Jesusfreakhideout.com Music News, September 2012: BEC RECORDINGS' BEBO NORMAN SET TO RELEASE EIGHTH STUDIO PROJECT, LIGHTS OF DISTANT CITIES, ON OCTOBER 22

BEC RECORDINGS' BEBO NORMAN SET TO RELEASE EIGHTH STUDIO PROJECT, LIGHTS OF DISTANT CITIES, ON OCTOBER 22

NEWS SOURCE: Merge PR
September 5, 2012

Seattle, WA -September 05, 2012 -BEC Recordings' singer-songwriter Bebo Norman is set to release his eighth studio album, Lights of Distant Cities, on October 22. Throughout his seventeen years as an artist, Norman has been applauded for laying it all on the table with his lyrical transparency and musical vulnerability.

Lights of Distant Cities was co-produced with close friend and longtime live collaborator, multi-instrumentalist Gabe Scott along with Ben Shive (Andrew Peterson, Sara Groves). Fans can now hear the debut single "Broken," which is currently going for adds at radio. Click here to listen.

Norman's music provides a common ground for the songwriter and the listener to collaborate in a discourse on life's curious details, and how those day-to-day unknowns play in the greater mystery of faith.

"The last few years have been pretty intense - a long, slow progression, or digression, into a spiritual desert," Norman remembers, disclosing the process of writing songs in the dark of the desert. "I struggled to write anything hopeful. But I wanted to be true to the season I was in, so I simply wrote about the hopelessness I was experiencing."

With the same transparency that has attracted listeners to his lyrics for nearly two decades, Norman admits, "My tendency is to allow the darkness to override the hope I have in Christ. A few months prior to recording I experienced an intense season of recovery and renewal. I finished nearly all of the songs after the recovery process. So you have desperation and recovery - darkness and light - represented within the same song."

A touching contrast evidenced throughout the eleven-song track list, and especially affective when heard within the brief parameters of individual songs, he says the end result is perhaps the most unique offering of his career.

As a husband to Roshare, his wife of nine years, and dad to Smith, 5, and Miller, 3, Bebo's perspectives have broadened dramatically since he first graced the music scene as a post-collegiate bachelor. Perspectives, he says, that poignantly color the hopeless to hopeful songs on Lights of Distant Cities.

About Bebo Norman:
Norman's 1999's national debut, Ten Thousand Days, landed Norman on the cover of CCM-a rare honor for a new artist. The follow-up, Big Blue Sky, was voted No. 1 Christian album of 2001 by the editors at Amazon.com. Myself When I Am Real (2002) earned seven Dove Award nods and charted the defining hit, "Great Light of the World." Recent projects Try (2004) and Between the Dreaming and the Coming True (2006) continued the steady climb, the latter gaining a near-perfect score at ChristianMusicToday.com, which called it "his best." In 2007, Norman partnered with Seattle's BEC Recordings to release his first Christmas project that garnered another Dove nomination. In 2008, Bebo Norman released another critically acclaimed project (self-titled) receiving such reviews as "…feels like the beginning of a vibrant new chapter in an already distinguished career" (Billboard). In 2010, Bebo received a Dove Award for "Inspirational Recorded Song" for his song "The Only Hope" from his self-titled project. Norman resides in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife and two children and is a Compassion International artist.

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For more info on Bebo Norman visit the JFH Artists Database.