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record deal because we didn’t have a group, so that was crushing for me. Shortly after that, which was 1994, at the end
of 1995, I started another group called The True Believers. I started the group, we rehearsed for seven months before
we did a show and we then did our first four shows and then we cut a five song demo and we took that to Blackberry
Records. I asked Melvin and Doug Williams to give me another shot and they knew what I could do and I told them
that what had happened in the past wasn’t my fault. The Williams Brothers were the owners of Blackberry Records and
they knew my work and what I had to offer and they gave me a shot. So we cut our first national record with Blackberry
and it turned out that the hit song from the album ‘Don’t Count Me Out’ was ‘Ooh Wee Another Blessing’ and that is
when my gospel career launched as my own entity, this
was my band, this is my group, this is my organisation.
When I first started the band, I was a guitarist, and going
through members I ended up singing background vocals
and playing guitar and in 1998/1999 I was forced to
become one of the lead singers because the lead singers
weren’t showing up for rehearsals and we were getting
ready to cut our live album ‘Live At Home With Family
And Friends’. We rehearsed for eight months every
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday for that live album.
Melvin and Doug would be there on Tuesdays and
Thursdays and they were watching me drill the band and
singing the songs and they would ask where the lead
singers were and I had to say I didn’t know and that they
wouldn’t come to rehearsals. So Melvin said I should
sing my own songs, as he had watched me deliver them,
but I told him I didn’t want to be a lead singer and that
I didn’t want to be out front, I wanted to play my guitar.
He told me the recording would be in two months and © Mike Stephenson
asked who was going to deliver the songs as he needed
a record that was going to sell. So I sang my own songs
and became the lead singer of the group True Believers. So here I am singing and playing. So I sang my songs on that
album and those songs became highly requested songs like ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’, ‘Don’t Count Me Out’, ‘Rescue
Me’ and the list goes on. I wrote all the songs and back then I was writing the whole record and I wrote about ninety
nine per cent of songs on all the True Believers albums. The deal was, I used to teach my cousins the songs and teach
them the punch lines and the delivery spots so I knew what to do, but I didn’t want the responsibility of singing out
front, but it kinda fell in my lap anyway.

From that, in 2002 is when I left the group as an active member. I owned the group and I owned the name of the group
and I started being an inactive member; it meant I didn’t have to go on the road, I don’t have to sing, I don’t have to go
to rehearsals, but I’m a member so I still get paid, So the group was on the road without me and I was finding them
singers and guitar players, whatever, to keep them singing because I didn’t have to go on the road but I still got paid.
Once the group realised what an inactive member meant, three years later they quit. So when I left the group I went to
the Williams Brothers as a guitar player and background singer. For me, the reason I left the group is because we had
a hit song and the guys in the group were part of it, but never believed that one day it would work, so when it worked
it freaked them out. They were scared, they were afraid to leave home and afraid to talk on the radio and afraid to shake
hands and be a public figure. I was born for that, so it got frustrating and I couldn’t get the guys to do radio interviews
and meet reporters and stuff, so it was going to crumble in a bad way. So before I watched it crumble, I came up with
a unique way that it would resolve itself by me leaving as an active member, because for two years I was the face of the
group. The guys wanted to go to their hotel rooms after driving for ten hours and sleep, but I would go out and sign
CD’s and shake hands and have pictures taken and stuff. So when I left the group, I knew they wasn’t going to do it and
I knew it was slowly going to dissolve, but with the people knowing that I was still the foundation of the camp, when
it was resolved, that would leave space for me to go back one day and pick it up.

So I left the group and toured with the Williams Brothers until they decided that they were going to come off the road
full time. I was with them from 2002 to 2007, which was five solid years of touring. I started writing songs for them
and also became a session guitar player and coproducer on some of their records. Once you become a band member and
you have the gift of writing and producing, anybody that records on Blackberry Records, you get a shot at placing songs
on artists’ albums so I got songs placed on Bishop Neal Rosen’s album, The Texas Boys album and so many other artists
that recorded for Blackberry and I also played guitar on a lot of those records. For me, leaving the True Believers,
knowing they were not at the status of wanting to go further, which I was working for, I got with a unit that was going
to put me in the light and to help me grow. A lot of people couldn’t understand how you leave from owning a group

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