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Gospel performer turned huge corner

As Gospel Day comes to fair, man revisits his past

BY LOUIS MEDINA, Californian staff writer
e-mail: lmedina@bakersfield.com | Friday, Sep 21 2007 3:00 PM

Last Updated: Friday, Sep 21 2007 1:23 PM

Rob Saranpa used to take a machete with him to help him do his dirty work as a money collector and strongman for drug dealers. “I would go with them and make sure they didn’t get jumped or anything,” he said. The machete was “mostly for intimidation purposes,” and Saranpa said he never used it on anyone and never carried a gun.

But he would beat people up on occasion.

“I actually one time had to hit a guy, knock him down and take his wallet out of his pocket to pay the dealer,” he said. “But mostly I was there for intimidation because people knew I was a bouncer and I was pretty intimidating at 6-foot, 250 pounds with a mohawk.”

That was from 1984 to 1997, the 44-year-old said. His tough-guy days began in the San Fernando Valley and ended in Tehachapi, where he still lives. His experiences included being a chaperone for strippers at bachelor parties and going to jail twice, once on each side of the Grapevine, for DUIs.

Saranpa finds it ironic that “it was alcohol” that landed him in jail. “I didn’t get caught for the things I did, the extortion and the drug dealing,” he said.

But then, “God got my attention by making me the single father of a 10-month-old.” Saranpa fought for and won custody of Alexander, and the years of tough lessons in parental responsibility began.

Then in 2002, when Alexander was 6, Saranpa met Jody Dyer. They fell head over heels for each other, and the mother of three proposed to him on New Year’s Eve that year, Saranpa said.

Dyer also took him to church and as the two fell deeper in love with each other, they also fell more in love with Jesus, and they knew the possibility of a more spiritual life together was much more than a hunch.

“We Brady-Bunched it and had four,” Saranpa said about the new family he gained when the couple married in October 2003.

Meet him at the fair

Now Saranpa is more likely to wield a cross than a machete.

Actually, he wields a bass, which he plays with his four-member backup band, Bold Witness. They will be performing at the 3 Way Chevrolet Stage of the Kern County Fair on Gospel Day next Saturday.

Their music is, like the band’s name, bold: “It sounds like Marshall Tucker doing pray music. It’s like a cross between Third Day and Creedence Clearwater Revival,” Saranpa said, “Southern rock-gospel.”

They first played at the fair last year as a last-minute fill-in for a band that canceled, according to Gospel Day coordinator Gary Young.

“He’s got a great sound and a great heart for Christian music,” Young said of Saranpa, whose day job is in a cement bagging facility. Young liked him so much he gave him a coveted evening spot in this year’s 18-act lineup, which he called “the best Gospel Day we’ve had in several years” and includes the award-winning Covenant Messengers as the closing act.

A message of renewal

When Saranpa performs Christian music, he also gives his testimony.

“There’s many people that remember him how he used to be,” his wife said. Women have come up to her and asked, “How did you ever tie him down?” she said.

“His coming to Christ was not my doing,” she tells them. “It was the Holy Spirit. I was just an instrument used.”

Saranpa — who has even written a children’s song called “The Night Jesus Met Santa Claus,” which has become a children’s book with a music CD produced by Lamon Records and sung by Ricky Traywick, Randy Travis’ brother — says it’s important for him to help people realize that bad guys don’t always start out that way, but a traumatic event early in life can propel them into a destructive lifestyle.

For Saranpa, that happened when he was 13 and he, his mother, three of his sisters and his younger brother suffered an early-morning home invasion at gunpoint, at the hands of a sexual predator who tied up and was planning to rape one of his sisters.

During the assault, Saranpa faked that he needed to throw up, went to the bathroom, sneaked out a window and ran to a neighbor’s house to call the police.

The man, both Saranpa and his mother said, had a police scanner and he heard a message about the assault in progress. He quickly fled but was later caught.

This happened while the family was living in the San Fernando Valley in 1976, and while police records were not readily available to corroborate Saranpa’s story, both he and his mother gave matching accounts in separate impromptu telephone conversations with The Californian.

After the ordeal, Saranpa’s father, who was divorced from his mother and living elsewhere at the time, suggested that Saranpa, as “the man of the house,” had not done enough to protect his mother and sisters.

“That better never happen again,” Saranpa said his father told him. “I set out to be a tough guy” after that, he said.

“I like to talk about it so that people can see that they can actually change,” he said. “But not on your own: They can give it up to God.

“I’m still Rob, I’m just a better man now,” he said. And “A Better Man” is actually the title of one of Saranpa’s songs.

Gospel Day, Kern County Fair

Included in the fair admission price. Performances are all in the afternoon and evening of next Saturday at the 3 Way Chevrolet Stage as follows:

Noon: Grace Plus Four

12:30 p.m.: Becky Dunn Group

1 p.m.: Natalie Miller

1:30 p.m.: Stacie Dollar

2 p.m: Anointed-Appointed & Approved

2:30 p.m.: AV 7 Quartet

3 p.m.: Gateway for Grace

3:30 p.m.: Shammah

4 p.m.: Straight Street

4:30 p.m.: Voices in Praise

5 p.m.: Deedra Patrick

5:30 p.m.: Rob Saranpa & Bold Witness

6 p.m.: Pleasant View Mission Baptist

6:30 p.m.: Psalm 100

7 p.m.: Herb Henry Family

7:45 p.m.: Rising Star Baptist Church

8:15 p.m.: RSV Quartet

9 p.m.: Covenant Messengers