Dedicated Men of Zion dive deep in new album

Written by Eddie Huffman

Church crowds get the spirit when the music brings them closer to Jesus, clapping and stomping and shouting amen. At a big music festival, on the other hand, Jesus may not be the main thing fueling the fervor.

Anthony “Amp” Daniels felt it when he performed gospel music at the 2024 Telluride Blues and Brews Festival in Colorado. He looked out at a crowd drinking and dancing like nothing he’d ever seen in a sanctuary.

“It’s OK with me because it’s all about having a good time, enjoying yourself, enjoying the music,” says Amp, leader of the Dedicated Men of Zion. “Some people are gonna get the message.”

The group continues to reach out to diverse listeners on their new album, Coming Up Through the Years. They bypass the synthesizers and hip-hop beats of contemporary gospel, drawing from a deep well of sacred and secular tradition that dates back to Sam Cooke and the Staple Singers, Memphis and Muscle Shoals.

The Dedicated Men of Zion have spread the message since 2014, when Amp’s mother pushed him out of the nest. He had been singing in church almost since he was old enough to walk, then hit the road with his parents’ group, the Glorifying Vine Sisters and Family.

“My mother said I sang like young people,” Amp says. She told him, “We an old group – you need to go sing with young people.”

The group has changed members several times, but a parent-child pair has remained constant: Amp and his son Antwan. Rounding out the vocal quartet are Tyjon Harris, a cousin, and Marcus Suggs, Amp’s son-in-law.

Different group members take turns on lead vocals.

“We’d all look at each other and say, ‘Who feel like they can do that?’” Antwan says. “We kind of feel the songs out. OK, Pop’s already got three songs – ‘Antwan, this one’s yours.’”

Coming Up Through the Years is the group’s third album and first for the Music Maker Foundation (MMF) label, though they had worked on previous albums with Tim Duffy, MMF’s co-founder and executive director, and co-producer Bruce Watson, a mainstay at Fat Possum Records.

The album cycles through ominous, bluesy numbers (the title track, “Victory”); energetic stompers (“Nobody’s Fault,” “What U Gonna Do”); and slow ballads that are alternately gorgeous (“No Ways Tired”) and foreboding (a cover of Al Green’s “Jesus is Waiting”).

An old-fashioned ribbon microphone captured the group’s heavenly harmonies and call-and-response vocals. Considerable credit for the album’s diversity and feel goes to co-producer Jimbo Mathus, who wrote most of the album’s songs and led a band of funky Mississippi musicians, playing several instruments himself.

Mathus deflects the credit, however: “Amp really took control of that session. Me and the boys had the backbeat – it was no sweat for us. There was just a magical sound in that session. I would say Amp really took the lead on that, and we just followed his lead.”