Grant Frederick can’t handle rap. You’re not going to find any Eminem or OutKast in the CD player of this 16-year-old’s new truck.
Contemporary Christian is more Grant’s speed. The latest Casting Crowns record is in his CD player right now. He can listen to rock a little bit, too. He can take a little country every now and then. He can appreciate classical. He just can’t handle rap.
What Grant can handle — and bang out as good as most anyone in his neck of the woods — is southern gospel. It’s as if he was born for it.
It just took Grant’s parents a few years to get the memo.
There he was all of 3 years old transfixed by whatever it was his mother was doing on that bench at Sparks Gap Baptist Church, Bessemer, in Mud Creek Baptist Association, which happened to be filling in for the regular pianist at the last minute.
“I remember that day really well,” Grant said.
Soon after, he started asking, “Can I? Can I? Can I?”
A year later, when Grant was 4, his parents gave in and allowed him to begin piano lessons at the music preparatory department at Samford University in Birmingham.
Things haven’t sounded the same since.
Music filled the Frederick home, and Grant eventually became the substitute and then the regular pianist and organist at Sparks Gap Baptist. He and his family still attend services there, and he still plays piano at the church when not in concert elsewhere.
Grant still practices once a week at Samford, too, and even got better than his mom. Not that he’ll admit it.
“Well, that’s kind of an awkward question,” Grant said with his trademark humility and a nervous laugh.
His mother, Kim, is more direct. “Oh, yes, he passed me a long time ago,” she said. “He just has that natural ability, where I took lessons for years and it just didn’t come as natural, and he just picked it up.”
Now Grant has his own CD out — “Playing Around,” produced by another famed southern gospel piano prodigy, Andrew Ishee. Not to mention a regular gig with Tuscaloosa-area southern gospel quartet 4given and 88 keys to a future of his choosing, including a “lifelong contract with 4given,” said Steve Lamkin.
“We’re so blessed and thankful to have him with us it’s not even funny,” said Lamkin, the group’s baritone singer and a member of First Baptist Church, Tuscaloosa. “We had prayed so long for a piano player to be able to do what Grant can do.”
Their prayers were answered when Ishee called Lamkin and said, “I got you a piano player.” So a tryout was set up for Grant.
“It wasn’t much of a tryout,” Lamkin said. “It took us about a minute to say, ‘Yeah, you can never leave.’”
That’s the sort of thing that makes Grant’s dad, Mark, beam.
“As a dad, I’m just thankful for the opportunity that our church and others in the area have given him,” he said. “He’s had a lot of good mentors that have crossed his path at an early age and I’m thankful for those. My prayer is that as he gets older, others will be placed in his path that would help his future decisions.”
Those decisions will undoubtedly involve performing but not for his glory.
“I just always try to make it clear to people that it’s not about me,” Grant said. “I enjoy playing and I hope people enjoy my music, but more importantly, I hope I lead them in worship and getting closer to the Lord.”
For more information about Grant’s music, visit www.4givenmusic.com.
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