Pioneers of CCM: Randy Stonehill

Randy Stonehill appeared abruptly on the Contemporary Christian Music scene in 1971.

Born in Stockton, California in 1952, Randall Evan Stonehill and was raised an agnostic. I previously wrote about how rock musician and CCM pioneer  Larry Norman met Stonehill, befriended him and then led him to Christ. Norman later signed Stonehill to his One Way label and went on to produce several of his early albums.

To date Randy Stonehill has released more than 30 albums since his debut production, Born Twice.  He is a singer/songwriter who falls neatly within the folk rock genre. His songs and style are reminiscent of the music of James Taylor with shades of CSN, and some melodic West-Coast rock influence can also be heard.

Some of Stonehill's tracks are insanely comedic in their approach, and he is inevitably zany in his live performances too. Several of his compositions contain critical commentary on American life, with humour used to good effect on songs such as American Fast Food (what a stupid way to die) and Cosmetic Fixation (both from the album Equator, 1983) and Lung Cancer (from the album Welcome to Paradise, 1976).

For me, perhaps his best and most memorable tracks come from this album.  Tracks such as Puppet Strings, Keep me Running and King of Hearts provided a melodic yet deeply thought provoking backdrop to my early years as a Christian musician. To say he influenced my own songwriting and performing as a CCM artist is a bit of an understatement.

Randy still continues to perform his songs today, mainly in appearances across America. He is definitely one of the pioneers of Contemporary Christian Music and has inspired and influenced many over the 40 years of his career. Here are a couple of tracks from the Stonehill back catalogue for you to enjoy:




A comprehensive biography of Randy Stonehill can be found on CCM Classic.

Photo credit: Mactographer on Wikimedia Commons

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Pioneers of CCM: Randy Stonehill by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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