“Lift Me Up” (Far Away) by The Benjamin Gate, Saturday, November 26, 2022

The Benjamin Gate was a band signed to ForeFront Records between 2001 and 2003. The band formed in 1998 in Port Elizabeth and took their name from one of the original entrances to the Biblical city of ancient Jerusalem and also named the band as a tribute to their friend who had died in a traffic accident, Ben Herbert. The band had some success in the burgeoning field of alternative Christian rock. They released two records, 2001’s [“untitled”] and 2002’s Contact, but by 2003 the band broke up after lead singer Adrienne Liesching’s engagement to fellow Christian Rocker Jeremy Camp. 

SEEING THROUGH A HOLE IN TIME. The Benjamin Gate was a female-fronted Christian Rock band that showed much potential for the future of the genre. Influenced by bands like Garbage and Linkin Park, the band arrived at an interesting time when music was getting heavier, more electronic, and blending pop and hard rock together. The band’s first record was distinctly Christian Rock, with the lead single declaring “Jesus’ love is All Over Me.” The Christian Rock band’s lyrics on Contact, though, aren’t necessarily always spiritual. Today’s song  “Lift Me Up,” is a song about missing family back in the band’s home country of South Africa while forging a new life in America. For Liesching, however, it wasn’t just about band life and touring, but romance that split her heart between family in South Africa and an muscular American Christian singer with a heartbreaking backstory of losing his first wife a year after their marriage to ovarian cancer. Despite Liesching’s change of passion from band life to home life raising three children with Camp, many fans of The Benjamin Gate resentfully joke about how Jeremy Camp broke up the band. 

EVERY DAY AWAY IS EASY TO IGNORE. While most of the band members of The Benjamin Gate returned to South Africa, Adrienne Liesching married Jeremy Camp and  released two solo records on BEC Recordings under the moniker Adie. Neither record is on Spotify. She performs with her husband and has appeared on a John Rueben song but she and her former band have mostly faded into Christian Rock obscurity.  I chose “Lift Me Up” for several reasons. I think it warrants a discussion—though not today—about female Christian artists giving up careers to focus on their families. It’s the nostalgia for forgotten musical gems in my teens that makes me think about how life has turned out. It’s the “where are they now” conversation with my sister about teachers and students from our high school that makes me wonder about some of the bands we listened to. But mostly it has to do with the feeling of being torn between two continents. It’s about being unable to celebrate with family because my vacation schedule is completely different. It’s about the extended family I’m not sure when I can see again. It was  Thanksgiving this week and it hurt less if I forgot about it. So that’s my whining about the holiday.

Read the lyrics on Genius.