Copious Notes

Skillet frontman John Cooper during the band's pyrotechnic-heavy show at the 2010 Ichthus Festival. © Herald-Leader staff photo by Rich Copley.

Central Kentucky Christian music fans, it seems, can pretty much lock the second Saturday of March onto their calendars for Winter Jam.

Skillet will lead the Winter Jam 2012 tour into the home of the Cats on March 10 with Sanctus Real, former Newsboys frontman Peter Furler, Kari Jobe, Building 429 and Group 1 Crew. This means that all that pyro we’re used to seeing out at the Icthus Festival will now be contained inside the arena.

I have this distinct memory of the last time Skillet was on the Winter Jam tour in 2008. It was the first time I took photos at Winter Jam, and no one warned me about those flame throwers at the front of the stage, so when the first ones went off I was feeling a bit … uh … toasty.

Anyway, Skillet in the arena. Should be a good time. As always, tickets are $10 and they are only available at the door. Earlier this year, Winter Jam 2011 attracted 16,431 people to Rupp.

Blanca Reyes and Pablo Villatoro playing around on stage at Questapalooza 2009. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Read more: Questapalooza is a big job for one church.

Group 1 Crew wants to make music you can take to a party.

“We wanted to give Christian kids a record they can be proud of,” says Manwell Reyes, one third of the Christian hip hop trio that is playing Questapalooza for the second straight year. “They know it’s God. Everything we write is God. But at the same time, we want them to have the full confidence that they can play it in front of their friends and know that it’s legit. They don’t have to worry about anyone saying, ‘That sounds dated’ or ‘That sounds whack.’”

As purveyors of urban music, Group 1 is something of a rarity in Christian pop music, a genre still mostly composed of adult contemporary music and rock acts.

Reyes says he thinks urban music gets a bad rap in the Christian market from gate keepers such as church leaders and record company executives who can’t separate the style from negative images of sex and violence associated with hip hop.

Pablo Villatoro, Blanca Reyes and Manwell Reyes on stage at Questapalooza 2009.

“Go to any church kid and look at their iPod, and I guarantee that some urban pop or hip hop is going to be there,” says Reyes, whose bandmates are Blanca Reyes (no relation) and Pablo Villatoro. “Secular urban music is what’s prominent today … the church is the only place that doesn’t acknowledge that it is.”

And Reyes says it is a problem if the Christian market is not producing music that the kids want to hear.

Group 1 Crew has done fairly well in the Christian market. The act’s last album, Ordinary Dreamers, was named rap/hip hop album of the year at the 2008 Dove Awards, Christian music’s top honors.

With the band’s new album, Outta Space Love, which is due Sept. 21, Reyes says the group is taking aim at the mainstream market.

“We’ve always felt called to the mainstream,” says Reyes, who promises Sunday’s Quest audience will hear quite a bit of the new album. “We feel like our music is for more than just the church. We feel like we should outreach to a mainstream world where other music really isn’t the best for kids to hear.

“Let’s not be content with just packing churches. Let’s go save some souls and grab some kids out of hell.”

Switchfoot - Tim Foreman, Jon Foreman, Chad Butler, Jerome Fontamillas and Drew Shirley, say goodnight - but, as it turns out, not for long - after their Ichthus set. Copyrighted photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

We got a chance to talk to Tim Foreman and Drew Shirley of Switchfoot before their set Thursday night at the Ichthus Festival. Click play to hear our chat. (Btw, the guy who walks through toward the end of the interview is Relient K’s Matt Thiessen.)

[podcast]http://copiousnotes.bloginky.com/files/2010/06/100617switchfoot.mp3[/podcast]

By the way, the line-up for Questapalooza was announced this morning, and Switchfoot tops the bill, which includes fellow Ichthus 2010 artists Newsboys, for their third Lexington-area show this year, and last year’s Questapalooza opener Group 1 Crew. The show is Sept. 5, and tickets go on sale July 4.

Slide show photos by Jason Sankovitch and Rich Copley.

Questapalooza 2009 did more with less Sunday: less time and less sun.

The absence of much — if any — sun made for a relatively cool afternoon and evening, and rolling back the start time made for a faster-moving event with main stage action from start to finish. If you were working the festival, say as a volunteer or a journalist, moving the start time back from 2 to 4 p.m. may have put a little more pressure on you. But for 8,500 festival goers, it meant there was always something happening on the main stage and you had a variety of things to catch when their wasn’t.

