Winter has come and gone, but Winter Jam is still scheduled to hit town this weekend.
One of the best-known values on the music-touring scene, Winter Jam has long charged only $10, payable at the door, so that the expense of advance tickets is not even a factor.
Winter Jam
Performers: King & Country, Matthew West, Crowder, RED, Sidewalk Prophets, NewSong, Trip Lee, KB, Tedashii, Lauren Daigle; (pre-jam party includes Stars Go Dim and We Are Messengers) with speaker Tony Nolan
5 p.m. Saturday, Verizon Arena, East Broadway and Interstate 30, North Little Rock
Admission: $10, on sale only at the door
(800) 975-9000,
Founded in 1995 by NewSong, Winter Jam played to more than 600,000 people in 2015, a record. The designated headliners on the 48-city tour are Matthew West and King & Country, though the tour is more of a collaborative conglomeration of like-minded musicians from the contemporary Christian community.
"This is my third Winter Jam tour, but first as a headliner," West says. "It's been incredible, going around the country with a bunch of great musicians, building friendships and then going our separate ways. We started Jan. 2 in West Virginia, and Little Rock is our next-to-the-last show, with the final night April 3 in Louisville, Ky.
"Most of us are still pinching ourselves over being lucky enough to have spent maybe half our lives on a tour bus, let alone on these 15 or so buses, accompanied by about five semi-trucks."
West, a native of Downers Grove, Ill., originally aspired to play professional baseball as he grew up a fan of the nearby Chicago Cubs. Instead, a music scholarship steered him in a different direction and in his early career, he wrote songs that were recorded by secular artists, including Billy Ray Cyrus and Rascal Flatts. Soon Christian artists, including Amy Grant, Casting Crowns and Michael W. Smith, were recording his songs.
In 2003, he released his first studio album, Happy, powered by a No. 1 hit single, "More," which stayed atop the Christian music chart for nine weeks. He has since recorded five more albums, the latest of which, Live Forever, came out in 2015. His latest foray into inspirational work is a book, Today Is Day One: A Devotional, released in December.
West has even more to be excited about on the tour, as he has his oldest daughter, Lulu, 10, along.
"She wanted to hang with her dad," he says proudly, adding that they left younger sister, Ruth, 7, at home in the Nashville, Tenn., area.
Co-headliner King & Country is an Australian duo, brothers Joel and Luke Smallbone. They have won three Gospel Music Association Dove Awards and two Grammy Awards in 2015 (Best Contemporary Christian Music Album for Run Wild, Live Free, Love Strong and Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song for "Messengers" by Lecrae, featuring King & Country).
Others on the tour: Crowder, as in David Crowder, from the Texas side of Texarkana, former lead singer of the David Crowder Band. He decided to go solo in 2012, and released a debut disc, Neon Steeple, in May 2014. RED is a three-man band -- vocals, guitar and bass, with five albums out, the most recent of which, Beauty and Rage, came out in 2015.
Sidewalk Prophets was formed in 2003 by students at Anderson University in Indiana. Trip Lee is a rapper, singer, poet and writer from Dallas who now lives in Atlanta. Tedashii is a rapper from Denton, Texas, who began his career in 2006, but in 2013 was sidelined when his 1-year-old son died suddenly.
KB is a trumpet-playing vocalist named Kevin Burgess from Tampa, Fla., who prefers to use his initials. He is touring to promote his second hip-hop album, Tomorrow We Live. Lauren Daigle is a Louisiana native on tour with a debut album, How Can It Be. Stars Go Dim, from Tulsa, was originally a side project of the band Pillar. We Are Messenger was formed by Irishman Darren Mulligan.
Evangelist Tony Nolan founded TNT Ministries in Atlanta.
NewSong has been around for more than 30 years and counts the founding of Winter Jam as one of its biggest success stories.
Weekend on 03/31/2016