Spring Harvest is an annual teaching/worship conference which takes place in the UK. It meets on two sites and over three different weeks, to allow it to cater for the large attendance of 70,000. As well as providing a diet of worship and teaching seminars, Spring Harvest has an evening "after-hours" programme at which they usually have a range of theatre, music, and other events.  Here are a few reviews of some of the bands that played. 

Chris Eaton 
Day 1/April 14th 

Despite being British, Chris Eaton is probably better known as an artist in his own right in the US CCM scene, as he has been based in the USA for the past few years.  He pulled in a good crowd on this first night of Spring Harvest, although a number of people left early--probably tired, as many of them had spent the whole day driving. 

Chris is best known as a writer for other musicians but has released two solo albums of his own.  His music is mostly keyboard-based contemporary pop, but on this tour, he was accompanied by a guitarist, bassist, and drummer, and the opportunity was taken to mix some of his standard arrangements with some rockier sounds.  This worked well--it was more captivating than I'd expected, and the friends I took along were impressed.  The musicians were session players, but were obviously enjoying playing live and had taken the material to heart, so it wasn't as stale as session material sometimes can be. 

The crowd was on its feet dancing many times during the evening, but "Saviour's Day" (a Number One hit which Chris wrote for Cliff Richard) was probably the high-point, as the crowd knew that song better than any other that was played. 

It was a shame that so many people left early, since Chris put on a good show--not as high energy as some others I saw that week, but certainly an enjoyable way to unwind after the long car journey. 

Rebecca St. James 
Day 2/April 15th 

I was surprised to see the length of the queue that built up before Rebecca St. James's show. While she is selling large numbers of records in the USA, she has not had all that much publicity in the UK.  I guess the very positive write-up in the program could have had something to do with it.... 

The venue was seated, and a majority of those seats were filled with an excited audience. I was a bit more hesitant, having heard quite a variety of reports about Ms. St. James, but was looking forward to being able to make up my own mind. 

Her band came on before her and kicked off with some fairly standard rock sounds. When Rebecca appeared, she was playing a harmonica--instantly, the suggestions I had heard about her similarity to Alanis came to my head. She seemed very much the cliched American musician, with a level of enthusiasm for which the crowd (a mixture of teenagers and parents/youth leaders) was quite ready.  After a few songs, the crowd seemed to get more involved, and the music was fairly strong, if generic, with those Alanis references coming up again with most vocal inflections. At that point, we were into the first of several solid Christian talks by Rebecca--messages telling people to live for Christ, to wait for marriage before having sex, and so on--all presented frankly. 

Most of the people with me seemed pretty positive about the whole show, but I felt that there was something missing. A warm-up act, a better music/talking ratio, and a more original sound would have pleased me, but this mini-tour does seem to have won Rebecca St. James a fan base in the UK (her merchandise was selling quickly across the Spring Harvest website).  Maybe a more standard concert venue would see her pulling off a more convincing show. 

Why? 
Day 4/April 17th 

Why?'s lineup seems to have been in flux for a long time. When I first saw them they were between fiddle players, and in the past year, drummer Mark and bassist Steve left the band to return to school. Now, founder-member Nick Parker (mandolin/vocals) has left "to have some babies," and has been replaced by long-time roadie Jamie who plays keyboard (and is almost as mad on stage as Nick was). The band is still in transition as fiddle player Ed plans to leave at the beginning of the summer. 

Seeing Why? in its present form is a strange experience for those of us who've been following them for a fair while. Half of the old songs sung by Nick are too high for his brother, Ant (who continues as vocalist, guitarist, and sole founder-member), so they have been dropped. Also, while the keyboards and Mowf's (ex-Eden Burning) awesome bass playing mean that their sound is diversifying and becoming something that will probably translate better to CD, it will take a while to get used to the missing mandolin.  

Having said all that, Why? is still a great live band. At this show, they played a fair mix of old and new material--mostly from their just released "best of" album.  They played tight and very, very fast, as evidenced by the tag "speed-folk."  Ed's fiddle was very prominent, and Andy actually managed to play the drums faster than Mark used to!  The new line-up looks as if it will stay together for a while, now that the band has slowed down on the touring front (although, not on stage!).  While it will take a while for both the band and some of their fans to get used to the changes, this show made me look forward to the album release promised this autumn. 

By  James Stewart