Live albums are as much a staple of southern gospel music as are arguments about entertainment vs ministry, which is to say that they are quite commonplace in this genre. Some of the “definitive” albums in the industry are live albums. The Kingsmen have arguably built a career on high-energy live recordings, including their landmark Big & Live release, while Bill Gaither created his own subgenre via his Homecoming series. If a gospel artist has been around for more than a few years, odds are they will inevitably produce (or at least take part in) a live recording of some sort.

Of course, it’s incredibly rare that a live album is 100% live. Once a recording is captured, it has to be mixed and mastered, sure, but it’s also fairly common for artists to go back and “fix” some parts that they may not have been happy with during the live performance, whether it’s wrong notes, goofing on lyrics, or just wanting another shot for a better take. It’s also not unheard of for additional musicians to be added to the mix in post-production to give the recording a fuller sound (usually things like additional guitars, percussion, or accent instruments).

Then there’s the issue of “sweetening” audience reactions…just about every live album sounds like it has a super-enthusiastic audience that is thrilled with every song sung and thinks every joke is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. If you’ve ever attended a Gaither video taping, you probably are aware that this is actually part of the production process – a producer will walk on stage and tell the audience to give very specific reactions that will be edited into the final product as needed (“Now pretend that Mark just told a really funny joke, and you’re laughing at how hilarious it is!” as the audience laughs uproariously at the producer while cameras capture as much as possible).

By and large, these edits are not super obvious, which most would argue is the goal when producing any album, live or not. I mean, who wants to hear a bunch of really bad edits while trying to listen to music? That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some rather glaring examples of obvious fixing going on.

For example…

Exhibit A – “Love Will Roll The Clouds Away,” from the Kingsmen Big & Live (1973)

Yes, I’m starting with one of the most well-known and well-loved live albums in the industry. Ignoring the fact that the cover photo is NOT from the original concert (the apparently had yellow jackets during that show from what I’ve heard, but I digress….), this is probably the most obvious piece of post-production editing on the album (although “The Apple Tree Song” is a close second). While not confirmed, I am fairly confident that Ray Reese recut the second verse to this song in a studio. The evidence for this starts around the 0:30 mark – up to that point in the song, you can hear the audience clapping and significant ambient noise, but all of that suddenly drops out entirely when Ray starts his solo. Once his verse is over, you can hear applause fade back in before Johnny Parrack starts his harmonica solo (during which, you can once again hear the audience clapping along, albeit faintly. The lack of ambient noise is also why I believe “The Apple Tree Song” may have been entirely done in a studio, but I don’t count that so much an edit as I do a complete recut.

Exhibit B – “Boundless Love,” from the Cathedrals Travelin’ Live (1986)

Unlike Big & Live, for which no video footage exists, the Cathedrals’ Travelin’ Live DOES have a companion video. Whether you paid the $80 for the original VHS from the Cathedrals themselves, or picked up the DVD version years later like I did for significantly less, if you’ve seen the video, then you are very familiar with how much editing was done between the live concert and the final album release, the most commonly-known being with “Boundless Love.” While the live instruments (which consisted of drums, bass, piano, and acoustic guitar) sound like they were left unchanged, the vocals are quite different from what shows up on the final album. Even if you’re not able to spot the differences in the overall vocals, the encore is a notorious giveaway, where Glen Payne, Mark Trammell, and Danny Funderburk aren’t quite sure which verse to sing (Danny’s facial expression is hiarious, and even the drummer seems unsure about whether to play half-time at the chorus, although that was left as-is on the final recording). By the time the album came out, that had been completely resung in the studio with the second verse. Couple that with the canned applause edited over the intro and additional instrumentation added (mostly synthesizers), and one could argue that “Boundless Love” is actually mostly a studio cut that just happens to have some audio from a concert mixed in.

For comparison, I made my own edit of the concert video using the album audio combining it with the video footage to show the differences between the two versions. And yes, I edited the encore footage to match the audio, but even then, there are enough differences in the vocal performances that very little of what you hear matches what is seen on screen.

While “Boundless Love” is the most obvious of edits, there are other spots where you can pick up on overdubs being done. For example, at the end of “Dry Bones,” the vocals suddenly get much fuller, which seems to indicate that the ending had some extra vocal dubs added, while “I’m Gonna Be Movin'” had an electric guitar added to the song that was not stage during the live concert. By and large, the video edition seems to have been more of an “added bonus” than a polished product. All that being said, I still haven’t figured out why the audio for “Blood Washed Band” on the video seems to include the additional overdubs while the rest of the video is the raw audio capture.

