Kevin Downswell stronger with double album and new baby girl

Considered by many to be a leading light in the gospel arena, Stronger singer Kevin Downswell has been working assiduously behind the scenes and is ready to unveil his album Grace, plus a bonus album, The Shift, on July 1. Last Wednesday, he invited the media for a listening at Gussie Clarke’s Anchor Recording Studio in Kingston where he played tracks from both discs and shared some of the personal inspiration behind a few of the songs.

The title track from Grace is his favourite, and coming high on the list of reasons is the fact that his daughter – a blessing for which he and his wife were praying – is featured, singing on point in her adorable, baby voice, and her name, Carissa, is Hebrew for grace. In between songs, he shared how his wife called him and asked if he was sitting down before she gave him the news of her pregnancy. “I almost lost it,” the first-time father said as he gushed about his little girl.

“This album was a journey for me,” Downswell stated in an interview following the listening. “And I did grow from the first to the last track. It’s like you watch yourself changing and it’s just amazing. The album took roughly four years and between that four-year span Kevin at year one was a different Kevin at year four.”

It was in 2019 that Downswell started on his sojourn to Grace, with the plan in motion to release it the following year. But along the way he was commanded by a God, who he speaks about in friendly very language – his ‘Daddy’ – to park the album and focus on other things, which included the online ministry with his wife during the pandemic and subsequently his baby.

“I didn’t understand what God was telling me at the time,” he said about the instructions at the end of 2021 to lock down everything for the next year. “But … I am coming out of a bloodline where we [men] absent. So when people called, we busy … mi busy taking care of my newborn.”

He admitted that a double disc was not his original intent, but it all worked out just fine, as he presented two albums with totally different flavours, but both of which beckon towards an international platform.

“God sometimes asks us to just give Him what yuh have. ‘Give me this, give me that, don’t be so perfect because if you perfect everything in life you perfect me out of it.’ Most of the songs I did for Grace, my voice was almost okay, but for The Shift, my voice was nada … nothing, it gone. And so The Shift is like you want to get away from the noise, but Grace is the main album we have been working on is really noise ... and the song Grace is the centrepiece of the album,” was Downswell’s personal critique of his offerings.

He talks quite a bit about using his music to influence people in a positive way and living his purpose to reach and reclaim lost souls through his music. Admitting, however, that there is no huge marketing and advertising budget in place to play their part in ensuring that his music is heard, Downswell, whose mantra is “you must allow God to do what Him a do”, remains undaunted.

“The Bible says ... let me paraphrase …. the world will love the world. Whatever is not of it, it will eventually shun.Every song was written for a particular purpose and intention and if that means that one person inna China siddung across him bed lock up inna him bedroom and hear the message and it change him life, then that is mission accomplished. When we dropped Stronger we had absolutely no marketing campaign. People come to mi and seh ‘Bro, mi love yuh big song.’ But when you were telling me that Stronger was released one year ago. Call Me, the song we did with Rodney [Bounty Killer] that is also an anthem,” Downswell said.

He is comfortable that having thrown the discs into the hands of God and said “Daddy, this one is yours,” the albums will do their job.

“We don’t have the big money and resource but we have the one who owns all the resources,” the minister of the gospel declared.

yasmine.peru@gleanerjm.com