Gettin Me Ready, by Pastor Champion

Gettin Me Ready

by Pastor Champion

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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
New singles from that unstoppable late, great, outside gospel artist and preacher Pastor Champion in a brilliant crimson colored vinyl.

Includes unlimited streaming of Gettin Me Ready via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Gettin Me Ready 02:45	buy track
2.	Song for My Brother 02:56	buy track
3.	Song for My Brother (Long Version) 04:56	buy track

about

On Pastor Champion’s “Song For My Brother” (Side B)

“Oh I love this song! My father used to play this with his brother, Willie”, Pastor Champion’s eldest son, Bernard, recently told us. “My uncle could play all kinds of instruments … and all at the same time, too. He’d play the organ and the harmonica, and then have a tambourine at his feet. My pops would play the guitar, and they had a great sound together.”

In the months leading up to our recording with Pastor Champion in the fall of 2018, we got to spend time with his family in California. That’s when we got wind of Bernard’s Instagram account—a true musical gem, where he occasionally posted videos of his father practicing and playing at home. Unaware of his son’s filming, these short clips were incredibly powerful and featured the very best of his father as an artist: raw, honest, urgent.

That’s how we heard “Song for My Brother” for the first time. But Pastor Champion was unsure about having this song on the album. His brother had passed away in 2010 and he said it was very painful to play it without him, and it didn’t sound the same, either. With his son’s insistence, and by showing him the videos, Pastor Champion finally agreed to play it in the recording session.

Fast forward a few years, and we still hadn’t finished Pastor Champion’s album—for a variety of reasons. In the summer of 2021, we made one final attempt. This one experimented with a new sequence that included fewer songs of traditional length in favor of more raw takes, longer builds and even Pastor Champion practicing practicing with the band. It felt a little more honest than anything we tried earlier. Finally, it felt like an album that was representative of what had compelled us so much about him in the first place.

The tracks “Song For My Brother” and “Gettin Me Ready” didn’t make it to the final album, so we decided to press them on a 45, much like the gospel 45s we love. Except this 7” comes in a deep, translucent crimson.

A few weeks ago, when Sam Shepherd (Floating Points) was in town, we sent him home with a copy … and then saw “Song For My Brother” pop up in his latest show on NTS! So we figured that if Sam wanted you to hear it, then it was probably the right time to share it.

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released June 3, 2022

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about

Pastor Champion Oakland, California

Pastor Champion was a badass

Just don’t ask us about his life—cause we don’t know.

A preacher, a pastor, an outsider gospel singer, who was raised in the Jim Crow South. He fled to California where he joined a gang before becoming born again, spending the rest of his days traveling with his electric guitar to congregations and people’s homes from San Jose to Shreveport. ... more

pastorchampion.com

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