Phil Keaggy was wearing his trademark cap, and had just started playing his trademark scorching acoustic guitar, when his musical ear noticed something amiss.
Randy Stonehill, the enthusiastic fellow father of modern Christian music who had preceded Keaggy on stage, “left a lot of energy up here … (because) I’m playing way too fast!” Keaggy said.
Truth be told, the veteran performer’s version of his “True Believer” sounded about right to most of the crowd — as did just about all else the two Christian-music pioneers did during their show.
Keaggy and Stonehill, both in their late 50s and with more than three decades of experience each in music, took 1,100 people at Lancaster’s Manor Church on a special three-hour musical journey Sunday night.
It showcased thr tremendous singing and playing skills of the two — Stonehill’s gift is for writing dead-on, sometimes-funny and sometimes-sad songs, while Keaggy is simply one of the most creative and prolific guitar players of all time, in any genre.
Christian music is now a growing segment of the overall entertainment business, but was a mere blip on the musical radar screen when Keaggy and Stonehill began their careers some four decades ago.
Both showed Sunday at the Manor Township church they’re far from resting on their laurels, and still pack a creative and talented entertainment punch.
Stonehill, in his hour-long set, gave the mix-of-young-and-not-so-young crowd a spirited version of the singalong “Shut de Do.”
He included an almost heartbreaking rendition of “Rachel Delevoryas,” about a girl who gets picked on in school for her “plain-Jane face,” but ends up later playing violin for a top symphony.
There also was an excellent version of “I Am A Servant,” written by Stonehill’s friend and fellow Christian music pioneer, the late Larry Norman, and the 57-year-old Stonehill ended with a moving version of “King of Hearts.”
Stonehill also displayed his trademark humor.
On his one-time social-comment hit “Great Big Stupid World,” his tenor voice reached out of the strike zone and hit a high one, and he said, “Even if you’re secure in yourself as a man, you shouldn’t sing like that. Note to self.”
Keaggy, for his half of the special double-bill concert, got “True Believer” straightened out right away with some Stanley Jordanesque tapping that almost turned into a song of its own.
Like Stonehill, Keaggy, 58, played solo, doing a nearly 10-minute version of “Salvation Army Band” and adding frills like slaps and quick solos throughout.
He added a tasteful solo on “Let Everything Else Go,” and in several places you’d swear there were three guitars playing, not one.
He then invited Stonehill back onstage and they ended things as they should have, as a duo, with Keaggy’s anthem “Sunday’s Child” and “Your Love Broke Through,” written by Stonehill and the late Keith Green.
The Keaggy/Stonehill show was a free concert offered by Manheim Township contemporary Christian station WJTL-FM, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.
Keaggy and Stonehill are “just great singers, great musicians, great guitar players … it brings back a part of my childhood” to see them, said Eric Fisher, who helps lead worship at Lititz United Methodist Church.
The two “really cleared the way for a lot of other Christian artists,” he added.
As WJTL station manager Fred McNaughton said in introducing Stonehill, “Where would Christian music be without Phil Keaggy and Randy Stonehill? Other people come and other people go, but these two guys just keep going.”

