The brothers performed their recent radio hit “A Lil Bit Louder ” and “Like A Good Neighbor,” a chestnut from their latest album, “Live From San Francisco” (Tyscot). “It’s a kind of depressed time,” says Rance Allen who sees parallels between today’s social climate and that of when his group was formed during the Civil Rights Movement. “It’s a time of unusual stress with all of the killings going on, the political mess that’s going on and there’s just so many people who have just moved away from believing in Jesus Christ. Our job of encouraging and uplifting will never be done. We’ll have to keep working on this until the Lord comes to take us home.”
The Rance Allen Group was formed in 1965 in Monroe, MI as a self-contained band. In 1972, they signed to Stax Records’ Gospel Truth subsidiary where they recorded a series of gritty gospel songs that won them main-stage tours with R&B headliners such as Isaac Hayes and Barry White in the 1970s. The group has recorded a dozen gospel gems such as “Miracle Worker,” “I Belong To You,” “Closest Friend” and “You That I Trust,” among others. Their fusion of R&B and Gospel has won them fans as diverse as American Idol’s Randy Jackson and Huey Lewis of Huey Lewis & The News. The group was honored with the BMI Trailblazers Award in 2008.
