Last time I was on an airplane I started playing the live recording of Andrew Peterson’s Rich Mullins Liturgy, Legacy concert at the Ryman, found myself choked up after the first song, and decided I didn’t need to sit sobbing on an airplane. Yesterday I was on an airplane again and decided heck, let’s give it another try. Short version: there were some tears, some rocking out, but hopefully nobody on the plane was too frightened by me. But let’s explore the long version.

First, just background: nine (!) years ago, Andrew Peterson put on a big concert at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville to commemmorate Rich Mullins and his rich legacy of music and faith. I managed to attend it, and it remains the best concert I’ve ever been to. They did a live recording at the time, but apparently the quality of some part of it was sketchy. Finally last year they did a Kickstarter to fund cleaning up the recording and releasing it digitally and on vinyl. (I have the vinyl still sitting at home waiting to be played. Soon.) Listening to it yesterday was the first time I’d heard those performances since experiencing them live back in 2017. I have two streams of thought I want to write about. First, in this post I want to just dig in with some thoughts on the music itself after revisiting it. Next I want to explore a little bit why these songs and performances are so meaningful to me personally.

Some general technical thoughts

OK, so first just general technical thoughts on the recording. It sounds great. The mix is good, the various instruments come through clearly (no small feat given the size of the band on stage), the re-recorded strings sound native, and the crowd mix is employed appropriately. (It was an amazing crowd. They knew all the songs and participated in all the right places. Goosebumps.) The only production question I walked away with was what Jeremy Casella does different in his own recording than was in place at the Ryman. Somehow on this live recording he doesn’t sound as much like him as he does on his solo recordings or usually does live. I dunno, I’m not a sound engineer.

Revisiting the concert itself

The concert lineup was so well thought out. Opening with Hello, Old Friends. Getting Awesome God out of the way early. Doing the artist round of favorites in the first half. Insisting on the note-by-note performance of the Liturgy, Legacy album in the second half. Starting the second half of the show with the same studio chatter that exists at the beginning of the original album. (The crowd’s reaction when they hear it: so joyful, so excited. The shared love and joy between the musicians and the audience at that specific point is almost overwhelming even in my memory here as I type this post.)

The performances in the first half are all so solid - no surprise given the artists - and almost entirely faithful to the originals. Jill Phillips notably adapts Cry the Name from 3/4 into 4/4, and Matt Giraud adds some amazing Marc Cohn-esque vocal riffs to Elijah, but otherwise, really you get the feeling that these artists grew up and were formed so significantly by Rich’s songs to the point that there was no concievable way to perform them other than just do what Rich did. And it was amazing.

Then I wanna talk about the band. You knew going in that they would be good - Andrew Peterson, Gabe Scott, Ben Shive, Andrew Osenga, Paul Eckberg, I forget who on bass… I have listened to the Liturgy, Legacy album countless times over the past 30 years. It’s one of those I legitimately know note-for-note across almost every instrumental part. And as I listened closely through the live recording, I was still astonished how closely the band nailed it. Osenga had all the electric guitar riffs dialed in. Shive’s piano parts were perfection. Maybe even more impressive (though it shouldn’t be surprising) was Paul Eckberg’s drumming. The drums on Liturgy, Legacy are involved, and Paul didn’t miss a beat.

Anyway…

If you’re a Rich Mullins fan, this live recording is well worth your time. I am so thankful first to have been able to attend the concert back in 2017, and secondly to now have the recording available to revisit.