Regina Vandereijk: ‘Bring out the Love/Bring out the Faith/Bring out the Healing/Oh flow down Grace…’
By David McGee
‘…gospel isn’t polished—it’s real, and it carries the power of salvation on dusty streets and old recordings’
THE LORD IS THERE
Regina Vanderjeijk
Royal Increase Music
Born and raised in Western North Carolina and steeped in Appalachian styles of roots music, singer-songwriter Regina Vandereijk nowadays makes her home in Gouda, Netherlands, where she and her Dutch husband, Willo, lead a discipleship called Royal Increase Music (“a collective of international artists, spanning USA, UK, NL to Africa, dedicated to following Jesus. Connected as a creative family, on a mission with one goal: to see His kingdom come and His will be done,” says the website about the collective’s purpose) and where Regina pursues her calling as a spiritual artist seeking a greater understanding of God’s purpose in her life. Although her music is being characterized as “pop-worship,” it’s more the latter than the former of that hybrid; in feel and execution it’s also more Americana, and singer-songwriter, as you might expect from a North Carolina native who grew up admiring, well, singer-songwriters and elegant songcraft by the likes of Paul McCartney (in an online interview that has now disappeared she mentions Paul specifically and adds “more than the Beatles”), and in her genre, Josh Garrells. Much like the emotional weight her husky voice projects, the soundscape backing her, with its hints at mountain music, traditional country, country blues, Praise & Worship styles, and, on occasion jubilee anthems (most dramatically on “Mighty Waters,” the powerhouse showcase moment on the lightning strike that was her 2024 EP, Love Called Her Home and featured here along with other EP tunes on the deluxe 14-song edition of The Lord is There) is given heft by acoustic and electric guitars; piano, keyboards, organ, Mellotron, banjo, accordion, drums and various percussion, strings (cello, violins, fiddle), plus a hallelujah chorus of background singers. “Our musical influences are as diverse as our backgrounds, from folk to soul, gospel to country, we sing out the cry of our hearts: to know God, be known by Him. To know one another in Him, and make Him known.”
Indeed, there’s a deep, deep blues here with little more than acoustic slide and moaning organ backing a deliberate, pain-wracked reading of “Victory,” a song resonating with history, as Ms. Vandereijk writes in her YouTube note on its origins: While arranging ‘Victory Freedom,’ I was praying for direction and felt led to research early gospel street evangelists. That’s when I discovered Blind Willie Johnson’s beautiful 1927 recording, ‘Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.’ His raw, Holy Spirit-filled blues deeply influenced the mood and tone of this song. His life and music reminded me that gospel isn’t polished—it’s real, and it carries the power of salvation on dusty streets and old recordings.
‘Victory (Freedom),’ inspired by Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground.’ Regina Vandereijk, from The Lord Is There
This album, and the preceding EP, are the first fruits of a journey Ms. Vandereijk began in earnest during a five-year stretch in the first decade of the 2000s when she moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, which, apart from its flourishing military, high-tech and defense industries, is known as a hub for Evangelical Christians and other Christian organizations.
“I had moved to the city to study with a voice teacher and to be near my ex-boyfriend, who was stationed at a nearby Army base,” she recounted in a podcast posted on her website. “Over the five years I lived there, I broke up with my ex, focused seriously on my singing career, but most importantly responded to the Gospel, repented of my sins, was baptized and began walking closely with Jesus. ‘Open Up the Doors’ [Ed, note: a song on The Lord is There] is the first song I wrote after I got born again. In some ways it feels like the oldest and the youngest of them all. I wrote it in Colorado Springs sometime between the Fall of 2008 and the summer of 2009. It’s all about deepening your personal connection with God through His word and helping you strengthen your relationship with Him.”
“Open Up the Doors” is the penultimate among 14 songs on the deluxe edition of The Lord is There, all written (nine) or co-written (five) by Regina, including two with her husband, Willo Vandereijk, all advancing counsel on deepening one’s relationship with God through His word and helping one strengthen his/her relation with Him. Regina herself has described the album as holding “pieces of my testimony” even as it describes a “journey through scriptures” reflecting Ephesians 5:19’s command to “sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” What Regina doesn’t say, but illustrates by her art here, is how she is following the command of the Apostle Paul, who wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians while imprisoned (“an ambassador in bonds,” as he refers to himself), to wit: “I therefore beseech you to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye were called.” And so she follows Paul’s command, summarizing the aim of her worthy walk in the heartfelt plea of a chorus: “Bring out the Love/Bring out the Faith/Bring out the Healing/Oh flow down Grace…”
‘Open Up the Doors,’ Regina Vandereijk, from The Lord Is There
Regardless of a listener’s faith, or lack thereof, it seems impossible for a listener, any listener, not to be moved, at least to contemplation, by the artist’s powerful lyrics, so rooted in Biblical allusions and lent added weight by her astonishing vocal command—think the conviction and expressiveness of Mahalia Jackson, CeCe Winans, and not least of all Wynonna Judd–and her unshakeable belief in God’s goodness and mercy, citing Biblical proof for same.