Like needtobreathe last year, Group 1 Crew made the most of its opening set, electrifying the crowd with a dynamic performance. One thing that has really evolved with the group since we first saw them in Winchester in May 2007 was greater involvement of the band, giving singers Manwell Reyes, Blanca Reyes and Pablo Villatoro more to play off of.

I didn’t get to hear too much of Jars of Clay’s set because I was busy working on our story for Monday’s paper, but it did strike me how seamlessly the band let its latest release, The Long Fall Back to Earth, color its whole set, while not slavishly delivering an overdose of the album. Jars is a band with a vast catalog of hits, and favorites such as Revolution and Love Song for a Savior were all there.

Third Day also has an extensive catalog to draw from, but the feel of it’s set was straight out of the Southern Rock-drenched Revelation album. If anyone came to Questapalooza wondering why these guys are regarded as one of the iconic bands in Christian rock, that question had to be answered a few songs in.

This was the first time I’ve seen Third Day since the departure of guitarist Brad Avery, and it was striking that this set seemed a bit more static than previous 3D shows with one less person to interact with and lead singer Mac Powell appearing to take on more guitar duties than in the past. But he sang with no-less conviction, and the band torched through a tasteful selection including Thief, God of Wonders and the band’s nuclear rendition of Rich Mullins’ Creed.

Quest Community Church continues to build Questapalooza into a signature event, and this is the one where they showed they understood bigger is not always better — in some ways.

Taliah Thornton, 4, of Lexington and Jonell Raglin enjoyed the 2008 edition of Questapalooza. Photo by Gabriel B. Tait.

After four years, you can safely say that if it is the Sunday before Labor Day, it’s time to party at Quest Community Church.

Questapalooza started in 2006 on a modest-but-­ambitious scale, inviting ex-dc talker-now-Newsboy Tait in to headline a day of music and youthful fun at the church grounds off ­Reynolds Road. Each year since, the event has upped the ante, bringing in bigger acts that attract bigger crowds.

This year, two legitimate headliners and Christian music icons in their own right, Third Day and Jars of Clay, top the bill as well as up-and-coming vocal act Group 1 Crew.

The wildcard is that you could open for Third Day.

Henry Shrader in the process of beating Kutless guitarist Nick De Partee in a Guitar Hero contest at Questapalooza 2008. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Questapalooza will feature the finals of The Fame, an American Idol-like singing contest that has been going on around town for several weeks and will culminate in semifinals on the main stage and the winner singing right before Third Day. Last year’s festival included a Guitar Hero competition, and winner Henry Shrader got to school Kutless guitarist Nick De Partee in the video game on the main stage.

“We wanted to give more of the community a way to participate,” Quest assistant pastor Justin McCarty says. There will be a chance to audition for the contest on the festival grounds early Sunday.

“Early,” this year, will be a little later than in the past.

While Although Questapalooza is getting bigger headliners and bigger crowds – more than 6,000 turned out last year – the event will actually dial back its hours, starting at 4 p.m. instead of 2, this year.

“We’ve found that period between 2 and 4 is the grayest part of the day,” McCarty says, meaning the crowd is smaller and activities aren’t quite as focused. “Moving it back gets us past the main heat of the day. We wanted to offer people the full experience for the whole time.”

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Jars of Clay's Steve Mason and Dan Haseltine brought their 1980s gym class look to the 2007 Ichthus Festival. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

In February, Quest Community Church announced Third Day will headline the fourth annual Questapalooza, Sept. 6 at the church off Reynolds Road. Today, the Questapalooza 2009 lineup was completed with the announcement Jars of Clay and Group 1 Crew will also play the event, again giving Quest something to top next year.

Group 1 Crew opened for Superchick in Winchester in 2007.

Jars is an interesting choice, because last year, they played an event at Lexington Christian Academy, across Reynolds Road from Quest, the night before Questapalooza, which featured Kirk Franklin and Kutless in 2008. Since then, they have released another critically acclaimed album, The Long Fall Back to Earth. Group 1 Crew has played around the area numerous times, including Winter Jam in 2008.

Quest will have a busy month, because a few weeks later, Jeremy Camp, Natalie Grant and Bebo Norman will play the church on Sept. 24.