Christian Music Online

Annual HeritageFest will be drawing Christian rockers

October 22, 2005 – 10:07 am

HeritageFest draws variety of artists - While some Texarkana music fans will be digging on the blues downtown, the 4th Annual HeritageFest will be drawing Christian rockers to the Heritage First Baptist Church beginning at noon Saturday for a different kind of celebration.

It’s the kind of celebration of Christian music that church planners visualized for youth several years ago, said Kale Magness, one of the festival organizers.

Taking the festival stage will be Kutless, Disciple, Pocket Full of Rocks, KJ-52, Krystal Meyers, OneFifty, Olive and Iron and Goesl’s Parade.

“Those of us who had the vision of doing something like this were of the same frame of mind,” Magness said. “Texarkana is positioned geographically to take advantage of musicians and groups traveling from Little Rock to Dallas and Shreveport could stop off for a show here. There was no venue for worship music and Christian rock, so we decided to take advantage of our location and try to become a regular stop-over.

“Christain music and worship music has shown it has crossover appeal with the success of bands such as P.O.D., Switchfoot and ThousandFootKrutch in the secular market. This allows us to extend our ministry to others. Last year was the biggest festival since we started, and we’re expecting a good turnout this year.”

The headliner for HeritageFest, Kutless is currently on its Strong Tower Tour, promoting their latest CD.

“Our record label brought the idea of doing a worship record to us. They believed the fans would like it. We were unsure of the timing since we’ve only done two records, but after prayer and thought, we decided to go ahead and do it,” said Kutless frontman Jon Micah Sumrall.

“After we made the decision, our goal became to make a new, fresh, revolutionary sounding record. I began to think about Sonicflood’s very first record and how I had never heard worship like that before. We wanted to bring that feeling back.”

Christian rock group Disciple has remained unchanged since their high school days a decade ago. They have performed 1,200 concerts to hundreds of thousands of fans, have released six albums, produced six No. 1 hits and have received four Dove Awards for Best Hard Rock Song and Album of the Year.

“We want to reach as many people as we can with our music. We feel that our songs are more than just music-we have seen them have a positive impact on people’s lives., but we feel we have so much more to give,” said vocalist Kevin Young.

Krystal Meyers is crystal clear about her music.

“I am a 16 year-old girl who loves God and who stands up for ‘anticonformity.’ I have chosen to find my identity in God instead of society. There are too many people doing what they shouldn’t, and I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to bow down to those pressures so I’m not going to,” Meyers said.

Pretty strong words from a teenager, but when you are also a young Christian rock vocalist, songwriter and musician, you are permitted a certain amount of self-confidence.

Meyer’s convictions are echoed in her edgy style and lyrics. She has worked with the Wizard of Oz production team of Avril Lavigne and Liz Phair, which resulted in a recording with Krystal revealing her grit and gusto set against a backdrop of rock guitar orchestration and explosive choruses.

Meyers developed her anticonformity stance while growing up in Franklin, Tenn., for the last 10 years as she watched friends give in to peer pressure, especially when it came to drugs.

“I respected my relationship with my God, my parents and myself (too much) to do that,” Krystal said.

KJ-52 has been through the Texarkana area a couple of times in the past few months where he demonstrated his Christian hip-hop and rap sounds, but he established himself on the Festival Con Dios and Winter Jam tours and with a Dove award for Rap/Hip-Hop Album of the Year.

“If there is anything that is typical in my life, it’s not having much but doing the best with what I had,” he said in press materials. “I wasn’t the best rapper. In fact I was horrible, but I got better. I wasn’t the best emcee or the most talented artist out there. I just simply did the best with what I had, and God has been blessing it.”

Local Christian bands also scheduled to appear are Olive and Iron, OneFifty and Goesl’s Parade will also give Texarkana Christian music fans a glimpse of where the local scene is headed with worship music and rock.

The local group Pocket Full Of Rocks is still savoring the recording contract the band entered into with Word Music in Nashville, Tenn. It may be a while before they are seen and heard in Texarkana as they take to the road in support of their music.

Tickets for HeritageFest 2005 are available for $15 at iTickets.com.

By ANTHONY DAVIS
Texarkana Gazette

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