“God Makes a Way,” a new ecumenical album of worship music from Oregon Catholic Press aims to bring inspiration to a wide array of listeners with a melding of genres and musicians—including Grammy Award-winning gospel artists.
Echo Harbor Worship, the collective behind the album, is part of a new music label birthed from a vision stretching back to the beginning days of OCP, the largest Catholic music publishing company in the world.
“Our roots go back to that, to stand up against what is wrong,” said Tom Booth, a Tucson-based musician and composer who began working 30 years ago with OCP, which was founded to combat anti-Catholicism from the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s.
After the Second Vatican Council, amid the Liturgical Movement, OCP began publishing Church music as a form of evangelization and catechesis, later expanding into contemporary genres. The label Via Cantus was founded in 2023 to reach Spanish-language audiences with Catholic worship music, leading to the founding of Echo Harbor under Booth last year.
“We want to be an echo of the word of God,” Booth said, “and Harbor is a place of safety, of depth. The water to me also symbolizes baptism.”
To create the label’s debut album, OCP hired the evangelical musician Chris Estes to help create a team of artists who could commit to a musical project Booth described as “excellent and beautiful and true and good.”
In a providential turn, Estes was also acquainted with Houghton, leading to a major collaboration on the Echo Harbor album’s title track between him, Tower of Power, and the Grammy-winning organist Cory Henry. The song was originally written by Booth and Castillo, with later additions from Houghton.
Booth also dug into his own reservoir of musical connections, dating back to his days as a budding musician in Arizona working in a variety of genres, including during the heyday of funk and contemporary gospel music. Among his collaborators were Eddie James (of Phoenix Mass Choir fame), seven-time Grammy Award-winner Israel Houghton, and Emilio Castillo of Tower of Power.
“A lot of this has just been a big circle,” said Booth. “Only God could do this, bring this—bring us—together… my love of gospel, just to bring all that beautiful gifting and incredible tradition into what we're doing.”
The “God Makes a Way” album also features Catholic worship mainstays Josh Blakesley, Sarah Kroger, Francesca LaRosa, and John Finch, as well as several others recruited by Booth and Estes.
“I feel like it's a new time for all of us. It's a new time in the Church,” Booth said of the unconventional display of denominational, genre, and ethnic diversity on the new record.
“There's a need and the Spirit will fill that need. I think a song brings people together like food, and we are hard-pressed right now to see and experience unity anywhere.”
Booth says the work of Echo Harbor has just begun, with a songwriting camp scheduled for this month in Southern California that is expected to produce new music for the label, which will release its second studio album next spring. A live album is scheduled for release in October.
The group is also working with national Catholic youth ministry organizations, including a planned album in collaboration with Life Teen. Echo Harbor musicians will also be on stage at the National Catholic Youth Conference this November in Indianapolis—where Pope Leo XIV will give a virtual address.
“Some might say what we’re doing is very eclectic. I would say it's human,” Booth said of the new label, which plans to bring on more artists in the future.
“The human experience is diverse and multifaceted and we're a choir. Every voice can be a part of that choir, so in our small way, we’re trying to try and do what we're supposed to do.”
Nate Tinner-Williams is co-founder and editor of Black Catholic Messenger.
