As mentioned, the troops albums were a couple of my favourites. Although both 1 & 2 were primarily aimed for children at our Glorie Company gatherings, a lot of the songs on these albums proved to be what we call crossover songs and were picked up by adults and sung at their meetings and services.Again I included a couple of instrumentals and the 1st track Andy and I wrote as the exit music for brother Timbo and his new wife Gill’s wedding service.But with all the great tracks on these albums my favourite has to be ‘What a long hard day it’s been’. Along with Father God I Wonder, this…

With the idea of ‘Training up the troops’ came some of the most exciting days in the Glorie Company. When I released this first Troops album I asked all my team to come to Spring Harvest dressed in army fatigues. The idea was to teach children that we are all in God’s army and in a battle against the evil one who wants to wreck the lives of both young and old. Pretty heavy stuff for 8 to 11 year olds maybe, but I believe they not only took it onboard, but also became a lot Spiritually stronger after learning (in a child friendly way of course) about Spiritual warfare.…

With Scripture Praise Party I seriously got down to putting simple little tunes to Bible verses. My main aim was to help children to learn Scripture. I deliberately wanted the tunes to be annoyingly catchy and would aim to write each song in 10 minutes max. I would then test each song out on an audience and if they were not able to whistle the tune after I’d sung it through twice, i’d drop the song. To this day I still cannot remember what possessed me to put a nagging wife is like a dripping tap on a children’s album! For many wonderful years I was a member of Gerald…

I updated the title and cover of ‘Antique Collection’ to Sting in the Tale’ but kept the recording exactly the same. I don’t think I’ve ever had such fun recording an album. I dragged a load of ‘the lads’ from our Church into a recording studio and we recorded lots of the most popular and crazy Ishmael and Andy tongue in cheek, parable songs that had never been recorded before. Far too mad for the rather serious Christian music scene of those days! This is the very best (probably only) Christian ‘Pub’ singalong you’ll ever hear, and of course I had to have the good old ‘honky tonk’ joanna rattling…

I was now getting more confident in writing praise / worship style songs and on ‘Ishmael’s Children’s Praise party Vol 2’ I decided to risk using mostly my own compositions. At this stage I must make mention of my buddy Mick Gisbey who was later to join me touring. Mick was writing some fantastic songs and I not only included a couple on this album but also included many more of his songs on albums to follow. Ishmael’s Children’s Praise Party Vol 3 was in many ways a breakthrough album for me. Again, the majority of songs were my own and now I had also started to put a few…