When the music of an artist's life intersects with the message in his soul, that collision results in a powerful creative expression. With one listen to Danny Liston's new album, it's obvious the veteran rocker's past and present have melded into a musical tour de force.

Liston's music is a reflection of his powerful testimony. Once heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol, Liston came clean with God's help and found himself singing for the Lord, but what he is doing isn't your ordinary worship music. It's a soulful hybrid of modern worship and edgy Southern rock. It's church meets the "chitlin' circuit," the name Danny gives the venues he played in his early rockin' days. It is uniquely Danny Liston.

"All the pieces that I had been looking for all my life musically came together in one night," Liston recalls of leading worship in his church. "I called my wife on my way home and I told her, 'Tonight the veil has been pulled back. This is what God has created me for-- to usher people into his presence, to convey through song just how much God loves them. Because of what I've been through, I think I'm a pretty good vehicle. I've done so much stupid stuff. I've fallen so short. The only person that has brought me to this place is God and God alone."

The road to this place has been an interesting journey for Liston. At 14 years old, he joined his first band, an outfit called the Soulful Illusions, where he got his first taste of life on stage as a drummer. By high school, he joined a group called the Belltones as a guitarist. However, Liston really hit his stride as a young musician in a group he formed with his brother called Mama's Pride.

The group became one of the seminal bands in the growing Southern rock movement that included Lynyrd Skynyrd, Wet Willie, the Charlie Daniels Band, .38 Special and the Allman Brothers. Tearing up the road, they earned a reputation as one of the hardest working and most musically inventive bands on the scene. Signed to Atlantic Records by the legendary Ahmet Ertegun, Mama's Pride had a devoted legion of fans, among them Skynyrd frontman Ronnie Van Zant, who approached Danny about producing the third Mama's Pride album, and asked the band to tour with Skynyrd on the second leg of the "Street Survivors" tour.

Unfortunately, such collaboration never took place. Just a couple months after Liston and Van Zant discussed working together, Van Zant was killed in the tragic plane crash that nearly silenced the legendary band forever. "When their plane went down, we were sitting in a bar," recalls Liston. "We just felt like there was this dark cloud. We had such a great kinship with all those guys."

Mama's Pride continued recording and touring, including a high-octane trek backing Southern rock legend Gregg Allman. However, years on the road and too many nights partying began taking a toll and Liston decided he wanted a different life. "We just couldn't seem to get out of gear and actually by God's grace, I didn't get out of gear because literally I would have been dead by now," Liston says.

But God had other plans for Danny Liston... Continue >