Reviewed by Dave Brassington

This is Kenny's third Christmas release, I loved "Christmas With Kenny And Dolly!" from the '80s, and his Word release from the late '90s was in my opinion a pretty commendable effort, seeming to come at a time in Kenny's often troubled personal life, when he seemed to have come to some sort of public Christian commitment. So what is wrong with this? In my opinion, a lot! To begin with the CD has only nine tracks, making it very short running, quite unusual for a Gaither music release. The album title indicates a live recording, well I can only find one live track! I am rather tempted to think this is sort of a trailer for a DVD, which I think would be better value. Of the nine tracks, we get yet more versions of such well known Christmas chestnuts as "Silent Night", "Away In A Manger", "O Holy Night" and "O Come All Ye Faithful", some in a medley version. Frankly there must be literally hundreds of better recordings of these well loved carols, so it leaves me with the impression that this is almost some throw away Christmas effort, very unusual for the normally meticulous Kenny who has often gone to great lengths to find material he wanted to record. To compound matters even more, we get a re-recording of Mark Lowry's classic "Mary Did You Know", a song he had on his previous Christmas solo album. His earlier version is much better! NOT recommended as either a worthwhile Christmas album or representing the quality styling of music normally associated with this fine artist.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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