Unwilling To Shut Up & Sing

CCM pioneer Pam Mark Hall opens up about her career and the making of her last major label release, 1986's "Keeper."

“Keeper is my gospel album. Of all my product, that would be my ‘statement of faith’ record. Even though the early records are very, very specific about what the elements of my faith are, those are records of certainty. Keeper is a record of questions and mystery.”—Pam Mark Hall

In November of 2020, Pam Mark Hall and I sat down (via Zoom—as everyone was in that particular moment in time) to have a conversation about her long out-of-print 1986 album, Keeper. I’ve held it for intuitive purposes. There’s always a little voice directing the order in which I share my work and, this past week, I got the it’s time whisper on Pam’s feature. You can watch below!

Keeper is, for me, one of the most important CCM albums ever made for several reasons. While Amy Grant’s Lead Me On rightfully gets a lot of love for its introspection and stark honesty, Keeper, which preceded Grant’s album by two years, was an important brick in the road for that kind of album’s possibility.

When Keeper was released into the market in the summer of 1986, it marked a shift not only for Pam, but for a certain segment of the artists within the genre. While Pam was known—I might argue generalized—for a particular kind of certainty in her work (songs like her own “Not My Will,” Amy Grant’s “The Now and the Not Yet,” or Debby Boone’s “Morningstar), there was always an indication that there was something churning beneath the surface. While her 1984 Reunion release Supply & Demand may have provided the unshakable belief her listeners loved her for, “God Only Knows,” her contribution to Russ Taff’s Grammy-nominated Medals in 1985, alludes to the beginning of a deconstruction of sorts, a breaking apart of the assuredness that many associated with her work.

Like her label mate and collaborator Kathy Troccoli’s Images which was released the same year, Pam colored outside of the lines with Keeper. The album deviated from what the market and audience required to be commercially viable within it. “When we’re talking about the Christian industry, we’re talking about selling records to an audience that has a certain frame of reference, an audience that the industry caters to which wants…praise songs,” she told Musicline as production began in January 1986.

She selected singer-songwriter Wendy Waldman, an outsider to the world of CCM whose songs had been recorded by everyone from Judy Collins to Patti Austin, to produce. She took a more rock-edged approach, deviating from the acoustic folk of her early albums and from the electro-pop of the Keith Thomas-produced Supply & Demand. Waldman recalled to FolkWorks that Pam was the first person who sought her out as a producer. “I think my budget was $18,000, out of which my salary was $4000. I went over budget, so my salary was less. Here I am, a girl from the old country producing a Christian record. It was a tremendous learning experience.”

While Supply had attempted to introduce Pam—a Jesus Music pioneer—to a younger audience, Keeper found her embracing her artistic eldership. She told Billboard, “I know I’m not Pat Benatar or Joan Jett. To posture myself like that would be devastating. At the same time, I’m encouraged by a statement Wendy made to me early in the recording process. She said ‘Remember, when you think about it, some of the best rock ‘n’ roll today is being done by people in their 40s. An adult like Robert Palmer or Steve Winwood or Tina Turner knows how to use it to actually portray themselves in a song.” Contemporary Christian Music magazine’s Bruce A. Brown commended the “quality and reality of Hall’s lyrics, the carefully crafted arrangements, and the dynamic musicianship” of the album.

But also like Kathy Troccoli’s Images, Keeper was also abandoned in the marketplace. While the exquisite “Unexpected Places” almost cracked the CCM’s Adult Contemporary chart’s Top 10, the album did not crossover into the secular market, which was her hope. Campus Life magazine noted the dissonance between the pop market of the time with Keeper’s core, writing “If folk music fell into the ‘80s, it would sound like this. Pam Mark Hall has created a listening experience that remains palatable to pop tastes while giving us something more substantial to chew on.”

Had Keeper come out in 1988 when Tracy Chapman and Sinead O’Connor were breaking through with well-crafted, thinking people’s songs, there might have been a place for the album to land, but in 1986, less weighty songs like The Bangles’ “Walk Like An Egyptian” and Huey Lewis & The News’ “Stuck With You” were dominating the airwaves, leaving no room for the social justice-minded “Jesus In The Street” or “What Can I Do,” or the heart-wrenching “Jordan,” co-written with Rich Mullins.

In our interview, Pam and I discuss in-depth the making of this album, and its release, which coincided with her divorce, that she says ultimately led to the end of her relationship with the label. Her analysis of the confines of a woman’s place in CCM, the effects of sexism and ageism, what she describes as the demand to “shut up and sing,” and the ways that that patriarchy and capitalism impacted her relationships with her peers who were women is stunning and rare. It certainly should make those familiar and unfamiliar with Keeper listen to it with a deeper context and begin inserting it into conversations with projects like Leslie Phillips’ 1987 release The Turning and Russ Taff’s 1988 self-titled album, projects regarded as definitive CCM albums.

Don’t miss the two albums she has made since: 1993’s Paler Shade and 2017’s Mangle The Tango, which chronicle her journey since 1986. To purchase her work, visit pammarkhall.com.