As a prison chaplain in New York, The Rev. J. Michael Nace has always found a way to weave music into his life. Even as a child, Nace recalls listening to’60s folk music on the radio every evening.

“The ’60s music was more intellectual and poetic and had more of a message,” said Nace, who taught himself to play the guitar during the decade. “That always captivated me – the ability to craft a song to capture people with words.”

While in college, Nace wrote several songs and played in a student band called Mr. Poet and the 30+3, performing frequently at The Witt’s End, a nearby coffeehouse. The group attempted to launch a music career by recording Nace’s song “Only a Boy,” but it never achieved national success.

After graduation, with his music career stalled and Vietnam troubling him, Nace realized that he had been “running from a call to the ministry,” so he enrolled in the Hamma School of Theology, where he earned his M.Div. in 1975. Yet, his passion for music remained strong even during a year of street ministry in Springfield, which inspired him to write the songs “Friend” and “Heavy Duty Lord.”

As the years passed, Nace continued to write, but it was his wife Sylvie who finally encouraged him to enter the recording studio after hearing him perform in recent years during religious services at the prison. The result is the 2006 release of Nace’s CD Here I Am in Buffalo, featuring 10 songs written by Nace, including “Julia,” which he says was inspired by a young woman he saw in Wittenberg’s dining hall years ago.

“I didn’t know her, but she had a mystique about her, and she always looked lonely,” he said.

Nace credits Wittenberg with giving him the “freedom to be inquisitive, to ask questions, to be myself, to become what I was meant to be.” Today he works to integrate that philosophy into his ministry and music. In fact, many of Nace’s songs have a soulful, reflective quality.

“I want [the CD] to open a window for them – to think, to just slow down a bit, to listen to what their life is saying to them.”

- Debbie Ritter