David Meece

David Meece (born May 26, 1952) is a contemporary Christian musician who enjoyed success in the mid 80s throughout the early 2000s with more than 30 Top 10 hits (several reaching No. 1).

Growing up in Humble, Texas, with an abusive, alcoholic father, David found solace in playing the piano. By his mid-teens he was touring in Europe and the US. He went on to study music at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where he met his wife, Debbie, who plays the viola. David and his wife currently live in Franklin, Tennessee.[1]

David worked with Canadian songwriter/producer and Juno Award winner Gino Vannelli for his albums Chronology and Candle In The Rain. Meece is perhaps best known for his songs "We Are the Reason" (which has been recorded by well over 200 other artists and sung in several languages according to Meece's website),[2] "One Small Child"[3] and "Seventy-Times-Seven".[4]

Meece was requested to appear in Billy Graham Crusades, among other outreach groups and television broadcasts. He was inducted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame on June 14, 2008[5] and received the 2009 Visionary Award for the Inspirational Male Soloist category.[6] In November 2012, Meece was given a Lifetime Achievement Award for his body of work by the Artists Music Guild.[7]

Contents
[hide]
 * 1 Discography
 * 2 Music styles and use
 * 3 References
 * 4 External links

Discography[edit]

 * David (1976)
 * I Just Call On You (1977)
 * Everybody Needs A Little Help (1978)
 * Are You Ready? (1980)
 * Front Row (1982)
 * Count The Cost (1983)
 * 7 (1985)
 * Chronology (1986)
 * Candle In The Rain (1987)
 * Learning To Trust (1990)
 * Once In A Lifetime (1993)
 * Odyssey (1995)
 * Send Down The Rain (advertised for December 26, 1995 but never released)
 * There I Go Again (2002)
 * David Meece: The Definitive Collection (2007)
 * Hands of Hope co-written by David L Cook and Bruce Carroll (2012) #1 on charts for 2 weeks[8]

Music styles and use[edit]
Possibly due to his conservatory training, David uses pieces of classical piano works as intros or settings for many of his songs. For example, in the song "This Time" from the album Learning to Trust, the opening section of the song (as well as the bridge and ending tag) is from Frédéric Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude" (Op. 10, No. 12) in C minor. The introductory melody for "You Can Go", from the album 7, is taken from theTwo-Part Invention No. 13 in A Minor (BWV 784) by Johann Sebastian Bach. (Because of the prevalent use of synthesizers, "You Can Go" is sometimes incorrectly connected to an advertisement in the early 1980s for Commodore 64 which used the Bach Invention played by a synthesizer.) Also, the song "Falling Down" from his album Count the Cost is based on a sonata by Mozart.

In 2012, Meece co-wrote the piece "Hands of Hope" with fellow performers, David L. Cook and Bruce Carroll. The song was a current day remake of "We Are the World" which featured many famous voices from the music industry. The song was recorded by the Charlotte Civic Orchestra and featured the voices of: Babbie Mason, Christy Sutherland, David L. Cook, Caroline Keller, Fantasia Barrino, Gayla Earlene, Joshua Cobb, Paul Zeaman and many of the former PTL Club singers from Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's show. The song went number one on the charts and remained there for two weeks.[9] The song was used as the theme song for Turning Point Centers for Domestic Violence.[10] On May 5, 2012, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced that the song "Hands of Hope" garnered Meece, Cook and Carroll theEmmy nomination for Best Arrangement/Composer of a Television Theme Song.