By the time of the album's release in November of 1978, Phil Keaggy was an established underground celebrity in the bourgeoning Jesus Music scene who was becoming increasingly respected as a guitar virtuoso by mainstream six-string aficionados.  From his early days with the rock trio Glass Harp, to several years as a solo artist and side-man to artists like Love Song, 2nd Chapter of Acts, and Paul Clark, Keaggy was revered as a thoughtful songwriter, pleasantly McCartney-esque vocalist, and, of course, prodigious guitarist.  His early albums, Love Broke Through, What A Day, and Emerging helped to define the very concept of Contemporary Christian Music.  But with The Master and The Musician, Keaggy let his fingers do the talking, creating a warm, worshipful and at times melancholy ambience that used electric and acoustic guitars, ethnic percussion, and modern synthesizers to say what words never could.

 

Keaggy's was a full and completely odd life in the 1970s.  From the heady rock and roll glory of his Ohio years with Glass Harp, to his adoption by a growing number of Christian artists boldly coupling their modern folk-rock music with simply lyrics of faith and inspiration, to moving to upstate New York to be a part of the Love for Newsong Records, a label owned and controlled by the Love Inn church, and would do not recording or playing without their consent.  After an extremely busy and painful stretch between 1974 and 1978 that included three studio albums, numerous tours and the loss of five children either before or shortly after birth, Keaggy was worn out, dejected and at a serious loss for words.  "I remember thos months," he says.  "I can almost remember the weather.  I can certainly remember the ambience, the spiritual atmosphere, and the emotions of those times."

 

"I came into this recording session discouraged, not knowing what I was really going to do.  I didn't know what to sing.  I didn't have anything to say.  That's why the album feels like it does; it's pretty special to me."  Submitting to the authority of his church elders, Keaggy began the process of preparing a new record that would be distributed by Word Music to the Christian market for the first time.  After the idea of the project being a co-written effort with his keyboardist, Richard Souther, was shot down by the church leadership, the frustrated artist obediently traveled to the Chicago area to start working on The Master and The Musician with Gary Hedden, an engineer friend from Ohio who had worked with Glass Harp and on What A Day and Emerging.  When Keaggy arrived at Hedden's Hedden West studio he had about a third of the album roughly sketched out, but a lot of empty space to fill.  In the first two weeks of June, 1978, he tracked five songs:  "Wedding in the Country Manor", "Suite of Reflections", "The Medley", "The High and Exalted One", "Mouthpiece", "Deep Calls to Deep".  Despite the creative flurry and strong start, Keaggy was missing his wife and returned to New York to see her and to re-charge.  The final lingering note at the end of "Deep Calls to Deep" rings with his loneliness.  "That is exactly how I felt," he remembers.  "I was missing Bernadette.  I was missing home.  I was running out of inspiration and that's how it ended." 

 

Fortunately, that is not how the album ended.  Keaggy spent the next month either at home or doing concerts on the road.  When he got back to work he brought his friend and Phil Keaggy Band member, Lynn Nichols, along to help while Hedden enlisted the engineering assistance of Mal Davis.  "I think I was probably particular and touchy and didn't know who to please,"  Keaggy recalls, "but I always tried to please somebody.  So Bernadette stayed home and I brought Lynn Nichols out with me.  We had lots of laughs, were great friends.  He pretty much pulled the rest of the album out of me."

 

"One of the first things we did was 'Pilgrim's Flight'," he continues.  "We did the 'Agora' piece which had the electric guitar and 'Jungle Pleasures' and 'Follow Me Up.'  It got fun.  There was also more of an electric guitar presence when Lynn came into the picture."  Though officially uncredited, Keaggy is quick to acknowledge Nichols' key roll in the creation of the album.  "You could really say that he co-produced that second half although he didn't get the credit.  I really do have a lot to be grateful fo with Lynn's input,"  Keaggy continues, "He was there as support, major support."  Nichols ended up producing several of Phil's records in the late eighties and nineties, including Sunday's Child, Find Me In These Fields and Crimson and Blue.

 

The stylistic flavor of The Master and The Musician reflects the diverse musical elements taking root in the 1970s.  Modern folk and folk-rock by artists like Steeleye Span, John Renbourne and Bruce Cockburn and progressive rock by Jan Hammer and Anthony Phillips all became the ingredients Keaggy would pull from for his eclectic project.  Distinctly English and Celtic motifs dance around modern jazz elements and straight 70s rock, all with a nod to the emerging worship music coming from the Christian community he was such an important part of.

 

In an era where Christian music was seen specifically as an evangelistic tool, the idea of an instrumental album was progressive enough in and of itself.  Thus the church community Keaggy was a part of included an allegorical story written by another member of the group.  Clearly inspired by C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkien and George MacDonald, the medieval story became the justification for the instrumental album that was created quite apart from it.  "Stewart Scadron-Wattles put a storyline to it," Keaggy remembers.  "He was gifted as a writer.  He and his wife were very involved in theatre and were very talented people."  When it came time to re-release the album in 1988 the artist decided to leave the story off as it really had nothing to do with the music itself.  "I would rather people get their own images out of the music," he added.  Most of the song titles, however, including "Agora (The Marketplace)", Wedding in the Country Manor", Pilgrim's Flight", Jungle Pleasures 2", "The Castle's Call", "Golden Halls, "Follow Me Up", and "Medley; Evensong, Twilight, and Forever Joy" came directly from the storyline and remain as hints of an English folktale through to this pressing.

 

Despite the difficult times surrounding the writing and recording of The Master and The Musician, Keaggy was, and is, completely proud of the final results.  "When I listened back to the final mixes I felt that it was the best album I had ever done," he remembers.  "Because Gary Hedden was involved it had some feelings of What A Day, but it went really deep and explored some new things guitar-wise for me.  The influence of Anthony Phillips (a founding member of Genesis) the twelve-string stuff and classical stuff all combining and gelling together was nice.  When I listened back on a nice turntable and a nice sounding stereo system I was extremely pleased."  His audience was similarly enthused, as The Master and The Musician would go on to become the best-selling album of Keaggy's career.

 

Now, thirty years later, this eclectic instrumental album, born of pain, idealism and struggle, remains one of Phil Keaggy's proudest accomplishments.  "When I hear the album now," he muses, "it totally transports me back the late Seventies.  Bernadette and I got married in 1973 and went through so much in those years with the loss of babies from '75 through '77.  This album was made while we were growing up.  Shortly after its completion we made a decision to leave that community in New York and move to Kansas City which is where our family actually started.  I hear the music and it takes me back.  I can almost smell the earth.  I can almost feel the wind.  It does that do me.  It's the association of memory in sound, smell and everything.  It's youthfulness."