OUR STORY
The Causeys’ story is part of a family music ministry dating back to 1949. Rooted in the faith, songs, and old brush arbor traditions passed down through the Sullivan and Causey families, this legacy continues today through Jonathan Causey, his son Jon Gideon, and his brother Daniel.
Together, they share bluegrass gospel filled with joyful acoustic music, rich family harmonies, and messages of faith, hope, redemption, and victory through Christ.
THE BAND
JONATHAN
CAUSEY
JON GIDEON
CAUSEY
DANIEL
CAUSEY
A LEGACY OF FAITH AND MUSIC
Long before bluegrass gospel reached stages and recording studios, music and ministry filled the fields and hollows of the South. Beneath makeshift brush arbors, the clear sound of acoustic instruments carried through the open air as people gathered to worship God with their whole hearts. The songs shared messages of faith, hope, redemption, and the promise of Heaven. This joyful, deeply spiritual sound helped shape what we now know as American roots music, and it is the tradition The Causeys are carrying forward today.
Jonathan Causey’s journey with this music began at an early age. At just 15 years old, he began traveling and sharing the gospel through song. He later joined the Sullivan family ministry alongside Jerry and Tammy Sullivan, where he continued to grow as a musician and servant of the Lord. Throughout the 1980s, Jonathan shared the stage with celebrated country and gospel artists including Marty Stuart, Ricky Skaggs, Emmylou Harris, the Chuck Wagon Gang, The Hinsons, The Isaacs, and many others.
For more than 40 years, Jonathan has ministered across the country, but for him, music has never been separate from faith. Every song, performance, and opportunity to travel has been another way to serve God and reach people with His message.
In 1992, Jonathan formed his own band, The Causeys. Three years later, the group signed with Cornelius Companies and Gateway Entertainment. Their song “The Master of the Music” climbed to number four on the Christian Country charts. The Causeys later joined the Eddie Crook Company and released “Aaayeee Louisiana” with Jo’el Sonnier. “A Mother’s Cry,” another song from the album, also found its way onto the Singing News charts.
Jonathan married Tammy Sullivan in 2002, joining two families whose lives were deeply rooted in gospel music and ministry. Their son, Jon Gideon, was born in 2004 and grew up surrounded by the songs, stories, and faith of both the Causey and Sullivan families.
By 2017, Jonathan had entered a difficult new season. In 2014, he lost his father-in-law, Jerry Sullivan. Three years later, he experienced the devastating loss of his wife, Tammy Sullivan. Grieving these losses, Jonathan stepped away from music ministry for a time of prayer. Standing at a crossroads and unsure of what would come next, he felt the Lord speak clearly to him: “I have given you everything you need.”
When Jonathan turned, he saw his 13 year old son, Jon Gideon. In that moment, he understood that the music and ministry were not ending. God had already placed the next chapter in front of him.
Under his father’s guidance, Jon Gideon began developing the gifts God had given him. He studied guitar and vocals while learning the music of the generations that came before him. His strong, full voice carries the power and conviction passed down from his mother, while his dedication honors the lasting influence of his grandfather, Jerry Sullivan. Jon Gideon is not simply preserving a family tradition. He is helping give it a new voice.
Jonathan’s brother, Daniel Causey, completes the family trio. Like Jonathan, Daniel learned to sing and play music when he was young. When Jonathan left home to join The Sullivans, Daniel entered the workforce, but music remained a constant part of his life. He performed with The Causeys throughout the 1990s and worked with The Sullivans whenever he could. Today, Daniel is admired by fellow musicians for his talent on the upright bass and brings both experience and a deep love for the Lord to the group.
Together, Jonathan, Daniel, and Jon Gideon bring the old brush arbor style of American roots music to life with bright acoustic instrumentation, driving rhythms, rich family harmonies, and strong, heartfelt vocals. Their songs are inspired by Scripture and shaped by real experiences of hardship, prayer, redemption, and victory through Christ.
