PCR Podcast Ep31: Mitch McVicker—Singer-songwriter and musician

Mitch McVicker is a singer-songwriter and musician who's released 7 full length albums over the span of his career. He won the Dove award for "Song of the Year" for co-writing "My Deliver" with Rich Mullins. In our chat we talked about his latest album The Grey: When black and white fade, about being a do-it-yourself touring musician, and what it was like playing himself in the Ragamuffin film. Find out more at McVicker's website: http://mitchmcvicker.com/. For past interviews he has done (especially those that go in depth about his time with Rich Mullins) please check the end of this article.


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Related Podcast Episodes:

Episode 09: Caleb J. Kruse on Meeting Rich Mullins

Episode 10: David Leo Schultz Director of Brennan
Episode 19: Joe Cook of The Ragamuffin Archive and Western Indian Ministries

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Rich Mullins Articles:
Take a look: The vast online Rich Mullins library
When Will the Christian Music Industry Get Its Act Together?
Rich Mullins and America As Promised Land
The Theology of Rich Mullins 
So...They Made a Movie About Rich Mullins

Reed Arvin and Liturgy Legacy & a Ragamuffin Band 20th Anniversary Interview

Other Interviews With Mitch:

Let's Not Think About the Election! Let's Listen to Music!—Songs Telling the Story of God

Let's not think about the election! Let's listen to music! 

It's the week before the 2016 presidential election but let's pretend it's not happening. Instead, if you happen to find yourself reading this article, please take a few moments to stop what you're doing, click play on the tracks below, and take in some beauty, truth, and goodness. I have curated a play list worthy of your consideration. May they work their way into your soul, embed themselves into your mind, and stir your strength into edifying action.

Today's list (Part 3 of 3):
Songs Telling the Story of Redemption
There is a story being told in our world that gets heard more than all the others. It is a story that makes you afraid. It tells you that if you don't do all you can you will lose everything. It is the kind of story that makes you want to win at all costs. It is a story of power and dominance and progress and accumulation. In this story we pick sides and if you aren't on my side, well, get ready to face the consequences.

But there is an alternate story being told. It is the way of Christ. It is the laying down of our lives willingly for the sake of others. Christ poured himself out and gave life to all the world. This is the story of new creation, of rebirth, of redemption. This is where justice reigns and truth finally wins. God is sovereign in this story and he has told us how the story ends. "Your mercies are new, new every morning..."

Featuring the songs of Rich Mullins, Fernando Ortega, Sara Groves Keith Green/Annie Herring, Andrew Peterson, Matt Redman, and Audrey Assad

Let's Not Think About the Election! Let's Listen to Music!—Songs of Hope & Peace

Let's not think about the election! Let's listen to music! 

It's the week before the 2016 presidential election but let's pretend it's not happening. Instead, if you happen to find yourself reading this article, please take a few moments to stop what you're doing, click play on the tracks below, and take in some beauty, truth, and goodness. I have curated a play list worthy of your consideration. May they work their way into your soul, embed themselves into your mind, and stir your strength into edifying action.

Today's list (Part 2 of 3):
Songs of Hope & Peace
When the whole earth is shifting beneath our feet, when everything around us seems to be crumbling, we desperately need a sure foundation on which to stand and a refuge from the chaos. These are songs that root us in the hope of Christ, of finding peace in him through times of trouble. Allow yourself to rest in these songs, but even more than that, allow yourself to rest in God our Savior in whom all things were made and in whom we live and move and have our being. Featuring the songs of Switchfoot, Rich Mullins, Phil Keaggy, Newsboys, Matt Redman, Delirious?, and Fernando Ortega.

Let's Not Think About the Election! Let's Listen to Music!—Songs of Protest, Satire, & the Apocalypse

The current political season leaves bloggers like me with a dilemma. In what can only be viewed as the most polemicized election of our lifetime(s) do we even bother with bothering people about our piddly little blog posts? Personally, I have a few articles I've been working hard at for the past several weeks, but at the moment I hardly see any point in adding to the noise. I'd like my thoughts to actually get heard and considered, so why waste the effort of putting out another article when people's psyches are already over-saturated with the latest scandal or with attempting to sift through what is fact and fiction in the media's neverending truth manipulation game? 

