Jubilee Artists Look Forward To Christmas

IMC Concerts and Greater Vision, Booth Brothers and Legacy Five bring the Jubilee series to many States throughout the year, as well as performing a special Christmas series in December. In 2014, the Christmas Jubilee came to Ontario, Canada, to a very receptive audience. SGN Scoops was there to talk to the artists who present this festive concert.

Gerald Wolfe who does most of the emcee work for the Jubilee presentation, is looking forward to having some time off from the stage work. “By the time I get home, our house will be in full Christmas mode, probably have a half-dozen trees up. We go out and run around, look at lights, go to the mall, eat, do what everybody else does. Then right after Christmas week, we get right back on the road. I’m looking forward to it though. I’m looking forward to putting my feet up!”

Wolfe is not the only one looking for a bit of rest. Fellow Greater Vision singer, Chris Allman says, “I look forward to relaxing, but that usually doesn’t happen. Because we are out here so much, when I get home there is a lot that my wife wants me to do. Then I will be just hanging out with the family. I always take my wife and my two daughters who still live at home (my two sons are married), to a city like Atlanta or Cincinnati and we shop for a couple of days. We like to go to big cities to get away. So when I’m away, I’m on the road, and when I get back home, I’m on the road! But it’s just different when you are with your family.” Allman adds, “And this year of course my grandkids are going to be with us. My two grandbabies are going to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with us. So Santa is going to come to see them at our house, so that’s going to be fun.”

Rodney Griffin is looking for to a couple of celebrations once he gets off the Greater Vision bus. “I’m looking forward to seeing my wife and two daughters. The day after we get home is my wife’s and my 20^th anniversary. So that will be a fun day. I’ve got her a gift kind of hidden away. I hope she doesn’t find it!” (Note: Rodney told us where but we aren’t saying!) Griffin continues, “A couple of years ago we moved back to Kentucky where we are from. My mom and dad are there as well as my wife’s mom. I look forward to home cooking from my mom. She cooks as often as we will come over! We love that.”

Legacy Five’s Matt Fouch comments, “[The 2014] Jubilee stretch is 12 days and [in 2013 it] was 17 days. So we got five days less this year, so that’s good. I look forward to doing what everyone else does at Christmas: spending time with the family, especially after having been gone for 12 days. I get to see my little boy and my wife. I look forward to just relaxing and getting to go see our extended family.”

The other Legacy Five members may need some rest, but Scott Howard isn’t planning on going home to put his feet up; at least, not for his entire vacation. “We finish on the 15^th in Chattanooga and I will get home the morning of the 16^th. My family will already be out of town for our little Christmas get-together. My son and I will catch up with them in Texas. We are doing a big deer-hunt down in south Texas. We’ll get back home around Christmas Eve and spend a few days there and then start in on the New Year’s sing. It’s right around the corner…it’s amazing how quickly it’s gotten here.”

New Year’s Resolutions

With the New Year swiftly approaching, we asked the guys about their New Year’s Resolutions. Trey Ivey intends to keep abstaining from soda pop, and Scott Fowler intends to stop making New Year’s Resolutions! Scott Howard says, “I’m not a good resolution maker because I’m not a good resolution keeper. I think my resolution will be to try to be healthier. I have discovered that the older I get, the faster my health deteriorates.” He laughs and continues, “So I think that is going to be a resolution of mine; to eat a little bit healthier, live a healthier lifestyle, work out a little bit more, try to be not quite so fat and happy.” Howard smiles and says, “Well, I still want to be happy, just less of the fat and more of the happy!”

IMC’s Landon Beene comments, “I say ‘lose weight’ every year, but this year it needs to be a reality. And to find a nice balance of being at home and spending time with my babies, and doing more of what I love and less of what I don’t.” Matt Fouch remarks, “It’s too early! I still have a month or so before I have to decide that. We do a New Year’s Eve thing at the Opryland Hotel so I try to hold all of my resolutions off until after that because the food they have in the green room is awesome. So any type of diet or food resolutions, I try to hold off on until after that event.”

Gerald Wolfe is not a Resolution maker. “I don’t make them because I’m no good at keeping them. My New Year’s Resolution, this coming year, is to eat. That’s the only one I can keep!” Chris Allman says he wants to keep his weight off. Rodney Griffin comments, “I want to draw closer to the Lord. I want to read my Bible more intently. I try to read it through every year but I don’t want it to become mechanical. I want the Lord to speak to me next year, give me songs He wants me to write, to live for Him and be a blessing to someone.”

It seems that Michael Booth is also on a health-kick for his New Year’s Resolution. “It’s pretty much just my health, to exercise and have a little better diet. I’m 44 now and that is still young, but I’m feeling the miles more than I used to. And I can feel it in my voice too. If you want to sing well into your sixties, you need to be really careful and eat right. And you know, God says it’s a temple. I’ve ignored that because it’s hard to do on the road. This is the hardest part of the day [following the evening concert] because I’m starving, and we will soon be going to bed. If you eat wrong then you get acid reflux and all that stuff. It’s really challenging.”

Ronnie Booth is working on his spiritual health for the New Year. “Keep walking closer, staying more in the Word and being more obedient. True success in life is doing the will of God.”

