3 Christian Musicians Build on Rock

Rock fans who don’t usually bother with contemporary Christian music might start judging this semi-supergroup collaboration among second-echelon CCM luminaries by its cover. Its back cover, that is, where it says “Produced by R.S. Field.”

Straying from the clannish Christian pop fold, Phil Keaggy, Wes King and Scott Dente have reached out to the fellow who put the crackle and zoom into records by Webb Wilder and Sonny Landreth that are among the best guitar albums of recent years.

“Invention” sounds fine too, though nothing on it is quite so hellbent as Wilder or as supremely boisterous and vital as the wondrous Landreth. Instead, players and producer go for a finely woven tapestry of layered, complementary guitar parts that interlock beautifully and harmony vocals with whooshy studio effects that pay homage to the Beatles.

Seven of the 11 tracks are instrumentals, and the players get to shine without sounding self-indulgent or gratuitously flashy.

Keaggy is the most renowned of the three. (King has a solo career, and Dente is half of the husband-and-wife duo Out of the Grey.) He supplies plenty of gleaming, fluid parts that uphold his reputation as the best picker in Christian pop circles. Yet the prime consideration throughout is how parts work within the architecture of a piece.

Keaggy, King and Dente range widely, touching on familiar styles, yet putting enough freshness into their performances and compositions to live up to the album title.

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Celtic music is hot these days, and the group covers the two primary Celtic moods in fine fashion: idyllic pastoral with “Isle of Skye” and marching, embattled heraldry in “The Moors of Bellevue,” which features a fine solo (apparently by Keaggy) that sounds like a more tutored Neil Young.

“Budapest Control” skips between chilly, high-plains romanticism and a Central European folk dance motif; “Angel Treads” has some of the mysterious churn of a Bruce Cockburn piece, and other instrumentals call to mind a pop-jazzy Pat Metheny and a now-mellow, now-speeding Leo Kottke.

Christian content is instilled indirectly in vocal numbers that have a serious-minded, questing tone. (“A pilgrim in progress, a wish that’s on the way” is one phrase that sums up the thrust and the allusive, rather than declarative, religiosity of the lyrics.) Most of the instrumentals ride surging rhythms that can be taken as evocations of the movement of a determined spirit.

Even determinedly nonreligious fans of neo-Beatleism and guitar instrumentals that emphasize strong, melodic composition should consider crossing the line, just as Keaggy, King and Dente did in finding a producer who could give their sound a special presence.

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* Keaggy, King & Dente and Out of the Grey play Saturday at Calvary Church, 1010 N. Tustin Ave., Santa Ana. 7 p.m. $15.50-$17. (714) 973-4800.