CeCe Winans

by Deborah Evans Price

It’s no secret that CeCe Winans has one of the most phenomenal voices in any genre of music, but as anyone who has had the pleasure of chatting with the GRAMMY-winning artist will tell you, she’s also got one of the best laughs in the business. It’s a warm, infectious sound that just bubbles with joy – just like CeCe herself.
  
It’s a breezy spring morning in Tennessee and CeCe has a lot to be smiling about these days. Her eighth studio album, Thy Kingdom Come, hit the streets April 1st and the long awaited project has already spawned the radio hit Waging War. She’s also reuniting with her brother BeBe to record their first duet album in years.
  
“Time is flying these days. I don’t know why it took so long,” CeCe says when asked what she’s been up to since her last album, Purified, released three years ago. “We’ve been touring with Purified and we were supposed to have this record [Thy Kindgom Come] out last year in the summertime.”
   
When she went in to record, CeCe had intended her new album to be a hymns project, but plans changed after she began recording. “We got into the studio doing the hymns record and we decided to add a few songs,” she explains. “We finished the record and gave it over to [the record labels] EMI and PureSprings and they both looked at me and said, ‘Nah.’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’”
  
Turns out the record company executives were thrilled with the recordings, so much so that they decided there should be two separate records.
  
“They felt like it was almost two records,” says CeCe. “They really wanted the hymns record to be all hymns. So we ended up really almost finishing two records and we’ll release the hymns record later on.”
  
CeCe was happy to put the hymns project on hold because she was so anxious to share the songs on Thy Kingdom Come. “The message is so urgent to get out with the times that we’re living in that I went ahead and decided to do Thy Kingdom Come first,” she says. “It’s a record that’s really for the church and encouraging the church to stand up and be the church. It’s reminding them of the authority we have in Jesus Christ. You can turn on the news and if you’re not planted and really know who you are in God, your heart can fail because we hear about all the college campus shootings and different things like that. I know for me, it just makes me really examine, ‘Am I being the person who’s making a difference?’ As believers, we have to understand the power of prayer and how important for us to be in position and intercede.
  
“Not only is your life and your children’s lives dependent on it, but so many other souls are depending on us to be in our places and doing God’s will on earth because that’s the only way we’re going to really make change and that’s really what this CD is about.”
  
That message is conveyed in the first single, Waging War. “We have to be reminded that we’re in a war and we have to be encouraged to keep fighting a good fight of faith because we really do win,” CeCe says, “but you have to keep fighting. I know for me over the past few years [I’ve felt] just the urgency of being who God called us to be. He said, ‘I’d rather you be hot or cold, lukewarm I’m going to spit you out of my mouth’ and I think a lot of us are living lukewarm lives.”
  
In recording the album, CeCe again worked with some of the industry’s most notable producers such as Tommy Sims and Percy Bady, Luther “Mano” Haynes and Victor and Cedric Caldwell, but she also worked for the first time with her son, Alvin Love III, as a producer. “He wrote some on Purified, but this time he wrote a song and also co-produced. That was kind of funny having to do what my son told me to do. It was kind of weird, but we made it,” she says with that signature laugh.
  
CeCe will also be working with family again soon as she and brother BeBe are teaming again for another duet album. “We just both felt like it was time,” she says. “He was ready. I’ve been ready, but again our schedules have been so crazy and so we just decided ‘You know what? We’re just going to have to make the time for it.’ So that’s what we’re doing.”
 
When asked who will produce the new effort, CeCe responds, “We have not decided that. We’ve talked to a few people. We definitely know we want to work with Keith Thomas, so he’s starting the first few tracks. It feels like coming home.”

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About the Writer

Deborah Evans Price is a Nashville-based journalist who has spent the past 11 years covering country and Christian music for Billboard magazine, and has contributed stories on everyone from Alan Jackson to Bon Jovi to Avril Lavigne.

Deborah has received the "Outstanding Mainstream Contribution to Gospel Music" award from the Gospel Music Association. Considered a key analyst in the music field, Deborah has been interviewed by MSNBC, CNN, CMT, New York Times, Today Show, and ABC Primetime, among other outlets. She's served three years as judge on TBN's "Exalting Him Christian Artist Talent Search," where some say she's become the "Paula Abdul" of the Christian competition.

A Virginia native, Deborah grew up on Air Force bases in New Jersey, Georgia, Arkansas, and Japan. She and husband Gary have been married 21 years and have a 16-year-old son Trey. They reside outside Nashville and attend Mill Creek Baptist Church.