2005

The Making of An Album with The Imperials

Welcome to the first segment of “The Making of an Album with The Imperials”.  Hopefully you will find this video-diary series informative, inspiring and fun!

As we get started, perhaps a bit of background would be helpful.  Most of you, no doubt, are familiar with the history of The Imperials and yet you may have lost track of the group over the past decade.  In the early 1990’s, after nearly 30 years in the music industry spotlight (both mainstream and Christian), Armond Morales felt God calling him to re-organize and re-focus the group.  The Imperials had re-defined themselves musically many times over the years and now they were re-defining themselves in terms of their ministry focus.  They basically left the industry paradigm behind and started a non-profit ministry focused on ministering to the body of Christ in local church settings.  (In 2003 Armond said that while God had called the group to minister to the body of Christ, in retrospect he realized that the body of Christ had also been ministering to The Imperials over the past decade and he felt that God had been teaching the group how to minister rather than just sing.)  In the fall of 2003 Armond retired from The Imperials and Ian Owens was hired to replace him as the bass singer.  It was the end of one era and the beginning of another.  For the first time in 40 years, The Imperials were without an original member.

Many have wondered over the past couple of years what the direction of the group would be and could these four unknown “new guys” really be The Imperials.  Also, why has it taken two years to get an album recorded?!  (We’ve asked ourselves these same questions many times!)  Basically, it took us the first year to transfer ownership of the group to the four of us and to figure out what the business structures/operating procedures for this new generation would be.  We really wanted to build on a firm foundation and that always takes time and attention to detail.  As to whether these 4 guys can really be The Imperials – well, only time will tell, but we are certain this is what God has called us to and we’re going to give it our best shot!!  This past year has been a demanding (and even frustrating) one in terms of getting an album recorded.  We’ve had several label and investor deals look like they would go through and then fall apart at the last minute, so we finally decided we would just do the album independently.  That’s what we are doing now and that brings us to this first segment!

When we started this process we realized that Imperials fans come from a wide variety of musical genres.  We regularly get emails and phone calls asking us to take the group back to its Southern Gospel roots or take the group back to its Contemporary “heyday” or just be middle-of-the-road or please do Praise & Worship, etc., etc., etc.  First of all, we really don’t want to take the group “back” to anywhere!  We are a forward-looking group with a clear call from God to call people into His presence and into relationship with Himself through the medium of music.  The number one request we get regarding musical direction is “just be who you are – be who God made you to be”.  We love the history of The Imperials and we love great music regardless of the genre - good music is good music no matter the style.  (Honestly, at any given moment on our bus, you are likely to hear SG, P&W, INSPO and Rock – generally all of them will be playing LOUD!)  In a nutshell, we would like to have something for all Imperials fans and yet still be true to who God has made us individually and as a group.  That’s a pretty tall order to fill - maybe next to impossible!

Anyway, when we picked the songs that we wanted on the CD, we chose songs we would want to listen to.  We listened to hundreds of songs from a lot of different publishers as well as independent songwriters and finally narrowed them down to about 30 songs ranging from almost rock to true Southern gospel.  We wanted to leave no stone unturned.  If we liked it, no matter the genre, we put it in our possibilities list.  From there we narrowed it down to ten songs ranging from The Imperials classic, Big God (which has a new twist to it), to Adult Contemporary songs to a true Southern Gospel song (which we want to keep a secret right now).  We even have a love song to our wives.

In closing, we are so excited about this recording and while the process so far has been difficult, it has also been fun and we’ve learned a lot.  We really look forward to sharing what God has placed on our hearts with whoever comes across our path.  It seems that any time The Imperials are involved, the question of genre seems to come up and we have obviously thought and prayed a lot about that.  It is our belief that we (all of us, not just The Imperials) need to give Christian music (regardless of style) a chance to grow into its next shape and we as The Imperials would definitely like to be a part of that.  We really can’t wait to have everyone hear what we are doing!  See you for the next segment.

The Imperials - http://www.theimperials.com
Ian, Jason, Jeremie & Shannon