Headin’ Home extends Colfax FBC message through music

COLFAX — A trailer imprinted with two H’s flanking a cross sat parked outside the Colfax First Baptist Church Sunday afternoon, hitched to a full-sized van complete with window curtains and topper.

The church’s house band — the four-piece vocal quartet Headin’ Home — was preparing for a trip to Eddyville for an evening performance at Faith Community Church. This was a short field trip for Headin’ Home Quartet members Jim Seiberling, J.D. Smith, Bill Tharp and Gene Steenhoek. In the group’s 14 years, it has toured as far as Mexico, Mo., playing nearly 50 shows per year.

Sunday, the group truly will be heading home, singing in a three-group concert at the Colfax FBC with the Living Water and Sharon Bethel Quartets. The group’s two remaining original members — Jim Seiberling and J.D. Smith — said the three quartets play three concerts together per year, rotating through their respective churches. The 6 p.m. April 26 show will have no admission, but a freewill offering will be taken to help support the quartets’ music ministries. To Smith and the other three members of Headin’ Home, summer touring with these and other gospel groups creates a strong bond.

“You get to know people and make friends, and the same groups make the same trek every year,” Smith said. “We spend a lot of time with the same group of people all summer. It’s family.”

The group’s geniuses came in 2001, as Seiberling noticed the fading presence of traditional hymns in church which were being replaced in favor of more contemporary Christian Rock-style music. The founding members including Smith, Seiberling, Leland Hall and Monty Beals, all felt they could further Colfax FBC ministry through song.

“My thought at the time was to sing four-part, southern gospel style here at the church once in a while. We had no vision beyond the church doors,” Seiberling said.

It was an invitation to perform in the Colfax Howard Street Christian Church’s Lenten Sunday Service talent show in 2003, that changed the scope of Headin’ Home. The group was asked to do a three-song set.

“We didn’t know many songs at that point,” Smith said.

“We knew three,” Seiberling laughed.

As soon as they left the Howard Street stage, Headin’ Home was invited back for the 2004 Lenten concert series but for a full 1.5 hour set.

“We had to learn a lot more songs. We had a year to prepare, but people kept calling,” Smith said.

Although they’ve learned to execute tight, four-part harmonies, the men of Headin’ Home cannot actually read music. For the last six years, the quartet has gained musical assistance from Newton-based Community Heights Alliance Church pianist Nancy Toppenberg. She helps the foursome hear and practice their harmonies.

Expanding from the hymnals, Headin’ Home also performs arrangements of more contemporary Christian tunes, but always sticks to the vocal harmony, southern gospel feel. The members of Headin’ Home said they take inspiration from well-known Christian acts like The Cathedrals and Legacy Five.

“Sometimes it’s a style that kind of fits in with what we do,” Tharp said. “If we’ve got too much hip movement we think ‘well, that’s nice but we can’t dance, we’re Baptist.’”

“If it hits your hips before it hits your heart then it’s a sin,” Seiberling said as the group chuckled.

When they’re not on tour, the members of Headin’ Home are preparing to record their sixth independent album. The quartet teams up with a producer/arranger from Shelby, N.C., who has worked with popular southern gospel group The Spears Family and has produced music for Billy Graham Crusades. Seiberling and Smith send the producer a track list and the producer provides all the instrumentals in a backtrack. But Headin’ Home and their Shelby collaborator have never actually met, communicating only by email and a rare phone call.

Headin’ Home’s most recent album is titled “We’re Climbing up the Mountain.” All CD sales go back into Colfax FBC and to fund the groups travel and recording expenses. This includes their most costly endeavor — studio time. Seiberling said they are currently on the hunt for a studio to produce their sixth CD. Their last album was recorded in a basement studio in the small town of Otley.

The framed album placards and thrill of performance is not what drives the members of Heading Home. It’s the ministry.

“There are people who attend our concerts that don’t normally go to church, so sometimes you throw a little humor in there. Sometimes you just have to harass the old guy here just for the fun of it,” Smith said pointing at Seiberling. “People enjoy that, and if that opens their heart and lets the message in for the day, then it’s worth it.”

“We’re singing the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what we’re trying to get across,” Tharp said. “We’re not there to entertain. Sometimes we throw a line or two in there to get a laugh, but that’s not our purpose.”