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4
ARTIST FEATURE Relient K
Get to know the 2 time Dove award winning, and Grammy nominated rock band from Canton, Ohio
8 YOUR SONSHINE STORY
We hear what Sonshine Festival means to YOU!
10 MANAFEST
Sonshine gets an exlusive interview with Chris Greenwood, a.k.a Manafest to talk about everything from pro skateboarding to his upcoming book
14 SONSHINE EXCLUSIVE VIDEO PREMIERE
Be the first to see Manafest’s NEW video for the song, ‘Figther’
16 SONSHINE TICKETS
Choose the ticketing option right for you!
18 CHARTER DAY SCHEDULE
Check out all your favorite artists playing on Charter Day Thusday at Sonshine Festival
20 THE GREAT COMMISSION
HM Magazine gives us a behind-the-scences look at the band behind the album ‘Heavy Worship’
26 ACTIVITIES AT SONSHINE
Whatever you’re into, Sonshine Festival has it!
28 WORSHIP @ SONSHINE
LIVE AT SON
Relient K is an American rock band formed in 1998 in Canton, Ohio by Matt Thiessen, Brian Pittman, and Matt Hoopes during the band’s junior year in high school and their time at Malone University. The band is named after guitarist Hoopes’ automobile, a Plymouth Reliant K car, with the spelling intentionally altered to avoid trademark infringement over the Reliant name. The group is associated with the Contemporary Christian Music culture, most notably the Christian rock and Christian punk scene. Despite being a Christian band the group has performed alongside secular artists. The band has reached
critical success with mainstream pop punk and alternative rock. The band’s sound incorporates piano and acoustic elements. Since its formation, Relient K has released six studio albums, seven EPs, two Christmas albums, and one collection of rarities. The band has received numerous awards including a Grammy Award nomination in 2003 for Best Rock Gospel Album and two Dove Awards. Relient K is best known commercially for their two studio albums which peaked in the top 15 of the US Billboard 200 chart. After signing with Capitol Records, they broke into the mainstream
NSHINE 2012
in 2004 with the release of Mmhmm, which debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard 200. In 2007, their fifth album brought the most success for Relient K, Five Score and Seven Years Ago debuted at No. 6 on the US Billboard 200 and sold 60,000 records in its debut week. The band has sold over 2 million records, with three albums being given gold certification by the RIAA. The band is also highly successful throughout the Christian Albums and Contemporary Christian Music charts. Their newest album Is for Karaoke was released on October 4, 2011.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Name: Relient K Genre: Christian rock, alternative rock, pop punk Hometown: Canton, Ohio, Members: Matt Thiessen Matt Hoopes John Warne Jon Schneck Ethan Luck Years Active: 1998–present Website: www.relientk.com Albums: Relient K (2000) The Anatomy of the Tongue in Cheek (2001) Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right...but Three Do (2003) Mmhmm (2004) Five Score and Seven Years Ago (2007) Let It Snow, Baby... Let It Reindeer (2007) Forget and Not Slow Down (2009) Is for Karaoke (2011)
Playing Main Stage KTIS Day Saturday
I
am a recovering alcoholic. I could not listen to the music I loved as it became a trigger for me. I began listening to Christian music. one song struck me immediately. I heard the band ask people to say a prayer for those suffering from addiction. The words that followed said to remember that we are are not alone in our pain or perhaps shame and our suffering. And the most powerful words of all “CRY OUT TO JESUS. I continued to listen to Christian music. It was all so wonderful and I was forever reminded to cry out to Jesus. But my desire would not leave and I began to give up hope of it ever leaving, untill I went to my first Christian concert; Third day, of course. My desire for alcohol was removed and it has not returned.
with the peace that does pass all understanding. Two years ago a gentleman approached me and said its my birthday. I told him happy birthday and he told me he had one year sober. Later that evening, I spoke with a woman who had told me about her sobriety as well. My depression became overwhelming this year and I made a very serious suicide attempt. I was air lifted to a hospital where I finally felt hope that I can overcome my illness. It was a therapist who worked with me that gave me the same spark I felt when my desire for alcohol left. She saw my spirituality and God led her to pray with me. sometimes, we do not see at the time, God allows us to get to our lowest point to remind us that we need him.
provided me with a doctor that I beleive gave me hope that I may have never felt. I no longer will only survive. I will live again and I will feel that overwhelming feeling that I felt the day my desire for drinking left. Music is a very big part of healing for me. I have had 2 tickets on layaway for the full four days...last year! my friend surrendered his heart to God at the Sonshinefest. I wanted to make certain that we would again feel the power of God working in our lives. When I read the post that Third Day would be there, it all fit. Also, Cassie has been wonderful in helping me obtain the tickets! I feel blessed that I will be at Sonshine festival again. With God’s help I am alive and able to attend. Maybe I may find Gods purpose for me there. You never know?
The sonshine festival is near my My doctor said it was a miracle home town and I look forward to that I survived and God has a very it every single year. I always leave important purpose for me. God -TAMARA MCKESSON
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SONSHINE FESTIVAL MINNESOTA’S LARGEST FAMILY FRIENDLY FESTIVAL JULY 11-14
Sonshine Exclusive Interview by: Kent Matthews
O
ver the past 11 years, Chris Greenwood has been better known as Manafest to his scores of fans around the world. In 2006, Manafest released Glory from which the rock anthem “Impossible,” featuring Thousand Foot Krutch’s Trevor McNevan, became a global hit. Most recently Manafest released his fifth studio album, Fighter. I spoke with Manafest about his international success, skating and a new book he has been working on.
