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I went to a concert last night at Avondale Presbyterian Church. The bands that played were: Days off Screen, Jonas Sees in Color, and Philmont. I was there to see Philmont, but I got to see all of those bands. Some of them were better than the others, like Philmont, but I enjoyed all of the bands that played. They all did an awesome job.

The reason why I went to the concert last night is because it is Philmonts last concert in Charlotte for a while. Philmont has been signed by EMI, and they are now on Forefront Records. I’m really excited about this because they really deserve it. I have been a fan of those guys since their formation a few years ago. I’m excited to hear their first full length album that they are working on right now. I hope that they have a lot of success and get a lot of attention in the Christian music scene.

If you like Christian Rock, Punk Rock, or even a little Synthesizer be sure to check out these guys. I promise that you will not be disappointed with these guys. For those who want to know what a Synthesizer looks like…look over to the right. It’s Josiah from Philmont rockin’ out on the Snyth. as well as his shiny guitar. That is pretty much all i’ve got on my mind right now. This year is almost over so look for a full wrap-up of 2007 here at The Life of a Smart Guy tomorrow.

Lynchburg, VA - A big show, expected to draw thousands, is about to get underway at Liberty University. Musicians and workers have spent the day getting ready for Winterfest. That’s a very popular three day Christian Music festival at the Vines Center on campus. Organizers say it’s a way to worship and have fun.

Plus, it gives young men and women a look at Liberty University.

Michael Stewart, Winterfest Director - “We have 14 bands, 4 speakers, comedians, truly what we like to call a Christian music festival and a winter retreat all wrapped up in one.”

Organizers say tickets are still available at the door.

New Launches Drive Gospel Music Channel Past 22 Million Subs

Recent distribution agreements and launches across multiple MSOs have driven Gospel Music Channel (GMC) past the 22 million household mark, the network announced today. GMC has added more than 14 million cable subscribers in 2007, exceeding its projections and making the nation’s only 24/7 Gospel/Christian music television channel the fastest growing (non-launch) network of the year.

GMC’s latest distribution gains include launches by: Bresnan Communications (MSO-wide throughout Colorado, Montana and Wyoming); Charter Communications (Central and West Divisions); Comcast Digital Cable (New Jersey Region); Cox Communications (Pensacola Region, FL.); and Time Warner Cable (Northeast Ohio Division, Cleveland/Akron; Austin/Waco/Killeen, TX.)

“We were very ambitious in our projections for the channel’s cable growth this year. To exceed those goals by nearly double reflects both the strong desire of the cable operators to provide their customers with positive, family-friendly and inspiring music television programming, as well as a tremendous effort by our talented team,” said Charles Humbard, founder and president, GMC. “We are grateful to our partners in the cable industry for their strong support this year and look forward to new heights in 2008.”

Previously announced 2007 launches include systems run by Comcast Digital Cable (Philadelphia, Miami, Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Denver, Houston, Pittsburgh, Sacramento Knoxville, Houston, Paducah); Cox Communications (Hampton Roads and Roanoke, Va., Omaha, Oklahoma City and Tulsa); Charter Communications (Charter Midwest and Fort Worth, Texas); and Knology (Huntsville, Ala., Augusta & Columbus, Ga., and Charleston, S.C.); Time Warner Cable (New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Kansas City, San Diego, Northeast and Southwest Ohio, Charlotte, Raleigh and other markets); and Bright House Networks (Bakersfield, Calif. and Tampa.) GMC also launched on Sky Angel satellite network in 2007. With its 2007 distribution agreements, GMC is now seen in each of the top ten markets (DMAs), 23 of the top 25 and 46 of the top 50.

GMC has affiliation agreements with all four of cable’s largest MSOs: Comcast Cable, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Charter Communications. The recent annual Beta Research Cable Operator Study revealed that Gospel Music Channel ranks as the #1 network to add among cable providers (200K+ and 100K+ subscribers). The channel also ranked #1 in “audience attentiveness to advertising,” and #1 in “feeling comfortable viewing with family” in a recent major advertising industry research report. Another new research study found that GMC viewers are 43 percent more likely to be highly influential in the community and have a 57 percent larger social circle than the viewers of other cable networks.

