Jason Crabb explores many musical loves as a solo artist

Click to see a gallery of Jason Crabb and Crabb Family photos (this image of Crabb at his Hendersonville home: Sanford Myers/The Tennessean).

We haven’t seen Jason Crabb’s skills on the basketball court, but it wouldn’t be too tough to guess two aspects of his game: solid fundamentals and a firm hold on the fake out.

After all, here’s a singer who made his name as part of a Southern Gospel family act, and then, when it came time to record his self-titled solo debut, recruited two very different producers (veteran country producer Norro Wilson and one of Nashville’s funkiest cats, Tommy Sims) to craft a document best described as all over the musical map. The broadening certainly hasn’t hurt him: Crabb is up for six trophies at Wednesday’s GMA Dove Awards, including artist of the year.

That’s the best part for the former lead singer of The Crabb Family: He gets to walk around in a multitude of musical worlds right now, and he’s loving it.

“Probably a little too much, to be honest,” Crabb laughs. “A lot of people want to tell you you can only do one thing and that's it, but man, I've got so many different kinds of loves in music. It's kinda like going to a basketball player and saying, ‘You can only shoot jump shots from inside the lane’ or ‘You can only do lay-ups.’”

Over the past couple of decades, whenever Christian music has had the opportunity to make the jump into the mainstream, it’s frequently come from the more rock or pop side of the gospel equation.

Right now, though, Crabb is finding his own crossover moment, with the single and video for “Somebody Like Me” being serviced to radio and video outlets (watch it below), and Crabb balancing his time and travels between concert dates in the gospel world and media promotion in the country space.

But it’s not so much a case of transition as it is prioritization, something Crabb has been well aware of as his audiences have changed and shifted.

“I always like to try to be able to appeal to whoever's there,” the Beaver Dam, Ky. native says. “If it's a youth event, give it everything we possibly can, turn the amps up and scream a little bit more. If it's a (Bill) Gaither (Homecoming) event, we're gonna concentrate on what lyrics work.”

Shifting approaches isn’t a strain for Crabb — he’s generally drawn to “(shaking) it up a bit.”

“When somebody likes something you do, you thank the Lord for that,” Crabb says. “But you always want to give them something fresh, too, and always create. It's something I've always wanted to do, and with the help of the Lord, it's something He's allowing me to do.”

That multi-faceted part of Crabb’s musical game will manifest itself at the Doves, as he takes part in a celebration of a century of Southern Gospel and teams with black gospel mainstay Donald Lawrence for a tribute to gospel/pop pioneer Andrae Crouch. And it’s clear that Crabb is equally jazzed for both performance opportunities.

“I'm a huge fan of Andrae Crouch. He's influenced every church across America and all artists to some extent, whether people realize it or not,” Crabb says. “To be a part of that with Donald Lawrence is going to be a wonderful thing, and then to be a part of celebrating 100 years of Southern Gospel music is fantastic, too. It's music that I love and that I grew up in. To be a part of celebrating something where you birthed your career, what an honor that is to be asked.”