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Mike at JW

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UPC: 7 33792 83722 5
Myspace: mike­craw­ford­mu­sic
RIYL: Sigur Ros, Wilco, The White Album, Pink Floyd, múm, the Bible
Con­tact: Mike Craw­ford
1617 W. 42nd
Kansas City, MO 64111
816.260.0298

In mid­town Kansas City resides a church called Jacob’s Well. On the sur­face, it looks like most other churches; a place where peo­ple come together week after week to sing, learn, mourn, laugh and pray. Many things make Jacob’s Well unique; the most obvi­ous, at first blush, is the music that res­onates from every cor­ner of the com­mu­nity. This church music is oceanic—waves of lyrics tum­bling, beautifully-intricate sounds engulf­ing and swirling around as you sail out into the deep waters of lived-out the­ol­ogy. On the first album from Mike Craw­ford, “Songs from Jacob’s Well,” these words and sounds have been cap­tured, writ­ten and recorded and are ready to be shared. Part of what con­tributes to this CD’s dis­tinc­tive sound is the sheer num­ber of musi­cians involved in the record­ing. Twenty-five peo­ple stack­ing layer-upon-layer of music to cre­ate what is more like an indie-rock orches­tra than a typ­i­cal wor­ship band. Lyri­cally, songs like “The Mag­ni­fi­cat” and “Horse and Rider” bor­row heav­ily from scrip­ture, while oth­ers like “Holy Lamb of God” are rem­i­nis­cent of tra­di­tional litur­gies. Part rock anthem, part ancient hymn, part mod­ern orches­tral arrange­ment, part field record­ing; the songs on “Even the Dark­ness” add up to an unpar­al­leled wor­ship (and lis­ten­ing) experience.

Songs From Jacob’s Well — Vol­umes I and II

Praise for Mike Craw­ford and His Secret Siblings:

Two CD’s full of cre­ative and tex­tured arrange­ments and solid lyrics, as sung at one of my favorite churches in the coun­try. The last track, “Words to Build a Life On” is like an anthem. I hope that thou­sands of churches around the coun­try will start singing this song.

~Brian D. McLaren

Upon hear­ing the open­ing seg­ment, thoughts and images and sen­sa­tions of what the music of the church could sound like were ani­mated. This is the most inspir­ing (‘inspir­ing’ seems too clichéd a word, how­ever it is exactly appro­pri­ate here) wor­ship music I’ve come across in a long time. ~David Crow­der

This album really raised the bar, in terms of both music and art design.

~Mike Hogan (David Crow­der Band)

Mike Craw­ford & The Secret Sib­lings burst forth in a pageant of extrav­a­gance that exper­i­ments with the bound­aries of what a wor­ship album can be. On head­phones, it’s Pink Floyd, Radio­head, and Steve Earle. It’s quite a remark­able accom­plish­ment. ~Don Chaf­fer (Water­deep)

Instead of bury­ing his quirky tastes to pos­si­bly please an imag­ined major­ity, and play­ing it safe by sound­ing like other wor­ship records, he has decided to write, record and wor­ship to the kind of music that moves him per­son­ally. As a result “Even the Dark­ness…” is the most cre­ative and rel­e­vant wor­ship album I’ve ever heard.

~Lori Chaf­fer (Waterdeep)

Sun­day wor­ship at JW reveals some of what Emer­gent means by call­ing itself poste­van­gel­i­cal. The music is led, con­ven­tion­ally enough, by a rock band that plays loudly enough to shake the wooden pews. But this is not happy-clappy “Jesus is my boyfriend” music. It’s much more edgy. The lyrics, many writ­ten by wor­ship min­is­ter Mike Craw­ford, lift up pain as well as praise: “Jesus full of grace, / the hum­ble you adore. / This world’s a hun­gry place, / with no jus­tice for the poor. / Jesus full of peace, / yet our hearts so full of war. / We take our prun­ing hooks / we beat them into swords.” The songs are new, and the words are flashed up on a plasma screen by Pow­er­Point, but the lan­guage is as old as scrip­ture. Most songs, in fact, are para­phrases of scrip­ture. And as loud as the music is, the singing is louder. Andy Crouch of Chris­tian­ity Today, who is crit­i­cal of much of the Emer­gent move­ment, praises JW as “the best singing white church I’ve ever been to.” JW’s effort to make music par­tic­i­pa­tory rather than performance-based struck a chord with Crouch, who also sig­naled his aware­ness that JW is rooted in its own par­tic­u­lar neigh­bor­hood and could not be eas­ily repli­cated else­where: “It made me want to move to Kansas City. Really.” ~The Chris­t­ian Century