More than anything, I believe people are increasingly weary of the whole thing. We are tired of fighting each other. Tired of the lies and cover ups and conspicuous tactics of both sides. We've all been spun by the media's spin and I believe if we slow down enough we'll become horrified that often we are the ones doing the spinning ourselves. Having been spun we continue on spinning others... That is, if we are wounded as a nation, a lot of the wounds are self-inflicted...

With all this in mind, I have decided to hold off on my "important" articles for a couple of weeks (or more....We'll see where everything settles in the aftermath of the election). Instead, as a blogger, with something of a public forum for propagating the importance of art and faith in our culture, I am asking us to slow down and listen and ponder and take in some truth, beauty, and goodness. So...

Let's not think about the election! Let's listen to music! 

This is a sincere call. If you happen to find yourself reading this article, please take a few moments to stop what you're doing and click play on the tracks below. I have curated a play list worthy of your consideration. May they work their way into your soul, embed themselves into your mind, and stir your strength into edifying action.

Today's list (Part 1 of 3):
Songs of Protest, Satire, & the Apocalypse
"Listen to the words of the prophet..." These are finger-pointing songs. These are songs that hurt us to our core. They catch us at our most hypocritical. At first we think they are singing about Someone Else, but if we keep on listening we come to find that no, they are singing about us too. Yes, we are culpable for the same crimes we accused others of committing. It would seem some repentance is in order.

But these are also songs that make us laugh...uncomfortably so...at the horror of it all. Sometimes a good bellyache can help us see the world differently and in seeing the world differently we begin to live differently and thus a laugh is never just a laugh. Sometimes a joke can change the world. 

Today's list includes: Bob Dylan, Larry Norman, Keith Green, Randy Newman, Arcade Fire, and Steve Taylor.

Classic Christian Music: A List of Radio Stations, Websites, Books, and Documentaries

I recently put up a post that has been viewed by more people than I ever thought it would. It is about the state Christian Music, or CCM, or "Jesus Music" is in, specifically how the music of older artists (or "legacy" artists) have gone out of print and that for those artists still touring their concerts are relatively small (though faithfully attended by a few). You can view the article here: The Troubled Future Legacy of Christian Music.

Carrie & Lowell is a Minor Sufjan Stevens Album (and that's a good thing)

Sufjan Steven's new album Carrie & Lowell (out 31 March, 2015) is probably the strangest album he has ever released. What makes the album so strange is that it is really not all that strange, which makes it pretty odd by Sufjan standards.

PostHumous Record Review: Over the Rhine's Drunkard's Prayer

Post-Humous Record Reviews: a personal refection on a long-forgotten album in need of a resurrection. 

Read the intro article.

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There are some albums that find you at a particular moment in your life. As in, they make their way to you irregardless of your own effort. They arrive and make their presence known and then somehow seem as with they have been with you forever.

Over The Rhine's 2005 album Drunkard's Prayer did this to my wife and I. To us it is a life-defining set of songs. Not only did we hold each other close and sway to "I Want You to Be My Love" for the first dance at our wedding, but we can also find each other in the songs' sweet romantic melancholy.

PostHumous Record Review Week

It's a big week here at PostConsumer Reports.

It's PostHumous Record Review Week.

These are the greatest albums you are probably not listening to.

Usually, it is just little old me writing everything around here (my name is Chris Marchand, BTW), but this week we will be having some guest writers.

I never envisioned PostConsumer Reports to be all about what I think anyway, so I am happy to share the space and get some other voices heard. I am certainly not the only arbiter of thoughts on the convergence of art and faith. I will be contributing two of the articles this week though.

As I said, we will be doing PostHumous Record Reviews. Here is the tagline:
A personal refection on a long-forgotten album in need of a resurrection.

What I have asked my friends to do is write an essay reflecting on an album they think deserves more attention and acclaim, an album people passed by and did not give much thought to when it first came out. These are both critical and personal reflections. I want some analysis of what is happening musically and lyrically but I also want to hear how their own story is bound up in the album. Really, I just wanted them to write on an album they are passionate about. An album where they go "Why don't more people like this? It's amazing!"

I'll be updating this page throughout the week as the articles keep coming out.

Here is the first one, written by me, featuring what I claim is the greatest pop/rock record to come out of the Christian music industry in the 1990's:

Newsboys' Love Liberty Disco (yeah, that's right—deal with it)