A key catalyst for the network’s growth has been its ongoing commitment to producing original programming. Gospel Music Channel has become the largest producer of original Gospel/Christian music television in the world, producing more than 200 hours of concerts, series, specials and video, producing all new content in High Definition. Most recently, GMC premiered a new weekly series, The Kitchen Sink, an hour-long music performance, news, entertainment and variety program; the only national show of its kind featuring Christian and gospel music. The show is a combination of live in-studio performances by top artists, lively interviews, world premiere videos, the latest entertainment news and previews, undiscovered new talent, inspiring feature stories and more.

The channel’s growth also can be attributed in part to an aggressive grassroots marketing effort. This outreach is led by GMC’s Ministry Partnerships team, expanded this fall to help broaden and strengthen the channel’s local community relationships, as well as its database and viewership. Operating within GMC’s marketing department, the Ministry Partnerships unit already has made significant strides in engaging with churches and affinity groups. Thus far, more than 2,700 churches in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Tampa, Seattle and St. Louis have been engaged on multiple levels. In 2008, the initiative will expand to the top 25 markets, in addition to new-launch markets outside the top 25.

On the ad sales front, GMC welcomed Wal-Mart and P&G as new advertisers to the channel in 2007, with Wal-Mart signing on as the first sponsor of The Kitchen Sink, with program integration. GMC’s extensive lineup of special holiday programming includes as sponsors Lionsgate, Unilever, Hallmark, Walgreens and Salvation Army, among others.

Gospel Music Channel is the first and only 24-hour, advertiser-supported, all music entertainment network devoted to the uplifting, inspiring, and diverse music that is gospel.

How many songwriters does it take to write a hit? A group of big names from the Christian recording industry is hoping it’s a lucky 13.

Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, Chris Tomlin and others are scheduled to gather for a retreat Jan. 7-11 in Perthshire, Scotland, with a plan to collectively write 10 to 12 songs for charity. Any money the tunes generate is designated to help the poor for as long as the songs are around.

“All those names on the list at some stage have written with each other over the last five years,” Martin Smith, lead singer for the British-based group Delirius?, said during a recent phone interview. “We thought ‘Hey, let’s all get together for a week and see what we can all do together on a creative level, and why don’t we give the songs away before they’re written?”‘

The 37-year-old singer-songwriter is organizing the retreat. He said the project has drawn some attention from the secular music world, and he would welcome their involvement, too.

“It has a ‘We Are The World’ vibe,” Martin Smith said, referring to the star-studded 1985 effort to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

All proceeds from the songs will be donated directly to the poor: Half will go to the songwriters’ charity of choice, and the other half to a yet-to-be-determined charitable program agreed on by all the writers.

“This is a slightly different model in that the actual charities will own the copyright,” Smith explained. “That way, we can bypass the publishers, the managers, the agents, ASCAP, BMI. One hundred per cent of the money comes directly to the copyright holder.”

The copyright holder in this case will be Compassionart, an organization that Smith created as a conduit to the charities.

Besides Martin Smith, Michael W. Smith, Curtis Chapman and Tomlin, participating songwriters are Darlene Zschech, Matt and Beth Redman, Tim Hughes, Paul Baloche, Israel Houghton, Graham Kendrick, Andy Park and Stu Garrard.

Among them, they’ve sold at least 42 million albums and had 82 No. 1 songs on the Christian music charts.

Michael W. Smith said the cause for the retreat “so resonates with my heart.”

“Isaiah 58 is the passage that I go to now more than any other, knowing that if we feed the poor, satisfy the needs of the oppressed and reach out to the downtrodden, the Lord will indeed make his face shine upon us,” he said.

While all the artists have co-written songs before, they’ve probably never done it in this kind of setting, with a dozen other writers. The plan is to break into small groups of three and see what happens over the five days.

“We’ve all tried to sit down and write a hit and failed. The ones that get out are the ones you never expect to,” Martin Smith said. “I think we’ll just have to get in there and see what comes of it.”

The music will likely be recorded by the artists for a compilation CD, but beyond that, Smith said, they could be recorded by other artists or used in other formats. They say the only certainty is that for as long as the songs survive, the money they make will help the poor.

“At the end of the day, it’s people giving up a week of their time and giving their songs away. I think it’s amazing that we all agreed to do that,” Martin Smith said.