And don’t get me started on their Campmeein’ Live or Reunion videos…

Exhibit C – “Angels Step Back,” from the Paynes Fire On Stage (1985)

On the flip side of the post-production edits is Fire On Stage, a live album recorded in Dayton, OH, by the Paynes. Like the Cathedrals, a live video was made available by the group at concerts on VHS. Unlike Travelin’ Live, however, the Fire On Stage video is less a direct concert capture and more of a “highlight reel,” in that about half of the tape is from the Fire On Stage album, with the rest of the video containing either separate performances of the same songs or a concept music video. To add to the confusion, the footage from the concert appears to be a combination of actual event footage (mostly shot from behind the band to see the audience) edited with a separate footage of the group appearing to be lip-synching to the final album audio after the fact. If you watch closely throughout “Angels Step Back,” there are a number of times where the lip-synching doesn’t quite match. To be fair, this COULD indicate that the live performance was just heavily overdubbed, but based on the body language, it appears more like Mike Payne is doing his best to follow a pre-existing audio track. Mix that with the fact that the forward-facing singing shots have the band mostly in the dark and never show the audience, and I’m led to believe that this was very much a post-production creation.

Exhibit D – “The Holy Hills Of Heaven” from The Oak Ridge Boys Performance (1970)

This one has pretty much been confirmed, yet still has an interesting backstory…

At the time the Oaks’ Performance album was recorded, Greg Gordon was a member of the Oaks’ band, and even had a featured solo on the show with “The Holy Hills of Heaven Call Me,” which was recorded as part of the album. Before the album’s completion and release, however, Greg had left the group to join the Downings. Rather than scrap the song, Duane Allen re-sang it, which is the version that was included on the final album release. This was first brought up by Chris Golden, who had mentioned that Greg had originally sang the song, and later confirmed by Duane (although he initially had forgotten that he overdubbed the song for the album). Considering this was 1970, it’s actually somewhat impressive that he was able to recut Greg’s part, as multi-channel recording technology was still fairly limited at the time (especially for live concerts, which were usually recorded by a mobile recording unit).

Exhibit E – “Port In The Storm” from the Singing Americans Live & Alive

Long considered among the best live albums ever produced in the genre, the Singing Americans’ Live & Alive album is one that many SG fans are familiar with, especially if you’re a fan of Michael English. It’s hard to argue with that stance, too, because there is some really good music to be found here, including English’s lead on “I Bowed On My Knees,” which became a signature song for him (side note – this was actually the SECOND time he recorded the song, as he had first recorded it with the Goodmans shortly before the group disbanded).

Now before you go assuming that I’m talking about Ed Hill’s forgetting the words, I’d like to point out that forgetting the words to a song appears to have been somewhat of a schtick for the group. What I am going to focus on here is what you hear before and after the “flub” – specifically, the lack of electric guitar in the intro. Apparently, when getting the album ready for release, they figured if they were going to leave the “mistake” in, why bother adding the guitar for such a short clip? This one is not super obvious unless you’re paying attention, but once you hear it, it’s hard not miss it going forward.

And yes, I’m also aware of a faint sneeze being heard in the intro of “I Bowed On My Knees,” which is reportedly from Michael, though unconfirmed.

Honorable Mention – “God Handled It All” from Gold City’s Walk The Talk Live Video

Ok, this one isn’t exactly a live album, per se. Walk the Talk was a studio release by Gold City from 2003, but as was customary for Gold City at the time, a live video was produced by the group that included all of the songs from the album performed live. Well, mostly live, anyway. Since this was a new album consisting of songs that hadn’t been performed much at the time (if at all), there apparently were a couple eggs laid during the concert that were fixed prior to the video’s release, most notable with “God Handled It All.” At around the 1:20 mark, the audio consists of a fairly flawless vocal performance by Jonathan Wilburn, Danny Riley, and Tim Riley starting the second verse, while what is seen on screen is anything but flawless – Danny appears to be singing something entirely different, while Jonathan is hesitating before joining in. Small potatoes for sure (you know me a nit-picking) and something that happens quite often while doing live videos, but whoever took the time to edit the audio probably could’ve taken an additional minute or two to splice in a separate crowd shot for about 2-3 seconds to hide the flub. Why take the time to fix one piece and not the other?

What are some edits that you’ve caught in live albums? I’m not talking about the really bad, cut for time edits done by Benson for their double-album CD’s; I’m talking a finished product that is supposedly “live,” but very obviously not. Let us know in the comments below…