Singer puts emotion, experience into her music

HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of album sales or not, when a young girl named Jennifer Knapp and her guitar came to the shelter one day to perform, a woman staying there wasn’t too impressed.
“She said, ’Who are you? I don’t know you! I hope you don’t stink,’” Knapp recalled, chuckling at the memory from a visit to this area a year ago.
“And you know what the funny thing was? When it was all over, she was one of the most affectionate people, and thankful.”
That typifies the reaction of many when they hear the heartfelt songs of Knapp, the Christian contemporary singer/guitarist, who has drawn raves for her emotion-packed songs about faith and real life, delivered in a voice that’s alternately soulful and whispery.
Knapp, who has just released a follow-up project to her smashingly successful debut “Kansas,” can sing with conviction about what new life means, having found her own when she became a Christian in late 1992.
The 25-year-old entertainer brings this theme Saturday to the Evangelical Free Church of Hershey, where she will open for the chart-topping Christian contemporary band Third Day.
After hundreds of shows in 1998-99 doing songs from “Kansas,” Knapp plans Saturday to showcase many of the 10 songs from “Lay It Down,” her new, second album, released Feb. 29.
On the new record, as on tour, Lilith Fair veteran Knapp tries to avoid the tried-and-true approach, and tries to stay “grounded… I feel best when songs I do are like a conversation with someone,” she says.
Staying grounded in reality is why Knapp will do things like go to Lancaster’s Water Street Rescue Mission and perform just a few hours before opening for Christian mega-group DC Talk, as she did last April.
That’s because, after everything else — the massive popularity of “Kansas,” the many comparisons to the Indigo Girls, the fans she has wowed with her combination thousand-years-of-anguish/ delicate-as-a-feather vocal style — Knapp says it’s “not about being served, it’s about serving.
“A friend talks about “entering a room serving,’ and that’s one of the most valuable things I’ve learned over the last couple of years,” she said recently from Clearwater, Fla.
Knapp, who’s from the Lititz-sized town of Chanute, Kan. and now lives in Michigan, grew up loving R.E.M. and the Indigo Girls, and “how open and raw the sound was,” she said.
Her own sound on “Kansas” had that same approach, especially on radio hits like “Whole Again,” “Undo Me” and “Romans.”
For her new effort, Knapp reaches back and rocks even while she adds some mandolin and other new touches. She does Shawn Colvin’s “Diamond in the Rough” along with nine of her own compositions.
Knapp, until she was in her late teens, had conducted a search for self-realization the common, college-age way — drinking, drugs, and the like.
That changed when she became a Christian in late 1992, and sometimes now “I can hardly remember the past, which is a nice feeling,” she said.
Knapp, after becoming a Christian, rekindled an early interest in music, but the real journey into making songs began when a friend in college asked her to write a song.
She did, but when friends told her she was good enough to make a record and be a star, she laughed.

Powerful voice, humor, faith: Christian singer mixes then all to please 1,000

With the big spotlight zooming in on her, the lady whose black pants suit matched her hair couldn’t see very far out into the darkened auditorium.
And Kathy Troccoli joked that “after doing this for 17 years, I still have to look to make sure someone’s out there.”
In unison, the 1,000 or so people inside the Lancaster Mennonite High School Performing Arts Center Sunday night gave the award-winning Christian contemporary singer an answer with a rousing applause - we’re out here, and like what we’re hearing.
“OK, I’m coming back to Lancaster and doing a concert next week,” Troccoli said, and there were more cheers.
The interchange with her audience typified Troccoli’s wide-ranging and uplifting concert Sunday evening.
Bonding with an across-the-age-range crowd and showcasing her powerful voice, the singer of no less than 13 number-one Christian songs also displayed an all-too-rare gift - having a great sense of humor while conveying the importance of her faith.
From the mellow opening song “I Call Him Love” to the encore “I Will Choose Christ,” she continually emphasized, as she put it, “It’s all about Him, not us.”
But along with that emphasis and a moving version of possibly her best-known song, the pro-life anthem “A Baby’s Prayer,” Long Islander Troccoli also brought with her the gift of laughter.
When she hit the big 4-0 last year, Troccoli got a plaque reading, “A woman doesn’t turn interesting ’till she turns 40.” Big whoop, she joked: “That comforted me for five minutes.”
She came to Lancaster from a Women of Faith conference, a female counterpart to Promise Keepers, and she’s “just glad they’re not calling it “House Keepers.’ ”
Other highlights included “Go Light Your World” and “Psalm 23,” a powerful, moving song she wrote in honor of her late mother. Her mom, with her dying breath, recited the psalm with the younger Troccoli.
Troccoli, who ventured into the crowd at one point - this wasn’t Lollapalooza, so she walked instead of body-surfing - also shared with the audience some of her struggles.
Along with losing both parents to cancer, she now has an aunt with the disease. “I don’t know how you do it without the Lord,” said Troccoli, who accepted Christ when she was 20.
And “it wasn’t because I was banged over the head with a Bible - it was because of the love of the Lord.” Born-again Christians need to live with the same love Jesus showed, she said, or else “people think we’re loony bins.”
Sunday’s concert was a benefit for Loving & Caring Inc., a Lancaster-based Christian ministry that helps crisis pregnancy centers and similar groups.
Troccoli was assisted Sunday by two talented musicians - guitarist Rick Widkowski, who in his baseball cap looked like he came on over from a grunge show, and piano player Carl Hergesell, a double for the hateful mailman Newman on “Seinfeld.”
At one point they did a medley of popular songs, as redone with Christian lyrics.
“My Girl” became “My God,” and the Stevie Wonder (later, Peter Frampton) version of “Signed Sealed & Delivered” became “Saved, Healed, Delivered.” The disco-era hit “We Are Family” even found its way in there.