Mixing church and beats has paid off for Christian artist Plumb, who has scored her first No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Dance Airplay chart with In My Arms.

Plumb, whose real name is Tiffany Arbuckle Lee, first hit the Christian album chart 10 years ago. She writes grey melodies in the Evanescence vein, but has an expressive, warm voice that recalls Sarah McLachlan.

The track, a mother’s cautionary lullaby (she’s pregnant with her third child), appears in ballad form on her sixth album, Blink (Curb), which debuted at No. 23 in October on the Top Christian Albums chart. It’s not Plumb’s first dance format success: Cut, another ballad from her 2006 Chaotic Resolve set, hit No. 5 on Hot Dance Airplay.

Christian pop rockers Casting Crowns, touring in support of their third album “The Alter And The Door,” will perform at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 13, at the Bryce Jordan Center, University Park. Leeland and John Waller are the supporting act.

Reserved tickets are $17, $30 and $42. Gold Circle seating also is available. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Monday, Dec. 10, and will be available at the Bryce Jordan Center, Eisenhower Auditorium, Penn State Tickets Downtown, the Altoona campus ticket outlet, all Ticketmaster locations, by phone at (814) 865-5555, at http://www.bjc.psu.edu/ online. Group rates are also available. Call (814) 863-1812 for information.

“The Altar and The Door,” which debuted at No. 2 on The Billboard 200 in August, set a new record for a Christian artist without crossover promotion in the mainstream market. The album was certified gold last month by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album spent 12 weeks on the Top Christian Albums chart with the single “East to West” continuing to hold the top spot at Christian AC radio 23 weeks after its release. A couple of tunes from the record are streaming at Casting Crowns’ MySpace page.

The band also took home a win at November’s fan-voted American Music Awards, picking up the trophy for Favorite Artist in the Contemporary Inspirational category

her recording debut in 1982, the contemporary Christian singer has been sure to give a few words of encouragement to concert audiences.

Over the years, Ms. Troccoli said in an interview this week, she became increasingly aware of the importance of those little chats. Today, the singer-songwriter is almost as well known for her speaking engagements and inspirational books as she is for her 17 No. 1 hit singles and sales of 2 million records.

Ms. Troccoli comes to Toledo for a series of concerts Wednesday through Friday at Westgate Chapel that she said will feature a mix of Christmas tunes, her own hits, and messages of hope.

The speaking engagements - including talking to 250,000 women each year at Women of Faith conferences - and her books are ministries that Ms. Troccoli said she had to grow into.

“Almost 10 years ago, I got in front of an audience and I just started sharing a lot of the stuff I hadn’t been able to share in my 20s and 30s, because age brings that ability to talk about such things,” she said.

Ms. Troccoli, 49, said that when she is honest and open in talking about her struggles with bulimia and depression, her vulnerability and candidness have a noticeable impact on audiences.

“I found that it was something that women loved and they craved, to know that someone else was going through what they were going through but who is able to say, ‘You are going to make it through the next day.’•”

Losing both parents to cancer brought a depth of emotion that many people can relate to, Ms. Troccoli said.

“So many people understand that. That element of my story becomes their story, and their story becomes my story,” she said. “I try to express what they would want to say if they could write.”

She said she has been “completely healed of bulimia for years” and also has learned to overcome depression when it starts to slip into her life.

Her susceptibility to depression is part of her “artist’s makeup,” she said. The ability to pour her heart into music as a writer and performer, tapping into deep and strong feelings, makes her vulnerable to depression, she said.

“I struggled as a young girl, but thank God, helping to understand the stuff that was going on in my body, through friends and prayer, I can tell women: ‘You don’t have to stay in that state of mind. There’s a path to freedom, and that path is in Jesus Christ.’•”

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Islip Terrace on Long Island, Ms. Troccoli said she was “raised in a religious home but had no clue about really making Jesus part of my everyday life and my future. Giving him control was very foreign to me.”

She was singing in dinner clubs and nightclubs when, at age 20, she had a conversion experience.

“I immediately started singing at coffee houses on Long Island and started writing songs to God in the same style of music I was singing in clubs. A youth pastor said, ‘Do you know there was contemporary Christian music out there?’ I said, ‘You’re kidding!’ Gospel music to me was Mahalia Jackson. I was so excited to see that there were people out there singing this stuff.”