The journey begins with “Always,” bursting out of the gate at a furious, fiddle-fired galloping pace before Regina enters with the repeated chant of “Always, always, always is the name of the Lord,” and continues on to enumerate God’s unwavering blessings: “Always faithful, always healer…always gracious, always truthful, always loving…always righteous, always Holy, always merciful…” while interjecting her unconditional confidence in His promises: “No, my foot won’t slip/for he watches over all my steps/always guiding, always leading/He keeps me from harm.” This sets the stage for one of the album’s most ambitious, and longest, tracks, the 7:24 “Wave of Mercy,” which rises from half-whispered verses with understated but jittery underpinnings to rousing anthemic choruses reflecting on everything from the Creation to Jesus’s crucifixion to God’s relationship to his Son, and acknowledging the toll it took on both: “And the Father never forcing/with the spirit hovering in love/has a plan to be unraveled/knowing very well what it would cost.” Here, as elsewhere, the roiling background is defined by strings, Rhodes, thundering percussion, organ, guitars and a Karl Jenkins-like mammoth vocal ensemble.
‘Wave of Mercy,’ Regina Vandereijk, from The Lord Is There
The notion of being moved to contemplation by these songs derives from the artist’s gift for the artist’s gift for blurring the line between outwardly spiritual discourses on her life’s journey to faith and blunt confessions of coming into the light from dark personal trials. That is to say, even non-believers can embrace the messages here as diary-like entries baring the most personal of frailties and fears and celebrating the road to healing. As the astute Christian music critic Rob Allwright notes in his perceptive review of The Lord is There on his One Man in The Middle website: As with many of the songs on this album there are deeper dual meanings, or things that Regina is trying to pull out. One of these is of humanity formed by God, aware of His wonders but unaware of the reality of Him.
Those “deeper dual meanings” gives us stirring verses such as:
She didn’t go home because it hurt too bad
Everywhere she went were memories of him
And she longed for the day
When it all would go away
And she’d go back to being herself again
She hid from the pain of her past mistakes
And lived in fear that they’d all be found out
And she wandered from her home, traveling far alone
Never giving love a chance to bring her back
(from the title track)
‘Love Called Her Home,’ Regina Vandereijk, title track from the new album
And…
All the pain
In the absence
Of a friend
To call my name
But, I’ve waited in the darkness
Like a candle in a cave
You’re the light never dimming
A beacon in the wake of a storm over waters daring to be tamed…
(from the brooding, piano-driven ballad, “You’re the Light”)
And, the album’s most majestic outpouring, with the most subtle, solemn organ, piano and understated percussion framing an epic vocal performance, so deeply committed and commanding it takes the breath away: “Mighty Waters”:
Midnight Moon over Tennessee
Blacktop road stretches out for me
Take me home where I belong
I’m bound and broken
Lord, make me strong
Muddy Waters float away my fears
Drown my sorrows, wash away my tears
Mighty Water revive my soul
Refresh my spirit
Lord, make me whole
‘Mighty Waters,’ Regina Vandereijk, from The Lord Is There
In her note on the YouTube video, Regina reflects on this towering number’s origin and meaning, to wit: “Many years ago, when my sister was still in her early twenties, she wrote ‘Mighty Waters’ during a long midnight drive back to her own home and work after a weekend at our parents’ house. That night, she felt a deep sense of homesickness. She thought she was longing for the place where we grew up. But as she wrote the song, she began to realize that her deepest longing wasn’t for any place here on earth. She discovered that her true home was somewhere else — far beyond this life, across what she called ‘the eternal waters of God’s glory.’”
Two outstanding avenues into the spiritual side of these songs exist: one is Allwright’s above-mentioned review, which strikes me as definitive; the other is the “devotional podcasts” Ms. Vandereijk has posted on Spotify in which she explains the animating event inspiring each song, the Biblical basis for each song in the most personal terms, and the issues the song addresses. In her own words, she explains: “In each episode I explore the Bible verses, the personal experiences, and encounters with God that shaped my music.” These aren’t quips; most run a half-hour or more and are deeply entrenched in Bible history. At the same time, Vandereijk doesn’t deny the “dual deeper meanings” Allwright referenced: towards the end of the podcast unpacking the song “Two Become One” she notes with a laugh: “If you love country wedding bands and Southern weddings, ‘Two Become One’ will likely speak to you stylistically; if you do dream about the wedding feast where the lamb and the bride and the groom sit at the table and eat with the lamb and the lamb finally drinks from the cup, this song captures that longing.”
There was a moment in the late ‘60s-early ‘70s when a flurry of “dual purpose” messages rooted in spirituality struck a responsive chord commercially: the Edwin Hawkins Singers, “Oh Happy Day” (a 1967 arrangement of a 1775 hymn by Philip Doddriddge); the Beatles, “Let It Be”; Simon & Garfunkel, “Bridge Over Troubled Water”; Blind Faith, “In the Presence of the Lord”; Norman Greenbaum, on a lighter note, “Spirit in the Sky’; In original songs, especially “Mighty Waters,” being equal parts theology exegeses and challenging existential discourses, Regina Vandereijk offers the promise of reinvigorating rock ‘n’ roll’s dormant gospel foundation and opening the door for more in our beleaguered nation to really get over. This is truly healing music. Clara Ward would certainly know whereof I speak. Who knows? Maybe I’ve heard the future of gospel and its name is Regina Vandereijk.
