In the late 1980s, when Brown Bannister ('75) had already produced about 10 of Amy Grant's albums, he was encouraged to leave Nashville for the brighter lights of Los Angeles.
He was told he could be even more successful out west, so Bannister and his wife flew to California and signed a contract on a house in Glendale, near L.A.
"We came back, looked at each other and thought, 'What in the world are we doing?' " Bannister said.
He wasn't sure he was ready to try and make it in L.A., but he knew he belonged in Nashville, working with friends such as Michael Blanton ('74) and continuing to build the Christian music scene.
"This wasn't a career I sought out - it found me, and it found me in the beginning days of contemporary Christian music," said Bannister, who has won 13 Grammy Awards, 23 Dove Awards and been named Producer of the Year five times by the Gospel Music Association.
A shy, introverted Bannister arrived at Abilene Christian College from Fort Worth in 1969 as a pre-medicine major. He met Blanton on his first night at freshman orientation and the two became fast friends. Slowly, Bannister began to come out of his shell.
"Mike was the first guy I'd ever heard talk about God and Jesus in terms of a personal relationship," he said. "Spiritually, I came alive as a result of meeting people like Mike."
Three years into school, though, Bannister became entangled in a drug subculture on campus, delving deeper and deeper into a dualistic lifestyle, he said. Things culminated when one night, Blanton entered Bannister's room and was greeted by a cloud of smoke.
Blanton was crushed, Bannister said, as he took in the scene, began to cry and left. For Bannister, that changed everything.
"The next day," he said, "my life was on a different course."
He and his parents decided it would be best if he took a break from school. Bannister ended up in Nashville, working and going to church, and during his year away, he said, he found a new relationship with God. He returned to school and took an aptitude test but was disappointed with its advice for a future career: "You should be in some area of music composition."
He assumed the test was a waste of money, but after graduating in 1975, he returned to Nashville at the encouragement of producer Chris Christian ('73), who was already carving his way through the music industry. Bannister tagged along with Christian, took sound engineering classes at Belmont College and soon found himself in a recording studio as the engineer and background vocalist for Grammy Award-winning pop artist B.J. Thomas' "Home Where I Belong."
"I had no idea what I was doing," he said. "But it was the first gold record in Christian music."
Next, he brought Christian a tape of Amy Grant, one of the youth group members at his church, and he began producing her albums. He has produced almost all of them since.
"I'm a picture of the grace of God," he said. "God just put me here saying, 'This is what I want you to do.' "
For 30 years, Bannister has produced award-winning albums for some of the industry's top Christian artists, including Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, Third Day, Mercy Me, Avalon, Point of Grace, CeCe Winans and Twila Paris. As producer, he is the album's architect. Once he signs on to a project, he is given a budget by the label and has to design what the album will sound like.
He will bring in the right backup musicians and vocalists, and it is up to him to calm the artist's fears when he or she panics halfway through the process about the album's direction. The process can be maddening, he said, not to mention time-consuming. It also doesn't help that he's a self-described workaholic.
In late May, he was tucked away in the Idaho mountains to record a Mercy Me album in a secluded studio. The previous day he worked from 7 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. in what he could only describe as an "intense" environment.
"The thing that motivates me to keep doing it is the greater impact of the music, the greater good," he said.
Once, he recalled, at an Amy Grant concert he watched as audience members worshiped - arms raised, lost in the moment.
"The honor and privilege of being a small part of something like that is amazing," he said. "It's the only reason I do music."
