Copious Notes

Tobymac (right) and the Diverse City band formed a drumline at Rupp Arena during the Winter Jam performance. (c) Herald-Leader staff photos by Rich Copley.

See more: Winter Jam 2013 photo gallery

Tobymac is one of the unlikeliest No. 1 artists to headline a Rupp Arena concert.

The former dc talk member operates firmly inside the contemporary Christian music world, but charted a No. 1 album overall on the Billboard Top 200 list last August with the debut of his latest effort, Eye on It.

Topping the bill at Saturday night’s Winter Jam concert, Tobymac (the stage name for Kevin Michael McKeehan) showed off the secret weapon in his success: his long serving Diverse City Band.

Red’s Michael Barnes checks to see what kind of lens I’m shooting with.

With him pretty much since he departed dc talk in 2001 for a break that turned into a solo career, Diverse City has formed into Christian music’s tightest ensemble capable of serving its frontman’s many moods: now we’re a hip-hop act, now we’re a rock band, now we’re worship, now we’re a drumline. One of the most illustrative moments was the pairing of the meditative Steal My Show and Boomin’, which sounds like its title. Falling back, a few members of the ensemble supported T-mac’s moment, and then we’re tight around him for the big number.

Steal My Show is Tobymac’s prayer to God to work through his music.

It is also something the other artists on the lineup, seen by an audience that packed 23,000-seat Rupp Arena to the rafters Saturday night, threatened to do.

Winter Jam has now made Rupp a regular stop, and this was one of its strongest, tightest presentations with even early evening artists like Royal Tailor giving arena-worthy sets and Red looking like a headliner itself with its blazing performance. When Red came to Winter Jam two years ago, it was stuck near the beginning of the lineup and missed by many who didn’t get into the arena until after the quartet played.

Saturday, they were highlighted after Nick Hall’s message and delivered a quick cathartic lineup with hits from their last two albums, Until We Have Faces (2011) and this year’s Release the Panic.

Sharing a lineup with Red and Toby, mellower acts Matthew West and Newsong, Winter Jam’s host band, also delivered surprisingly engaging sets. West, in particular, was electrified and funny, at one point joking everyone would leave with a copy of his new CD, Into the Light … if everyone went to his merchandise table and bought it. “This isn’t Oprah,” he joked. “I have to feed my kids.”

Matthew West, not Oprah, on stage at Rupp Arena for Winter Jam.

I did not get to see every act Saturday, as I had to leave the arena for a while to report and write an item for the Herald-Leader about the resurrection of the Ichthus Festival.

Newsong’s Russ Lee announced from the stage that the 43-year-old festival, which closed late last year due to financial troubles, is being brought back by the people who bought the intellectual property of the festival, including its name and website. Ichthus had a table at Winter Jam, and former director Mark Vermilion said more detailed announcements should be coming later this week about when and where an abbreviated Ichthus will be presented this year. He said the new owners, whose identities were not disclosed Saturday, want to bring back a full-fledged Ichthus, which ended as a four day-three night event, in 2014 and after.

So, Winter Jam will not have to fill the roll of Central Kentucky’s biggest annual Christian music event. But as it has proven before, it’s great in its own right.

Worship artist Matthew West talked to the crowd at the main stage at Ichthus on June 18, 2011. (c) Lexington Herald-Leader photos by Rich Copley.

Saturday night at the Ichthus Festival, I arrived in the photo pit at the Deep End stage and saw a familiar face on the front row: Jenny Green, a teen from Crawfordsville, Ind., who I had met the day before hanging out at the front row fence at the main stage.

Friday, she had arrived at the big stage at 10:30 a.m. to stake out a spot for Skillet and Family Force Five. But Saturday night, with a lineup including Disciple and The Almost, Jenny assured me that the Deep End was the place to be.

Jenny Green (glasses and raised arm) of Crawfordsville, Ind., and others cheer a performance by Disciple on the Deep End Stage at the Ichthus Festival on June 18, 2011.

For her, at least.

The main stage had not closed Saturday. There were in fact thousands of people gathered for festival closers Matthew West and Chris Tomlin. But the worship artists were not going to make your ears bleed and pop your eyes out with pyrotechnics, as cool as How Great is Our God might be punctuated with some fireworks.

But the shifting stages and fan bases were part of why this year’s Ichthus demonstrated something serious Christian music fans have known for a long time: You cannot neatly categorize Christian music under one heading, though that is what the music industry has long tried to do.

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Chris Tomlin will headline the Community Day, June 18, at the Ichthus Festival. © Associated Press photo.

The Ichthus Festival is focusing on a new market: Central Kentucky.

During the past four ­decades, the Wilmore ­Christian pop music festival has drawn fans from all over the Eastern United States and even farther away.

Ichthus CEO Mark ­Vermilion points to the festival’s heyday 10 years ago, when entire sections of the camping area would be made up of people from Michigan. Now, just a ­handful of the event’s more than 10,000 ­patrons are from the Great Lake State.

And the same is true of Georgia, Illinois, Virginia and other areas more than half a day’s drive from Wilmore.

“Our market has shrunk to a 200-, maximum 250-mile radius of Wilmore,” Vermilion said.

Two big factors contribute to that.

First, there’s everyone’s ­favorite headline: gas prices. If you think your SUV can drink up the fuel, wait until you try filling up a church van.

Also, the number of ­festivals and similar ­opportunities to see Christian bands has increased, so audiences are ­finding they don’t have to travel as far to see favorite bands. Even in Central Kentucky, where Ichthus used to be the sole annual Christian music event, other attractions such as two one-day festivals in ­Lexington — September’s Questapalooza at Quest Community Church and March’s Winter Jam at Rupp Arena — have given music fans other ­opportunities to see many of the same acts.

And in some ways, while there is still free camping on site and four straight days of rock at Ichthus Farm, the event is marketing itself to locals as an attraction similar to those one-nighters.

It started last year with a festival-opening ­“Community Night” featuring chart-topping artists TobyMac and the Newsboys. This year, Ichthus is offering two days geared toward locals. The festival will open June 15 with a Night of Worship featuring praise superstars Hillsong United. Three days later, it will close with Community Day, letting single-day attendees ­access the festival for a ­discounted price.

Both days are $25 each, if tickets are purchased by June 10, or a Night of ­Worship/Community Day package is $40.

“There will always be people who want to come for the full three- and four-day experience, and we believe that’s where real community happens,” Vermilion said. “But we also want the people from Central Kentucky to look at Community Day and say, ‘That’s my day.’”

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