Worship music collective Maverick City Music has notched hit songs on both Billboard‘s gospel and CCM charts over the past few years, and in the process have helped bridge the two genres — while also breaking through barriers in the world of church music.
The Recording Academy has taken notice, with the group’s members picking up several nominations ahead of Sunday’s (April 3) Grammy Awards. One of the collective’s founding members, Dante Bowe, earned five nominations across gospel and CCM categories, for both his solo work and his work with Maverick City Music. Additionally, the Recording Academy announced that Maverick City Music will perform during the ceremony.
“I found out it was five nominations and I was shocked — I was emotional,” Bowe tells Billboard.
Bowe, a North Carolina native and now Nashville resident, is nominated three times in the best gospel performance/song category, for his solo tracks “Joyful” and “Voice of God” (the latter featuring Steffany Gretzinger and Bowe’s MCM cohort Chandler Moore), as well as for the Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music hit “Wait on You.” The best gospel album nominations include Maverick City Music’s Jubilee: Juneteenth Edition. In CCM categories, the contemporary Christian music album nominations include Old Church Basement, the collaborative effort from Maverick City Music and Elevation Worship.
Over the past two years, the worship collective Maverick City Music’s organic, raw songs such as “Promises” and “Jireh” have topped both Billboard’s Christian and Gospel charts, and in the process, have helped elevate marginalized voices and created a collaborative space intentionally inclusive of women and artists of color.
In 2018, Maverick City Music formed as the brainchild of two artist/writer/producers with success in the CCM industry: Tony Brown and Jonathan Jay. Both were part of the worship group Housefires. Brown is also a co-writer on Chris Tomlin’s 2015 hit “Good Good Father” (which Housefires originally recorded), while Jay is a co-writer on Natalie Grant’s “My Weapon.”
Brown and Jay started a workshop in Atlanta for songwriters, with the intention of elevating marginalized voices. That group now includes Bowe, Moore, Naomi Raine, Lizzie Morgan, MJ George, Aaron Moses, Joe L Barnes and Brandon Lake.
“We came to write songs for other artists and we ended up recording them ourselves and it took off,” Bowe says.
In 2020, Maverick City Music’s “Man of Your Word” reached the top 20 on Billboard’s Christian Airplay chart. Last year, “Promises,” featuring Raine and Barnes, spent two weeks atop the Christian Airplay chart and reached No. 3 on the Christian AC Airplay chart. This year, the group’s successes continued as “Jireh,” featuring Moore and Raine, reached No. 1 on the Gospel Airplay chart (and reached No. 23 on the Christian Airplay chart).
“I think it really took someone on the CCM side to affirm what me, Naomi, Chandler, Aaron and Joe were doing,” Bowe says of Brown and Jay. “Finally, having some gatekeepers on our side, that changed everything for us. And then having Bethel [Music] being a part of “joyful” definitely helped break down laws of systems and things are in place that, are kind of now fading away.
“I think worship is worship,” he adds. “We all have stories to tell. Our testimonies are just different. I think it comes across in our music and people hear soul and pain and hope. It comes across in everything that we try to do. We all kind of write the same and we all kind of come from some of the same places.”
He is also featured alongside Moore on “Wait on You,” a collaboration between Elevation Worship and Maverick City Music. The song reached the top 10 on the Hot Christian Songs chart, and No. 1 on the Hot Gospel Songs chart.
The track is from the two groups’ collaborative album Old Church Basement, which spent five weeks atop Billboard’s top Christian albums chart, and 17 weeks at No. 1 on the Gospel albums chart. Bowe recalls recording the album over a two-week period at Elevation Church in Charlotte, N.C.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the best two weeks ever,” Bowe recalls. “We felt celebrated, they felt celebrated. We didn’t want it to sound just Maverick or just Elevation. It was a labor of love. We had no agenda with that album. We really felt like we had the same heart.”
In addition to three Maverick City volumes, the group released the now Grammy-nominated Jubilee: Juneteenth Edition. The project highlighted several Gospel and R&B luminaries including Israel Houghton, Jekalyn Carr, Ciara, Lecrae, Koryn Hawthorne, Tamar Braxton, and more.
“I feel like in gospel and Christian music, there has always been this divide, ultimately,” Bowe says. “Maverick, we just used the gifts God gave us and at this point in our careers, we felt like it was our due diligence, our obligation to bring awareness to Juneteenth, and that everyone wasn’t freed on the Fourth of July. And then there are gospel artists who have never packed arenas, ever. We want them to be seen and heard.”
For Bowe, his successes have validated of years of hard work and soul-baring creativity, and proved a triumph over circumstances including homelessness and abuse. “I’ve had a hard life growing up,” Bowe said. “Doing music was just my therapy. So being recognized across genres makes so much sense considering that growing up I was listening to Al Green, Kirk Franklin, rock, R&B, all the things.”
His parents separated around the time Bowe was 11, and they sold drugs to bring in money. As a child, he was also molested by an elder in the church. “That was really tough, and a battle to get through in and of itself,” he recalls. “And my parents, they were also the most incredible parents. They [sold drugs] because they felt they had to survive and give us a life they didn’t have. It was quick money and it became something long-term.”
Three years ago, he was homeless, until a pastor offered him a space to live in a trailer. He ended up writing several songs in that trailer, while battling discouragement. “That’s why people relate to the music because I wasn’t raised in the whole, ‘church going, my mom and dad were pastors’ and all this stuff, you know what I mean?” he offers. “I was raised totally opposite from the path that I’m choosing now.”
Now signed with Bethel Music, he added to his collaborative work with the release of the solo single “joyful” last year, from his solo album circles. The track reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Gospel Airplay chart. Bowe says the song’s origins belie its uplifting title.
“It wasn’t a joyful time,” Bowe recalls of how he felt as he entered a Nashville writing room with co-writer Ben Schofield. “I had just lost my grandfather while working on this album, and there was racial division happening. 2020 was just a hard year for everyone. We wanted to write a song that would speak life into the year. We just wanted to declare that no matter what’s going on right now, we choose to be joyful.”
At the 2021 GMA Dove Awards, Maverick City Music was named new artist of the year, while Bowe’s “joyful” was named contemporary gospel recorded song of the year. Old Church Basement was named worship album of the year. But beyond just the awards wins, Bowe was heartened to see the diversity reflected in the overall awards show, in an industry that has grappled with division.
“There was definitely more diversity there,” he says. “It just…you got the celebration. You could feel that everyone was being very celebrated. Some of our CCM friends and gospel friends knew each other. I felt like at the Doves, we saw the fruit of some of our own labor, yes.”
Bowe is opening shows for duo for King & Country and is working on a solo worship album. However, given his collaborative nature, he hints there will be some guests on the project: “I can say it will be a more polished worship project… I’m going to have a string section, a huge choir, it’s going to be a whole experience.”
