Amy Grant Transforms Hymns

Christian music audiences aren’t perfect, but they are forgiving. That may be one reason Amy Grant felt she could take such liberties with her religious music by making frequently exotic changes in 100-year-old hymns that are featured in her new “Legacy” album.

She devoted a chunk of a 2 1/2-hour performance Tuesday at the Vineyard church in Anaheim to songs from that album, drawing on daring arrangements by Grant’s husband, singer-guitarist-songwriter Vince Gill, and other collaborators. Gill is sitting in on this tour because Grant’s longtime guitarist dropped out three weeks before it opened.

Gill recast the 17th century hymn “Fairest Lord Jesus” with what Grant called “an acoustic Bo Diddley feel” at the outset, morphing into a propulsive mountain music treatment that might be labeled “O Father, Where Art Thou?” Her version of “Softly and Tenderly” was built on a sinuous beat--part-calypso, part-New Orleans second-line parade groove.

Later, Gill set the church crowd absolutely atwitter with a new song, “This Guitar and Me,” that reminisces about his hardscrabble days as a touring musician when “if we got lucky, we took a barmaid home.” The crowd oohed nervously but forgave him when he sheepishly apologized. If onlookers were disappointed that the scant two numbers featuring Gill didn’t include one of his goose-bump-raising ballads, they didn’t show it.

Grant, in a particularly chatty mood, supplemented the new material with songs from throughout her two-decade-plus recording career, her warm, lightly smoked alto more effective at conveying heavenly bliss than mining earthly travail.