Meet people through music
Charlie Hall has been traveling for almost 15 years, from his home base of Oklahoma City to Kuala Lumpur, enthralling friends and strangers with his goatee and his songs. With a musical journey that has crisscrossed all kinds of rock music, folk music, and electronic music, he carries a songwriting sense that aims to capture dense images of life with God, in compositions that can be carried with the listener. He aims to tell the old story of the Gospel in an ever-shifting world, without resorting to easy truisms, or lazy language. His new collection of songs, The Bright Sadness, echoes a journey pressed to the chest of God, joyful and sorrowful at once, with God's heart clear and pulsing in each note and word. It wraps liturgy with the unexpected, and daily mundanity with daily surprise. As many of the Passion collegiate gatherings were recorded live, Hall was quickly dubbed "a voice" for the Passion movement, performing on all eight Passion albums, which have sold more than one million units. Charlie expresses the desire to be "honed into God, where I'm not part of a culture where I'm trying to make the people around me think, 'Hey, that's a good Christian.' I'm just trying to pursue God and not pursue being accepted into a club...I'm more honed into my pursuit of God in Christ and how he's forming me and changing and helping me love him and know him. Renewing and encouraging local churches, engaging young and old with social justice action, widening hearts to see God at work in the whole world, spurring local artists on to imaginative and creative expression, and offering songs of rest to those who are simply tired are some of the hopes of Charlie, and his band of gypsies. Hall's band, in which he performs vocals and guitar, consists of Kendall Combes (electric guitar), Brian Bergman (keyboard), Dustin Ragland (drums), and Quint Anderson (bass guitar).