Wickham, Baloche, Shust and others celebrate God's Name

|PIC1|In the Bible, the writers of Scripture revealed God's character through his many different names. This autumn, four of Christian music's most prolific and respected songwriters offer their musical portraits of God's character with the new Integrity Music CD Your Name, which releases in October.

Your Name, a concept CD with 10 brand new worship songs written by Ian Eskelin, Brian White, Tony Wood and Glenn Packiam, features an unprecedented collaboration of vocals by top artists like Phil Wickham, Paul Baloche, Aaron Shust, Lincoln Brewster, Vicky Beeching and Ayiesha Woods as well as vocalists from Leeland, Building 429, Rush of Fools, DecembeRadio and more.

The project was produced by Eskelin, 2008's Dove Award winner for Producer of the Year and executive produced by Steve Rice, Integrity Music's Vice President of Creative Development. Eskelin had originally conceived of the idea during songwriting sessions with White and Wood.

"When we first started doing research for the project, I did a 'Google' search and found a list of more than 50 names of God," said Eskelin. "It's amazing what you can learn about the character of God from each one and it gave us extraordinary content for writing these songs."

"From a musical standpoint we wanted to create something that didn't sound like anything else out there," said Rice. "I asked Ian to pull out all the stops and we spent countless hours in the studio together crafting the unique sound of this recording.

"When some of our favourite singers agreed to lend their amazing voices to the project - that was truly the icing on the cake! From songs like the totally rocking "Life", with Leeland Mooring and Joel Auge, to Phil Wickham's spine-tingling version of the title cut, "Your Name", I couldn't be happier with the way it all came together.

"There is just something really cool about every single song on the project!"

Bringing together the diverse artists that participated on Your Name was at first a "daunting task", admitted producer Eskelin until they came up with a wild idea of creating a mobile recording studio in a hotel room in Nashville in April where much of the Christian music industry, including artists, were gathered for GMA Music Week.

"Jared Anderson was the first guy who sang in Hilton Room 902 at 9 in the morning and Wes Willis from Rush of Fools followed. It was a great way to start making this record."

Eskelin, White, Wood and Packiam collaborated together on nine of the album's 10 tracks with Baloche penning the title track, "Your Name" with Packiam.

"From the beginning we knew this project was more than just four guys getting together with some great song ideas," said White. "We felt the hand of God steering exactly what we needed to be saying with these songs and we are excited to see how the CD connects the worshipper with the Lord."

Aside from becoming new worship songs for the church, the CD will offer multiple Christian AC and CHR radio singles, including the first single, "Lord".

Integrity Music will produce a companion digital songbook for Your Name as a resource for worship leaders and music ministers who wish to incorporate the songs into their services. The CD-Rom songbook for vocals, piano and guitar will include transposable sheet music, lead sheets, chord charts, lyric text files and song perspectives.

Your Name will be released through Integrity-Provident Distribution in the UK in October.