LeRoy's Praise Band

LeRoys Praise Band is the nom de plume of Allen Gibson, and is the way Allen promotes and publishes his contemporary Christian and positive spiritual music.  

Allen began writing positive spiritual music in response to what he saw as a deficit in most overtly spiritual music. "One, its overt! I mean, who wants to be hit over the head with someone elses viewpoints!"

"Second, and most importantly, most contemporary Christian music is really focused on a very limited set of spiritual experiences and is written from a very limited sense of the the breadthand depth of authentic spirituality. I wanted to write songs that were more dense and textured and reflective of the spiritual journey I am on."

All the voices and music found on LeRoys recordings are the work of Allen as well. Allen studied composition at Northern Kentucky University, and has studied piano, saxophone, and guitar at the music schools of both Northern and the University of kentucky in Lexington.

Allen produces LeRoys recordings in a multi-track environment that has included a variety of equipment-- including an early Sony 4-track recording deck, a Fostex D-90 8-track and d-5 DAT, and that now is confined largely to a software based recording set-up that lives in his home computer.

LeRoy now records using Sony/Sonic Foundry products Acid and Vegas. Allen plays a 25-year old Tama acoustic guitar (which is "the loudest guitar Ive ever heard," as one friend puts it), an Ibanez PF 300 electric, and a variety of other electrinic instruments including Allens favorite WX-5 wind controller firing a VL-70 sound module.

Allen is a United Methodist pastor, and has played in the praise bands of his last three churches. He has also been the worship co-ordinator for the Kentucky Annual Conference for three years, and several of the songs in this collection were composed as theme music for Conference or related programs and were sung by members of the larger Conference as well as by several individual churches.