New Year Predictions

We also asked some of the men what they foresee for the coming year and whether there were any changes ahead. Scott Fowler comments, “The older I get, the more I don’t like change. I hope there are no changes on the horizon. When things are going well, I like for them just to stay put. I’m hoping things will just stay as they are and life is good.” He says there won’t be a new Legacy Five release for a little while. “We are still kind of enjoying our latest recording which is Great Day, and we’ve had two radio singles off of that so far. We will start recording again in 2015, but nothing in the next couple of months.”

Scott Howard echoes Fowler’s remarks when he says, “I don’t know of anything I would predict. There’s always change and the older I get, the less I like it. I don’t really plan for change but I’ve grown to kind of accept it. I don’t foresee anything changing. Our group will still be out doing our thing, unless the Lord tells us something different. I feel like we are doing what we are supposed to be doing now. I tell people all the time that it is subject to change. Sometimes God will steer you in a different direction, for whatever reason. I don’t foresee that, but I never know. So I just wait and see what happens.”

Christmas Holiday Plans

The Legacy Five men are looking forward to their New Year’s Concert and Fowler is also looking forward to his family’s New Year’s celebrations. “We usually spend New Years Eve at our event in Nashville, Tennessee. We have a three-day event at the Opryland Hotel. 12-million Christmas lights are up, 12 life-sized nativity scenes, and it’s just a lot of fun. When the hustle and bustle of that is over, we’ll have a delayed New Year’s party and celebration dinner at my in-laws. They are of Norwegian descent, so they have some Norwegian dishes they prepare for us, so it’s a lot of fun to taste that culture.”

Gerald Wolfe is looking forward to the New Year, though maybe not so much any of the inevitable alterations that life brings. “There’s always change. That’s the only certainty in life. We are releasing a new album in March 2015, the first major one we’ve released in two years. Also, we are now getting into our 25^th year, so all of 2015 will be leading up to our 25^th anniversary. So we will do some special events along the way, we are giving away a cruise to the Caribbean, all kinds of special stuff like that!”

Chris Allman is looking forward working on his personal projects and with Greater Vision. “There are different goals that I have. I enjoy producing. I’m producing a group right now called The Wrights from Kansas; we just did tracks with them. I’m very excited about what is happening there. They have a great CD that is going to be released next year. I’d like to produce some more groups and do several more of those during the year. So we’ll try to get that underway.”

He continues, “We have a new project coming out in 2015; it’s already in the can as they would say. It’s already mixed and ready for release. It has some new songs I’ve written and some new ones that Rodney’s written.” Allman notes, “This past year was the busiest we have ever been. Ever, ever, ever. It’s good and bad. It’s good because there is a demand, and bad because it wears you out. You have to have a balance and this year we got close to crossing that balance. So we are getting pretty tired here at the end of the year. We are still enjoying it though.”

Rodney Griffin is looking a little closer to home for changes in the New Year. “The biggest news in the Griffin household for 2015 will be if we get a dog. We had two family dogs and both of them lived about 19 years, and we lost both of them this year. It was a tough ‘dog year’ at our house as both of them had lived the extent of their lives.”

Legacy Five’s Matt Fouch is excited about an unusual trip that they will be making in the fall. “In 2015, Legacy Five is going to Israel! We are doing a Holy Land trip and that is exciting and something new for me; I have not done that before. As you hear from other people who have gone there before, it’s one of those things that is an experience of a lifetime especially for Christians, because you get to see with your eyes and walk the places, physically, that you read about in the Bible. I am looking forward to that and I know most of the guys in the group are looking forward to it as well. We are going in October 2015, so I have a little time to wait, but that is one of the things I am most excited about in the New Year.”

Fouch says the unrest in the Middle East doesn’t worry him, when it comes to the Israel trip and personal safety. “Scott went there with Dr. Charles Stanley and In Touch, as well as Greater Vision. Scott wanted to check it out and he was there when the fighting was at its peak. He said that he never heard anything, or saw anything, because it was taking place in a different part of the country. He said that with all the different religions of the people that lived in that area, everyone was peaceful. I think it’s a thing where everyone understands that this is a tourist area, so they stay away from it. Scott said there were no problems, no issues with security, so we are not really concerned about that at all.”

A Social Media interview guru; Matt plans to continue his On The Couch With Fouch in 2015. “I love doing it. For those who are reading, one of the really unique things about the interview series is that the audience gets to ask the questions! It’s Social Media driven. So if you are reading this, you are probably on the Internet, or on Facebook. I read a statistic that about 70 or 80% of Americans have a Facebook account. So I put out there whom I am interviewing and you guys get to tell me the questions. I ask the questions you guys want me to ask. That’s what makes it so unique. So if you want to follow me on Facebook, you can go to Matthew Fouch - Bass Singer, or if you are on Twitter you can follow me @L5bass. When I do have upcoming interviews you guys can let me know what you want to know!”

With a big smile, Fouch adds: “I love Legacy Five, I love being here, and everything is going wonderfully. I’ve been here for over two years now. September 2012 was my first date with the group. It fit like a glove from the beginning. They made me feel very comfortable. I guess they don’t have a problem with me because they haven’t run me off yet!”

We hope you have enjoyed these insights into the lives and hearts of the men from the Jubilee series and Jubilee Christmas.

For more information on the following groups, visit their websites:

IMC Concerts   http://www.imcconcerts.com/

Greater Vision   http://www.greatervisionmusic.com/

Booth Brothers   http://boothbrothers.com/

Legacy Five   http://www.legacyfive.com/

Find them on Facebook and Twitter too

First published on SGM Radio website in December 2014

For more artist features, visit SGN Scoops today!