The Causeys believe their music is more than entertainment. It is a ministry and an invitation. They want every person to feel welcome without judgment, experience God’s presence through the music, and discover a real, personal relationship with Him.
With a treasured family legacy behind them and God leading every step ahead, The Causeys are carrying this music into a new generation, one song, one prayer, and one life at a time.
THE GREATEST STORY
The Greatest Story includes liner notes from two respected voices, each offering a different perspective on the recording, its music, and the family legacy behind it.
FOR THE LOVE OF A SONG
LINER NOTES BY MARTY STUART
Marty Stuart shares his personal perspective on the recording, the music, and the family legacy behind it.
Since the late 1940s, there has been a music sent forth from lower Alabama that is in part, the soundtrack to so many lives throughout the southland. That sound is a firebrand collective of a rhythm based, beat-driven, Cajun tinged style of lonesome bluegrass, church house, rock and roll which serves as the infrastructure to a catalogue of songs built upon stories and teachings from the Old and New Testaments. Songs that inspire hope, faith, and the promise of Heaven, its rewards, and eternal, unspeakable beauty. The term most commonly associated with this music is bluegrass gospel. The people who pioneered the sound of this brush arbor style of Pentecostal sonic beauty is the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers from St. Stephens, Alabama. Reverend Arthur Sullivan was the first of the family to present the family’s music along with his sermon on the radio airwaves in South Alabama beginning in 1949. After brother Arthur’s passing, the family’s music was carried around the world by his brother Jerry and his sons Emmett and Enoch, along with Enoch’s wife, Margie.
In the late 1970s, Jerry Sullivan formed his own group with his daughter Tammy Sullivan. Along with being a world-class musician, what set Jerry apart was his gift of songwriting. His was the soul of a gospel poet. Jerry Sullivan’s earliest compositions served as some of the cornerstone titles in the Sullivan family’s canon of songs. Like his fellow Alabamian, Hank Williams, Jerry Sullivan’s words never took up much space on paper. The two men’s songs are kindred spirits in scope, range, and vast depth — heart songs with timeless appeal.
My first job playing music professionally was in the summer of 1972 with Enoch, Margie, and Emmett Sullivan and I loved every mile of it. It was during those days of joyful first discovery that I came to know all of the Sullivans, the power of their music, and the beauty of their songs…songs that were celestial, powerful, uplifting, get in your soul and stay there kind of songs. I soon discovered that most of the songs that hit the hardest and went deepest were written by Jerry Sullivan. At the end of that summer, I got a job in Nashville, playing in Lester Flatt’s band and my Sullivan Family times became few and far between. In the late 1980s, after years of distance, Jerry reached out to me and invited me to come and play some music with him and Tammy. His call came at the perfect time. My career was in a slump and I had less than nothing going on. On the very first day of being back around Jerry (or Uncle Jug as I called him), we began to write songs. As the months rolled on, songs seemed to pour from the sky. On one three day stretch we wrote over twenty songs, all keepers. As the years rolled by, we wrote so many songs that I lost count. However, Tammy Sullivan and her husband Jonathan Causey kept track not only of the songs Jerry and I wrote, but they also had the foresight to record or write down the words to most Jerry Sullivan related songs.
It’s unbelievable, but Enoch, Emmett, Jerry, and Tammy have all now gone. What they left behind are countless lives that were touched by their presence and music. The Sullivan sound, as well as the words to their songs, are simply part of the atmosphere of the South. However, music unplayed and songs unsung are in danger of becoming lost treasures relegated to the dust bins of history, victims of the passing of time. Hope is found for such matters in the book of Isaiah, Chapter eleven, verse eleven. The Scripture says, “at the appointed time, the Lord will bring back a remnant.” Concerning those divinely inspired songs sent down from Heaven to Jerry Sullivan and those of us who wrote with him, were it not for Jonathan Causey and his and Tammy’s son, Jon Gideon, I fear all would be lost. As said, Jonathan has kept an eye on the manuscripts, notebooks, tapes, and scraps of paper left in the wake of so many creative storms, and he keeps those songs alive by playing and singing them. When I listen to this record which is filled with some of those songs, my heart is enriched. It is a joyful noise, indeed. I think of the Sullivans all over again and miss them all the more. Some of the songs on this record such as “Pray” I don’t recall writing, although others I fondly remember writing with Uncle Jug in his gospel bus, the backrooms of little country churches along the brush arbor trail, by the ocean, under trees, sitting by Uncle Jug’s garden,backstage at auditoriums and at gospel singings. Wherever we were, we would get into our own world and write. God always met us in those times and gave us beautiful songs.
