Crane Hill’s Bama Blu-Grace getting noticed in Southern Gospel

Published 5:30 am Thursday, September 14, 2017

After 17 years in its present-day incarnation, Crane Hill-based Gospel group Bama Blu-Grace is beginning to see some real notoriety.

Composed of two married couples — all of them longtime friends – the quartet’s single, “How Does it Feel to be Home,” reached the top of the contemporary Southern Gospel charts this past summer. Trade magazine The Singing News has nominated them for a trio of Diamond awards, the genre’s equivalent of the Grammys.

“We’re very fortunate and blessed to have our first number-one single,” says guitar and banjo player Ron Hale. “And we made the top five nominations for Song of the Year and Album of the Year. That’s pretty cool.”

If you live in North Alabama, what’s also cool is the group’s accessibility. Bama Blu-Grace will be joining the Triumphant Quartet, another award-winning group with Cullman ties, onstage Sept. 18 at the third annual Caring for Cullman benefit concert at Cullman High School.

All four members of Bama Blu-Grace grew up locally, and all have remained in the Cullman area. Hale graduated from Addison High School; the other three members all went to Cold Springs. “That kind of makes me the odd man out,” joked Hale.

It’s hard to characterize the group’s music until you’ve heard it. Their “Gospel” descriptor is frequently hyphenated with a “bluegrass” out in front, but Hale’s reluctant to commit to that — despite the group’s suggestive name.

“I don’t really consider what we do to be bluegrass,” he said. “We’re more of an acoustic-country style of Gospel than we are bluegrass. It’s more of a modern acoustic style, and we can even fall over into that category of ‘pray-and-worship’ sometimes. It’s hard to categorize.”

About the group’s name: funny story, that.

“It’s crazy,” joked Hale. “You know, just about the hardest thing in the world to do is to name a group right now, because everything’s just about taken. Years ago and before I joined, they were already looking for a name; searching the web to see if anyone else had what they’d come up with.

“They didn’t see anybody with just the name ‘Blu-Grace’ except for this one other group in Wisconsin. So they called up there and the folks there said, ‘Well, we’re in Wisconsin and you’re in Alabama, so you should be fine using that name.’ So our group went on and made their first album under that name: ‘Blu-Grace.’ 

“Well, then, about three months later, we got booked for a show in…Wisconsin. So we decided to just put ‘Bama’ in front of our name then, and we went ahead like that from that point on.”

Despite a regular, if highly structured, touring schedule (Hale and the others have day jobs here at home), Hale said Bama Blu-Grace doesn’t play many benefit concerts. But when the opportunity to play Caring for Cullman — a benefit for Cullman’s Good Samaritan Clinic — came along, the decision was easy.

“It just fit the little ‘pocket’ just right for what we look for in a benefit,” he said. “It’s basically what we want: somebody in need who’s doing a good ministry…That’s 99 percent of what we are, really: a ministry.”

Catch Bama Blu-Grace Monday, Sept. 18 at the Good Samaritan Caring for Cullman benefit concert, held at 7 p.m. at the Cullman High School auditorium. General admission tickets are $15; a limited number of Artist Meet-and-Greet tickets also are available for $25. All proceeds fund the Good Samaritan Health Clinic, Cullman’s free primary care service for indigent patients.

For more information, including a list of local ticket sellers, visit goodsamaritancullman.com or search “goodsamaritancullman” on Facebook.

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 145.