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BiTS: You suggest on the notes with the album that there were some restrictions that were
placed upon you. Can you be more precise about what they were?

IB: Well, I mean, they were there because they wanted to be. The word was put out and the
people that were interested participated, and the people that did not, didn't, and the chaplains
themselves encouraged certain people they thought were
the strongest singers because it's a massive population and
it's a massive campus, and there are dozens of different
services across the campus. And you know, yes, there is
artistry, supreme artistry in what they do. And I can say
that recently we did a record in the South as well, and in
the process of doing that record had the opportunity and
the pleasure to visit many different churches and yet I

found that many of them were not what maybe people
FB at the time of the disturbances
often associate or expect with gospel music from America.
So some of them were quite lacklustre really, restrained
and lacklustre. So to hear these men and not knowing what we would find and then to hear
these men singing in a way that I think is hard to transcend, you know, they've reached that
point many of them where I believe all great
art exists, which is the state of transcendence
where there is no competition. It's pointless
to try to compare Billie Holiday to Nina
Simone to Bob Dylan. I mean, there's a point
where on certain performances, people reach
this transcendent place where there's only
beauty. There's no competition and these
men have done that. It's incredible. I mean,
some of the voices, you can't sing better than
they're singing. It's not a competition, but you
can't transcend it. You can be different. You
can be maybe as good. You can reach that

same point of where you just feel it in your
chest or in your gut, or, you know, certainly
in your heart. And at the end of this, this
recording took place on the day of the
Grammys this year, and instead of going to
the Grammys, I went there on these red-eye
flights and drove those few hours and not knowing what I would find, and at the end I told
them, these performances are better than anything that's going to happen on the Grammys
tonight. And again, not a competition, just that they needed to know how good what they did
was and how beautiful it was and how much value it had because it does.

BiTS: Now I gather this was mixed race with the prison approval.

IB: Yes, it was. I mean, often there's not so much integration still to this day and some of that's
based on different denominations of faith as well. But this was integrated, and you know, for
whatever reasons initially, I'd say just kind of performance anxiety and normal things that go
on with artists, at first people were a little shy and reluctant and took a little ice breaking of
the first courageous person to step up and do an acappella song in front of a room full of around
30 other people, some of whom they knew well and some of whom they didn't know. But once