10/16: Amy Grant

The old Doris Day chestnut Sentimental Journey will not be among the tunes Amy Grant sings when she takes the stage at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix on Oct. 16. However, it perfectly sums up Grant's emotional state of mind.

Twenty years ago, the singer-songwriter released Lead Me On, a landmark album in the contemporary Christian music industry. To celebrate the anniversary, a deluxe two-disc edition recently appeared in stores.

Now, Grant has reunited with seven musicians from her 1988 touring band to revisit the material. The 20-city tour kicks off with the Phoenix concert.

"I feel like I'm going to this really cool family reunion," Grant says while driving to a business meeting in her Nashville hometown. "We literally get to go back emotionally to a younger, more innocent time. It's really energized all of us."

Surprisingly, the album that inspired the tour isn't the biggest seller in Grant's deep catalog of material. That would be Heart In Motion, her 1991 release that sold more than 5 million copies and turned the singer into a mainstream pop star. Bubbly, effervescent singles such as Baby Baby, Good for Me and Every Heartbeat dominated radio for months.

The bold Lead Me On was an altogether darker and more candid album. Rather than merely focusing on praise and worship, Grant created a disc that dealt with many of the gray areas of life and faith in such songs as Shadows and What About the Love.

The self-penned Faithless Heart is perhaps the disc's most nakedly honest tune. In the song, the narrator discusses the temptations that exist outside her marriage. "It scares me through and through / Cause I've a man at home who needs me to be true" goes the verse.

"I never, ever did that song live, but I am going to on this tour," says Grant, 47. "That one struck a little too close to the bone at the time, but I think if you're going to say something, you might as well be honest."

The honesty paid off: CCM Magazine, which covers the Christian-music industry, named the disc the top Christian album of all time. It also won honors from the Grammys and the Gospel Music Association, which gave it the Dove Award for album of the year.

"I didn't work any harder on that record than I did on any of the others," Grant says. "But the attention to detail in the production, the songs . . . it was like we were creatively fired on all pistons. It was a wonderful experience."

She hopes the experience translates to the live show. With the exception of harmonica player Terry McMillan, who died in 2007, and ex-husband Gary Chapman, she was able to regroup all the musicians from the 1988 tour.

No one hesitated before signing on. Guitarist Chris Rodriguez, who worked with Grant on two world tours, remembers he was hiking at Point Dume in Malibu when a text message arrived on his cellphone.

"I hadn't heard from Amy in ages, and out of the blue I get this message saying that she's doing a reunion tour for Lead Me On and would I be interested," he recalls. "I wrote back three words: 'Yes, yes, yes.' "

He says there is a reason people were quick to get on board.

"Amy's the best," he says. "People who work with her love her. She's generous and thoughtful, but she's not a pushover. She's the kind of person that the band will call on their day off and say, 'Hey, we're going bowling: You wanna come?' Not everyone you get to work with is like that."

Rodriguez tours with both Keith Urban and Kenny Loggins, so he has been doing what he calls "Amy homework" while on the road. In other words, listening to tapes from 1988 and relearning material he used to know by heart.

"Some things I'm very familiar with," he says. "Other things I forgot that we did a certain way. It will be interesting on certain songs to see if we stay true to the original and do it big '80s style, or if we rework them more organically."

With Grant, you imagine she'll opt for the latter. Despite the nostalgic nature of the tour, she seems like a very forward-thinking person. She signed with EMI last year and has written several songs. She plans to go into the studio in January to cut an album.

"I just left a meeting with (label president) Peter York," she says, laughing. "I played him a batch of 15 songs, and he liked four of them. You think that would be horrible, but it's not. It's great having somebody setting such a high bar. It's been a really fun, engaging experience."

Still, that's the future. Up next is a quick visit to the past.

"Going over this music, I remembered a part of myself that was gone," says Grant, who has been married to singer Vince Gill for eight years. "It's been lovely. This isn't a show for people to come to, thinking, 'Can she sing as high as she used to?' Well, I probably can't. But I do hope they are reminded of how they felt at that time in their life."

For her, the past ties into the present.

"Sometimes when you look back in a really constructive way," she says, "it can really re-ignite your fire for the future."

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