Psallos directors, Cody Curtis, assistant residence director, and his wife, Melody Curtis, assistant director of the community music center, partnered with Union to perform for church ministry in West Tennessee. They hope to eventually perform throughout the United States in Christian circles.
As the songwriters for the album, Cody and Melody intended to bring to life the words of Romans designing the album as an expository work on the complete book. The first disc covers Romans chapters one through eight with the second disc covering chapters nine through 16. The work comprises a variety of stringed instrument arrangements accompanied with vocals. Unlike most recordings, the songs in the “Romans” album continue without pause.
Psallos consists primarily of singers, songwriters, musicians, theologians and ministers from the Union community, including lead vocalists Thomas Griffith, junior art major, and Kelsie Leaf, junior English literary studies major.
“This project is nothing if it isn’t the Gospel,” Griffith said. “And learning how to understand the insane responsibility and blessing that [it] is was a huge part of the past few months for me.”
Cody, a Union alumnus and music major, and Melody, Union alumna and Christian studies and piano music double major, combined their talents to establish Psallos in 2012. Psallos originated to “help Christians faithfully obey Scripture’s call to worship God in spirit and truth and to enrich and elevate the current stream of contemporary Christian music,” according to their website. Psallo is the Greek root word for “making melody.”
In Ephesians 5:18-19 Paul encourages the church to “[address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with their heart.”
The couple’s musical efforts started with their release of “Slave Songs,” a ten-track album with emphasis on the biblical spiritual slavery metaphor. Shortly after the couple started touring to perform “Slave Songs,” they realized being in the background of performance was more fitting for them. After ending their tour, the vision for Psallos as a larger collection of musicians began to take form.
“I met with Dr. Taylor Worley and with Dr. Brady, and so with a lot of initial conversations we thought we could do this,” Cody said. “[T]hen we started talking about the ‘Romans project,’ and that’s where Psallos came from.”
In summer of 2014, the couple finished the songwriting for the “Romans” album, Cody said. They devoted that fall to introducing the musicians to the songs. Recording the track at Union soon followed.
Psallos built their own studio by utilizing a vacant room in the residence complexes with over twelve mattresses to construct “the mattress fort studios,” Cody said. All efforts to make the Romans project were done on a volunteer basis.
In fall 2015, Cody and Melody want to integrate their music into chapel services.
“For the future, what we’re looking for is really people buying [the ‘Romans album’] themselves or [they] can even think about if their church might be interested in it or a local ministry,” Cody said. “We’re open to what the future holds for this project.”
The “Romans” album is available on Bandcamp, iTunes and Spotify.
