Connecticut’s J.J. Hairston goes beyond the call of duty when it comes to spreading gospel music.
In addition to writing and recording popular songs in the field with his group Youthful Praise and directing music at the Bloomfield megachurch The First Cathedral, he’s performed “Porgy and Bess” at the Bushnell with the Hartford Symphony and backed Miss Piggy on Lady Gaga’s network TV Christmas special. He even helped an off-key sheriff sing the National Anthem on “Good Morning America.”
On Tuesday night, Oct. 28, Hairston and Youthful Praise perform a big album release concert for its seventh recording, out Tuesday, “I See Victory” on Light Records, as part of the group’s most ambitious national tour yet.
The CD release concert will be held at the same First Cathedral where “I See Victory” was recorded live with a few other famous voices from the gospel world, from Donnie McClurkin to Karen Clark Sheard of the BET reality show “The Sheards.”
The night they recorded was a memorable one, Hairston says in a phone interview. “We had close to 4,000 people there on a Monday,” he says, “which was great.”
He may get close to that number again Tuesday night, thanks in part to still another role: he is the gospel DJ on Hartford’s WZMX Hot 93.7 FM hip hop and R&B station.
When what he calls a “really hard core hip hop” station asked him to be on the air, he says, “I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to introduce a whole new audience to gospel music.”
Hairston has been fitting in “Sunday Praise with J.J. Hairston” on Hot 93.7 amid his other duties for almost a year now, he says, “and the audience has just grown exponentially.”
“People who would normally not go to church or don’t go to church are being exposed to the message through the music. That’s what I thought was the biggest opportunity, which is why I agreed to do it. It wasn’t about money or even the need to increase my name in the state,” Hairston says. “It was more about spreading the message. And I can’t think of an easier or better way to do it than through one of the biggest radio stations in the state.”
Hairston, 40, lives in Seymour with his wife and three children, aged 18 to 4. “But everything I do musically is based out of Hartford,” he says.
The New York native first came to Connecticut at age 13. “My mother was musical director at the church when we lived in Brooklyn, and my grandfather was the pastor,” he says. Growing up in the church, he says, “We were in rehearsals every day.”
But when his stepfather got a job and moved the family, his connection to all that faltered.
“Honestly when we moved to Connecticut, I wasn’t doing music at all initially. We weren’t connected to a church,” Hairston says.
Eventually his mother found Bridgeport’s Turner’s Faith Temple, which already had a dynamic young choir called Teens of TFT.
“I joined it,” Hairston says, “and that choir became Youthful Praise.”
Though the ensemble toured the tri-state area a bit, “there were no records. There was just us singing in church,” he says. But once they started writing original songs that caught on with other choirs, they were on their way.
Particularly because of a song written by founding member Shawn Brown, “Awesome God,” which “became very popular in college and church choirs across the country, but people didn’t know where that song came from.”
Recording it independently changed that, especially after the website GospelFlava.com liked the recording so much, it decided to start its own label and put it out itself in 2001. That label in turn got a distribution deal with well known gospel label Light Records.
“We only pressed 1,000 copies, but once the distribution deal went through, we eventually sold close to 50,000 copies of that CD,” Hairston says. More recently, its last album, “After This,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Gospel Albums Chart in 2012.
Youthful Praise grew in popularity because its original songs were “easily translatable to a lot of church services and choir directors. A lot of choir directors would teach it to their choirs across the country,” Hairston says.
And rather than being strictly contemporary in approach or staying traditional, Hairston says, “I think we try to stay right in the middle. We have some songs that are contemporary. We have some songs which are very traditional. And that’s intentional because we don’t want to alienate anyone.
“So we have a lot of young choirs and young groups that sing our music,” he says, “but then there are also a lot of traditional choirs that like to play our music as well.”
One example of their varied approach came earlier this month when Hairston and The First Cathedral choir Praises of Zion joined the Hartford Symphony and Hartford Chorale in presenting the music of “Porgy and Bess” at the Bushnell. “It was great ,” he says, “but then we went right back to church on Sunday morning with very traditional music. So it’s a very wide range of music we do, and I really love it.”
For the new album, “I See Victory,” Hairston said he did a lot of Bible listening to arrive at its theme. That’s right: listening, not reading.
“I listened to a lot of Bible scriptures for about a month straight,” he says. “I go to YouTube, and search for a King James version of Genesis and listen to the whole book of the Bible being read on YouTube. And certain scriptures or certain themes will pop out to me based on what I’ve hearing.”
The resulting “I See Victory” has already added two charting singles, “It Pushed Me” and “Bless Me” to their roster of hits from the past dozen years, including “After This,” “Lord of All,” “Resting on His Promise” and “Incredible God, Incredible Praise” and brought them to TV performances as varied as Conan O’Brien, BET’s “Celebration of Gospel” special, “Sunday Best” and last year’s “Lady Gaga & The Muppets Holiday Spectacular,” where they backed Miss Piggy singing “Santa Baby.”
“I don’t know how that happened; or why she wanted a gospel group, but it worked out great,” Hairston says. ” And just to be on a show with Lady Gaga — I mean, we went from seeing her on TV to being with her on TV.”
Youthful Praise has weathered some storms — from the deaths of early members Shawn Brown and Tyrone McKoy in 2010 and 2011 to the death of Hairston’s mother earlier this year.
One thing that sets Youthful Praise apart from other gospel acts is that they try to keep positive, Hairston says.
“Sometimes people write songs or sing songs that are about their issues or about their problems. We choose not to do that. We want our music to be an escape, or an uplift from those problems,” he says. “We hear enough sad stories; we don’t need to hear sad music.”
THE J.J. HAIRSTON & YOUTHFUL PRAISE album release concert with Tye Tribbett and Hezekiah Walker, is Tuesday, Oct. 28, at 7 at The First Cathedral, 1151 Blue Hills Ave., Bloomfield. Tickets are $20, $30 and $35. Information: www.firstcathedral.org and 860-243-6520.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the choir that accompanied Hairston in concert with the Hartford Symphony.
