Pray Service

Each human story in each song of the PRAY SERVICE album is taken from the dramatic story in one of the musical screenplays of Dave Stauffer’s seven-movie screenplay series, “Sow Y’oats!” In the seven related stories, the same characters are followed from the age of six to their middle age in many dramatic, insightful, religious, romantic, and sexy subplots. The seven screenplays incorporate about eighty original songs that Dave Stauffer has written, and his talented band of Believers has recorded. The plots have a lot to do with dating, maturing, and philosophy dealing with God—and so do the songs they sing. In several of the PRAY SERVICE songs, the singers speak their lines in or during the song, which adds a deep meaning to the words of the songs. By listening to the words and the mood of the music, each listener can feel the emotion of the dramatic event that the song describes in the screenplay. To write his songs, Dave Stauffer has drawn on his many years of singing tenor in church choirs as well as his years of singing, playing bass and guitar, and writing songs in several rock and roll bands that played for years in smoky bars and taverns. Along the way, he acquired a community of outstanding singers and musicians to record his harmonious songs. Occasionally, Dave Stauffer has stumbled on flashes of musical brilliance—such as his observation that “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by Johann Sebastian Bach and “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” by Ludwig Von Beethoven were written in the same key and, with a little imagination, had the same beat, so that Bach and Beethoven could be combined into the Bach-Beethoven Duo. Additionally, he wrote dramatic words to fit his screenplay and added them to the romantic mood of “Theme from the Second Piano Concerto” of Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), which resulted in “Washed”. The PRAY SERVICE album contains a wide variety of musical styles: “Go In Peace” is a reggae song sung by six different lead singers who combine into a six-part harmony choir by the end of the song. “Keep The Faith” is a modern creation which sounds like an old-time revival meeting. “I’ll Stick With You” combines a four-part harmony part with a three-part counter-melody, resulting in seven-part harmony over a three octave range. “This Little Child” is destined to become a theme song of both Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Finally, “The Dirge” is like no other religious song ever recorded in that it combines a three-part men’s chorus with another two-part men’s counter-melody; in it, the listener is placed at the funeral where the first men’s chorus escorts the deceased to the beyond and the second men’s chorus prays for the intervention of God. The PRAY SERVICE album ends with “Keep The Faith (Long Version)” to give the listener a true religious experience to sustain them on their life’s journey.