Catholic sings his fiery faith

Musician crafted his songs in front of the Blessed Sacrament

Scott Kelly

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Calgary

In a bid to evangelize the world, Calgary singer/songwriter Scott Kelly has put together a CD filled with Catholic theology.

Seven Times Seven is a compilation of 16 largely pro-life and pro-marriage songs, which Kelly says are rooted in his prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and in Pope John Paul II's call for a new evangelization.

He seems proudest of his pro-life anthem Let Them Breathe, but he says the whole album is "subliminal Christian rock.

"Those songs, a lot of them, were born through the 1990s right in front of the Blessed Sacrament," Kelly said April 11 in a telephone interview from Calgary. "What inspired me was just this love of the Eucharist."

The 48-year-old father of two began playing guitar and writing songs in his teens. He was a bar band rocker until the late 1980s when he returned to his Catholic roots and began doing his bit to evangelize southern Alberta.

Secular Franciscan

A secular Franciscan since 1991, Scott is involved in various Church ministries, including service to the poor, a folk choir and Catholic broadcasting. For seven years Kelly has broadcast the Immaculate Heart Radio show on AM 1140 on Saturdays at 9 p.m. He has also served as youth minister and was the lead guitarist for St. Michael's Life Teen Band for two and a half years.

An accomplished visual artist whose art is carried by several galleries, Kelly was once the subject of a CBC Moral Divide documentary when he painted hidden Christian messages into the mural he was commissioned to do at Calgary's Cash Casino.

He worked on Seventy Times Seven with local producer Demetrio Navarro for three years, but began composing the songs that make up the album some 17 years ago.

It began to take shape when he served as resident caretaker at St. Anthony's Church in Drumheller for five years in the early 1990s. "I remember praying to the Lord to always keep me close to him in the Blessed Sacrament and I ended up with the keys to the church," he recalled.

Over the years he served as caretaker for various other churches in Calgary.

"So I used to sit in there with the guitar and sing to the Lord. A lot of songs would come to me and I started to write them down.

"Eventually I began to carry a small personal tape recorder to capture these ideas because I found they slipped away," he recounted.

"I ended up with a huge library of tapes of fragments of songs. I even started to dream songs. I would wake up in the night and stumble to the tape recorder and hum the melodies into the tape recorder."

Homilies spark

He also got inspiration from homilies while attending Mass.

"Then I realized that the Lord was giving me a lot of inspiration in this area. I love music and I love songwriting. As I was leaving the original band I was in, even the last year or so that I was in it, the songs were becoming more and more Christian and spiritual."

Kelly also drew inspiration from Pope John Paul II's letter to artists, which he said encouraged him to take a leap of faith and do something.

"When Pope Benedict XVI came out and said we need to present Christ in a new way to the modern world, I thought I should take this music that I love so much and give it to the Lord and pack it with Catholic theology and meaning to help evangelize the people.

"I felt called to be part of the new evangelization and I tried to engage the culture of death.

"That's why I wrote Let Them Breathe which makes a strong statement in that area."

For more information on Kelly's CD and art, visit www.scottkellyartist.com.

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