blues guitarist and Cross Rhythms presenter, and he kindly invited me to send projects to him for review.

2016 – Met Lins in person during a trip to the UK. Great guy. Love Cross Rhythms and The Gospel Blues Train. They’re the best. Looking forward to a long and happy relationship.

2017 – Finished and released “Incarnation 2.” This fourth project featured songs that were bumped from the lists of the preceding CDs. In many ways, it seems that the fourth should have been first in the series. Nonetheless, I have had an unmistakable sense of the Presence, the Timing, and the Guiding Hand of God on all these. And I have been blessed beyond my wildest expectations.

Hopefully and God willing, there is more to come….

TIMELINE

A MUSICAL/THEOLOGICAL TIME LINE for Jim Radford

©2013 Jim Radford. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.