Paul Clark Music - Off the Grid Ministries
Since childhood, I've loved the challenge of building something out of nothing. Be it housing scraps into tree houses or discarded hearing aids into mini-amps, my imagination ran wild. Sadly, in my mid-teens wild drugs ran over me. In May of ’70, I quit KU, fled Lawrence with my band and relocated deep in the Colorado Rockies. Barely unpacked, Jesus breathed life on my ashes and songs of faith burst in me like flowers on a charred forest floor. E'er the pioneer, I saddled up my guitar and headed for any stage as my pulpit. Inconceivable now, but a half-century ago it wasn't hippies but the church who resisted me for using guitars and drums to worship God. Nowadays you’d be a pioneer if you tried to start a church today without a rock band.
Venues were scarce in 71' so Bill Speer and I opened the Narrow Gate in Denver. Inspired by my songs beaming hope to the hippies drifting in an older man named Dick Brown paid $3,000 for me to record my first album, “Songs From the Savior, Volume One.” His timing was impeccable. Fanned by the winds of The Jesus Movement, the record took off like a wild prairie fire. Months later my grandparents funded “Songs From the Savior, Volume Two.” With traction from record sales, my label, Seed Records, signed a distribution deal with Myrrh and went on to release “Come Into His Presence,” “Good To Be Home,” “Hand to the Plow,” “Change in the Wind,” “Aim for the Heart” and “A Minstrel's Voyage.”
In 1980, with major labels dangling the crossover carrot at Myrrh, I foolishly signed in house. After releasing singles from “A New Horizon,” “Drawn to the Light” and “Out of the Shadow,” I knew my gifts were disconnected from the CCM market so I peacefully withdrew and started Minstrel's Voyage Music. As of 2018, I've added “Awakening From the Western Dream,” “When the Moon's Behind the Clouds,” “Private World,” “Resonate,” “Christmas With Paul Clark,” “Call Of the Canyon,” “Mission Road,” “Approaching Jerusalem,” “Down at the Whistle Stop,” and “Branching Roots” to my catalogue.
Why the long backstory? Because I believe there’s going to a revival greater than the Jesus Movement. Collapsing cultures are providing a massive harvest field for a new generation to thresh the global floor. Jesus commanded us to go out, not to wait for them to come in. Pioneering is not conferences and events but often inconvenient daily trench work. The platform I had doesn’t exist for young artists today. Tech companies, the new landlords of music, have compressed analog dollars into digital pennies, muzzling most musicians from honest wages. With my vast experience, I have established Off The Grid Ministries, Inc. (a 501c Not-For-Profit Corporation), to be a supply house and launching pad to equip the next generation of artists.
Anyone who knows me will testify that I am all about deep friendships and connecting people. Would you prayerfully consider coming alongside me with a portion of your resources to be the next Dick Brown and grandparents?
In Jesus love, with my sails up,
Thank YOU for your Support!
Paul Clark
“I can't stand on this bridge
and watch the river flow
when I know there's a sea
that's collecting them below
and that sea fills the ocean
and she buries all her dead
we must learn to speak from our heart
and not from our head.”
“More Heat Than Light” from the album “Awakening From The Western Dream”
Paul Clark / Minstrel's Voyage Music / ASCAP
Organized by Paul Clark Music and Off the Grid Ministries Inc
501(c)(3) Public Charity · EIN 43-1307464
[email protected]