Ernie Haase & Signature Sound have spent almost two decades making music together, but they just launched into new territory with their 29-track Decades of Love album, celebrating love songs from the past century. The record, broken into two acts (1920 – 1960 and 1970 – 2020) features some of music’s most iconic love songs, of all genres, including “Blue Moon,” “I Can’t Help Falling in Love,’ “Shower the People You Love,” “I Will Always Love You” and more.

Ernie Haase & Signature Sound celebrated seeing Decades of Love land in the Top 10 on the iTunes Pop Albums chart, which might seem like a bit of a surprise for one of Southern Gospel’s reigning acts. What makes the recent accolade even more surprising is Decades of Love began as a gift for the band members’ wives, before Haase realized the potential for much, much more.

“It was supposed to be just an EP  of love songs for our wives, just a few songs,” Haase tells Everything Nash. “It quickly took a different form, and really it turned into a show, something we can present to performing arts centers. They’re looking for Signature Sound to come sing, but they’re looking for something that would be good for their season ticket holders. So that was in my thought process. I thought, ‘This is turning into more than just an EP. This has legs, as they say.’ And then I started looking at time. We needed about an hour and 45 minutes worth of music.”

Haase originally planned on including seven songs on the EP, but the more he worked on the record, the more he realized they could turn it into what became Decades of Love. But even with 29 songs, Haase had to whittle that list down from literally hundreds of songs to the 29 that made the final cut.

“Sitting with our producers, we just started throwing out our favorite songs and then, with their musical genius, they’re like, ‘That would not work for a quartet,'” Haase recalls. “So that was our guiding light. Can we make it into harmony? Can we take, ‘I Can’t Help Falling in Love’ that people recognize as an Elvis [Presley] song, can we stay true to the original form, but can we add harmony to it? … Can it be a quartet? And then there were still 60 songs. At that point in time, we just had started chopping it off and saying, ‘Okay, only three or four songs in the ’20s and ’40s. You literally could do 20 songs just in the ’70s alone.”

Ernie Haase & Signature Sound has released more than two dozen albums since they began, including their Keeping On record, out in 2021. With a lengthy history of recording Christian music, Haase says Decades of Love is just as important, and has just as much meaning as any of their previous projects.

“There’s always that why factor,” Haase says. “You can always do anything, but should you do it? And for us, number one, it felt right in our gut. We just felt like this is what we wanted to do. Our motives are pure, and it’s a bridge recording. We had a bridge recording back in 2015 called The Inspiration of Broadway. We saw how that gave us a bridge to people’s lives and ears and hearts that would not come out to hear a Southern gospel quartet sing classic quartet songs. And so, we don’t take that personally either, but it’s just a great way to bridge and to sing to other people who are maybe not followers of the genre of Southern gospel.”

Ernie Haase & Signature Sound are performing their gospel songs now, and will embark on a Decades of Love Tour in October.

“We’re in the throes of a very exciting season,” Haase reveals. “It’s what I call it back to busy. So August all the way until the end of December, we are just cooking. We’re going out and singing the songs from Keeping On,  and also from Decades of Love. And then we’re also doing an exclusive tour in October of just Decades of Love programs, especially in the upper Midwest. And then before long, we’ll be on the Jazzy Little Christmas Tour again.”

Decades of Love and all of Ernie Haase & Signature Sounds’ music, as well as a list of their upcoming shows, can be found at ErnieHaase.com.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Adkins Publicity