Ms. Troccoli was in the vanguard of contemporary Christian music when the genre first began to grow into a music-industry phenomenon in the early 1980s.

After signing with Christian label Reunion Records, she moved to Nashville, where her smoky voice and pop music sound quickly turned her into one of the major stars of contemporary Christian music.

Her chart-topping hits include “Psalm 23,” “Live for the Lord,” “My Life Is in Your Hands,” “I Will Choose Christ,” and “I Call Him Love,” and she cracked the mainstream charts with “Everything Changes” and her collaboration with the Beach Boys on “I Can Hear Music.”

She has won two Dove Awards, was nominated for a Grammy three times, and in 2003 was named one of the “Most Influential Christian Women in America” by Today’s Christian Woman magazine.

“It all happened very quick,” Ms. Troccoli said, looking back at the early days of her career. “But I often say that we all have gifts but we can be gifted and be a mess.”

She said she felt pushed into appearing “hip and cool” for the Christian youth market, even though that was not her true self.

“I’m not putting myself down here, but I was never hip and cool,” she said. “I was a club singer from New York. I struggled with the style and music everyone thought you should be as a 20-year-old singer in front of the youth.”

She compared it to forcing jazz artist Norah Jones to imitate a pop artist such as Britney Spears.

“It wasn’t for me,” Ms. Troccoli said. “But at this time in my life, I’m comfortable in my skin and with my audiences. I’m where I should be, singing the songs I should be singing.”

Kathy Troccoli will be in concert at 7:45 p.m. Wednesday through Friday at Westgate Chapel, 2500 Wilford Rd., Toledo. Admission is $12. Information: 419-841-8077

THE performers for next year’s gospel music festival, RezFest, in Wyndham have just been announced - and they include some of Christian music’s biggest names.

Headline acts will include American artists Newsboys, Jars of Clay and Alabaster Box, with Australia’s Planetshakers.

The festival, on Easter Sunday, March 23, and Easter Monday, March 24, will be staged beneath a giant marquee at the historic Point Cook Homestead, a beachfront property overlooking Port Phillip Bay.

Outgoing Wyndham mayor Shane Bourke said the event was a great way to spend the Easter weekend.

“Attracting some of Christian music’s most popular bands is a great coup for Wyndham,” he said.

“I would like to thank the Wyndham Ministers Network for their assistance in organising this event.”

Tickets are $37 for one concert or $70 to attend both and can be booked at the Wyndham Cultural Centre or online at www.word.com.au.

Founded in 1994, the Christian rock band Jars of Clay has sold millions of albums to both Christian and secular fans. After visiting Africa in 2002, lead singer-songwriter Dan Haseltine founded Blood:Water Mission to dig wells and raise money to combat poverty and aids. The band has just released its first full-length Christmas album, Christmas Songs, which offers a different take on the genre. CT’s Mark Moring spoke with Haseltine.

For a Christmas album, your new record has an unusual variety of songs. How were they chosen?

A lot of it was centered on two things. One, we wanted our Christmas record to be a little more lighthearted than a traditional Jars of Clay record. But then we started talking about Christmas and what it means. We have all these things we say about Christmas—peace and goodwill toward men—that in our current cultural [moment], don’t seem to hold much weight because we’re in the midst of war and great conflict. So how do we say these things and mean it?

How do lighthearted and serious issues, like the ones you mention, go together?

We wanted to make a Christmas record that had room for both nostalgia and cultural critique. To simply focus on the warmth of friends and family, and the mystery of Santa Claus, and the health rebellion of eggnog, would be an incomplete telling of the Christmas story. But simply to focus on the reality of perpetual war and human violence would make for a dark and sobering listening experience. We knew a balance had to be created.

You have been involved in helping Africa for years through Blood:Water Mission. Does your involvement inform the album?

Just in terms of making sure we were making a thoughtful Christmas album. Do They Know It’s Christmas? [Band Aid’s No. 1-selling 1984 album to fight famine in Ethiopia] looms over everybody’s head. That was such a terrible way of expressing what goes on in Africa in terms of objectifying it. That album took a broad brush and says this is what the Westerners think of people who certainly must not be as smart or aware of what goes on in the world.