London-based singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist OWEN DEACON spoke to Tony Cummings about his music and ministry.

Albums by Owen Deacon don't come along every day. His debut, 'My God Mon Ami', was released at the end of 2000 after four years of solid work. Now there is another album, 'Crossover', to be investigated. Like its predecessor, it's a hard to categorise project, acoustic-driven R&B gospel but with reggae and jazz overtones it shows again that this singer/songwriter and multi instrumentalist is one of the most underrated talents on the whole UK scene. I asked the resident of Harlesdon, north west London, why he'd called his second album 'Crossover'? He replied, "It's based on the idea of Moses crossing the Red Sea and it applies itself to a nowadays context. A lot of people ask me whether the 'Crossover' title refers to crossing over from gospel to the mainstream marketplace but that's not really the point of it. But if it does cross over I'll be happy! The intention was to make an album that would not only spark people's imagination but would question people as well and also encourage.

Owen peers at me through his dark glasses and then continues, "We live in a day where there's a lot of discouragement about because of so many different factors and especially our youth are suffering. Some of them are at school leaving age and not knowing what they are going to do with their lives, some people have left university and they are out in the real world now, facing it first hand and finding it isn't all it was cracked up to be. You know, we are making decisions to move on and some people are in marriages and it's not going well and they need to know how to get together. Some people are divorced, unfortunately, and want to know how to go on from there. Basically, the message of the album is, if you are in the right frame of mind whatever bridge you got to cross you can cross it."

42 year old Owen admits to being a musical eclectic and this certainly comes through on 'Crossover'. He said, "Whenever I wrote songs for 'Crossover', every time I had a seed of an idea I would go with the feeling of it. So if it was like a reggae feeling I would use that reggae influence, not try and water it down but actually have it there. Or if it was more of a jazz flavour then I would use a jazz flavour, get the guitar going. I had some really top quality session musicians like Paul Powell who has played for Mica Paris and some guys from Gabrielle's band, Dave Phillips and Derek Taylor on bass and producing. So I got in all these guys and then we just went for it, whatever sound was going for, we just went for it."

Owen spoke about the differences between 'Crossover' and 'My God Mon Ami'. "With 'My God Mon Ami', we didn't have the facilities to record it, we didn't have a 24 track studio so it took a lot longer to get a mix sounding half way decent than it would have done in a proper studio so a lot more care and attention went into the first album because of like the limitations we had making it. The second album we acquired a 24 track studio and so making it was a lot easier. You know, we didn't have to worry about annoying little noises that we had to get rid of!"

'Crossover' is being distributed into Christian retail by Spirit Music and Owen is taking every opportunity he can to promote his second self-financed album. "I want to play everywhere, anywhere that will have me!," he said ruefully. Anyone who's seen this powerful musical communicator with his acoustic guitar and his hoarsely soulful voice will know that he is not short on musical ability. Let's just hope we don't have to wait four years for another album.