Fred Hammond spoke with the CP, about his Festival Of Praise Tour, and how much effort has to go into making a gospel tour successful.
“Gospel music has taken a turn and not in the flourishing direction. It’s taken a turn kind of headed toward a drought,” he told CP. “When you put a 52 city tour together, you have some moments where promoters are a little discouraged from doing things with gospel music because you can’t get the sales. It makes sense on paper, you think you can get it done, and then you don’t get support from the audience or from the buying public.”
Hammond went on to discuss how many Christian shows don’t provide the same experience as secular artist shows.
“When Beyoncé came to town for $200 a ticket minimum, no one had to hear her say, ‘hey everybody, I want you to come to my concert.’ They just said she’s coming to town and people went and got their tickets,” he said. “There is an art that the world captures that the Body does not capture, especially in entertainment. What the secular industry does … the audience is as fun as what you see on the stage.”
Hammond continued,
“At a gospel concert you come, you sit down, you watch what’s going on stage. There’s really no interaction,” he said. “There’s people saying, ‘hey, bye and then they leave.'”
However, Hammond is looking to change that with his Festival of Praise tour.
“We try to figure out how can we create this interaction, because if not we won’t have anything left,” Hammond said. “You must make the stage as impactful as possible. That’s what the Festival of Praise is, that’s what the record is about. It’s to make the stage impactful to almost shock you at times.”