When I listen to this recording, I can’t help but think how proud Tammy would be to hear Jon Gideon singing. He’s got the family tones along with the cool factor to go with it. He is to be a standard-bearer no doubt, and a bona fide cat in the making. Another standard in the realm of the holy spirit is the passing of mantles. So much of Jerry Sullivan’s life work now rests in the heart, soul, and mind of Jonathan Causey. Jonathan was a son-in-law, but Jerry loved him like a son. He knows full well the weight of the voice in the wilderness job that lies ahead. But I know Jonathan, and I know that he believes God will make a way for him, song by song, prayer by prayer, mile by mile, as he journeys on the gospel way and continues to proclaim:
Marty Stuart
THE STORY BEHIND THE MUSIC
LINER NOTES BY JACK EDWARD BERNHARDT
Jack Edward Bernhardt, a professor of anthropology and country music scholar, offers a historical perspective on the recording and the generations of music, faith, and family behind it.
In America’s sanctified South, the Sullivan name is as glorified as those of the Chuck Wagon Gang and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Gerrol (Brother Jerry) Sullivan and his daughter, Tammy, shared their songs of praise and redemption with audiences from their native Alabama to churches and festivals as distant as Alaska and Northern Ireland.
Within four years of each other, Jerry and Tammy were called to join God’s Heavenly Choir. But they left us a legacy of inspirational songs, among them “I Can See God’s Moving Hand,” “He Called My Name,” and the Grammy-nominated “At the Feet of God.”
Tammy’s greatest legacy is Jon Gideon Causey, the devoted son she, husband Jonathan and grandfather Jerry raised in the Pentecostal faith and the family tradition of music ministry.
With “The Greatest Story,” Jon Gideon makes his recording debut, singing his family’s songs at the side of his father. Fifteen years old, Jon Gideon already sings with the spirit and conviction that are hallmarks of Sullivan-Causey gospel music. His evolving talent amplifies the impassioned retelling of “He Called My Name,” his grandfather’s account of committing to Jesus at an “old brush arbor” service on a dusty country road.
A veteran of the gospel ministry circuit, Jonathan’s mentoring provides Jon Gideon a wealth of musical and spiritual guidance. The brilliant blending of voices young and old on “Love Divine,” and the call-and-response harmonies of Jerry and Tammy’s ebullient “I Want to Praise the Lord,” would surely make mother and grandfather proud of the values and music instilled within young Jon Gideon.
“The Greatest Story” introduces Jonathan and Jon Gideon as the latest expression of Sullivan family gospel. Listen and enjoy as they enliven the songs emblazoned on the hearts of generations of Southern Saints. Sullivan songs and ministry are secure with Jonathan and Jon Gideon Causey, as they continue the tradition of one of the most beloved musical ministries in the history of the American South.
Jack Edward Bernhardt
Professor of Anthropology and Country Music Scholar
THE CAUSEYS PHOTO GALLERY
Explore photographs from The Causeys’ years of music and ministry, including performances, recordings, travels, and meaningful moments shared along the way.
THE SULLIVAN FAMILY LEGACY
Explore the story of Jerry and Tammy Sullivan, Jonathan’s father-in-law and late wife, and Jon Gideon’s grandfather and mother. The faith, music, and ministry they passed down through the family continue today through The Causeys.