I grew up in Toronto and didn’t move to America until a year ago. I’ve traveled here extensively, but always went home to Canada. I have a lot of friends in California, and the weather is nice obviously. California really made sense.
new to us. We stopped in Beijing and Shanghai. It’s funny, we are playing in clubs and bars over there. It’s a great opportunity to play our music in these venues and connect with the people there. We have built some great relationships in our time there. It’s really exciting.
You just came home from a trip through China and Japan. How How did you get so popular over did that go? there? You are almost as big as David Hasselhoff! It was great! Every time we wonder if it will be our last opportu- Ha! I don’t know about that! nity to go, but this was our fourth There is an A&R guy at EMI I know you are from Canada, trip to Japan. We shot a music that really grabbed onto my muhow long have you lived in the video there for Fighter and I got sic and thought it would work. United States? to skate a lot. China was totally What Japan typically does with
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international music is import a little bit and see how it does, and if it sells they import a little more and if it builds momentum they will put marketing behind it and have a domestic release of the album. That is what happened to me. It’s an honor to keep going back.
raw, cold fish! It’s one thing to know you are trying something new, because you are prepared mentally, but when it’s a surprise it’s totally different! He basically spit it out on me. It was hilarious! I’m really picky, so I’m not going to try any kind of tongue or whatever, I let the other guys try that stuff.
What’s the craziest thing you have eaten in all your interna- I see you have a couple of new tional travels? music videos out already for this new album. I stay away from the crazy stuff, but some of the guys in the band Yeah, we tend to shoot quite a get a little daring. My buddy few. The one out now is, Never ate what we thought was a hash Let You Go. We shot it in France brown type of thing, but it was and I got to drive this awesome
1950s Porsche! We shot, Pushover, in Hollywood and Venice Beach with a bunch of skaters. We had a scene in the L.A. river and I’m splashing around in this nasty water. We just shot, Fighter, in Japan and we will shoot for a song called, Throw It Away, in Toronto. I’ve got a great team around me, I try to keep busy. Tell me about your new song Pushover, I know a lot of people are jumping on the anti-bullying bandwagon, but this is a lot more than that to you, right? Continued Next Page >>>
The idea of, Pushover, is having confidence in yourself and I believe confidence doesn’t come from money or physical strength, but it really comes from your relationship with God and knowing who you are in Him. That was a key factor to me when I was growing up. I got picked on and bullied a lot and knowing who you are in God and know that he has a plan and future for you that gives you a real boost of confidence to step out in faith and do awesome things. I see you skating a lot in your music videos. You wanted to go pro right? That was the dream! I started when I was 14, and skated non-stop. When I got injured everything changes. About that same time I got dumped by a girlfriend, too. She wasn’t a believer in Christ, so I shouldn’t have been dating her anyway. But I was just in a real dark place and got into music and writing songs. I still skate, but God put a new dream in my heart to pursue music. I’m very thankful for where I am now. With the recent celebrity suicides, this has been pretty prominent in the news lately, especially in sports. What would you say to someone who is having those kind of thoughts? I’ve been there and had those thoughts before. Sometimes we are in a dark or depressed state, but it could be stress, lack of sleep or just one really bad thing in your life that is consuming your attention and it feels like everything is lost. My message to you is not to give up. Life is worth living. Problems don’t last forever. We need you here and God loves you and has
good plans for you. I almost quit myself when I felt that way, but I’m glad I didn’t, and you will be too. Just keep going! You said something on Twitter that made me thing you might be writing a book. Are you? I’m keeping pretty quiet, but yes I am writing a book. Part of it will be biographical and I will share some of the things I went through growing up, like my dad’s suicide. The other part will talk about the music industry, the business side and the artist side. I want to help aspiring artists with tips on how to navigate their way through it. People need to be warned of some of the pitfalls and know the pros and cons of certain things. I’ve toured in 10 countries and things can get pretty crazy. I have a lot of artists ask me how to get into the business and I want to help them do it right. I hope to have it out by the end of the year. Coming up real soon you are making the rounds for a few summer festivals, including Sonshine Festival! I’m looking forward to it! I’ve played Sonshine for many years. Since you are an avid skater will you be hitting the skate parks at the festivals? I do mostly street skating, I’m not much of a ramp guy, but in the past I’ve had a chance to skate with some of the teams that were doing demos and it was a lot of fun. I would do it again! For more info on Manafest visit
www.manafest.net
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THE HARD MUSIC [DIGITAL] MAGAZINE
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tHe aFteRS
Album: Heavy Worship Label: ANGR Release Date: July 12, 2011 Members: Justin Singh, vocals; Angela Razo, guitar/vocals;
Billy Sweet, guitar; Victor Cota, guitar/vocals; Solomon Joy, bass; Alonso Azofeifa, drums RIYL: Sleeping Giant, xDeathstarx, The Gun Show, A Day to Remember, For Today
myspace.com/thegreatcommission
tHe GReat CommiSSion One night not too long ago, The Great Commission front man Justin Singh traveled to Riverside, CA to see contemporary worship artist Phil Wickham. During the show, Singh says Wickham just went with the Holy Spirit. Wickham started playing a little interlude and made up lyrics on the spot. “There was about 6-700 people singing to Jesus with all they have, spontaneously, at the top of their lungs and I thought that was the heaviest thing I’d seen in my life,” Singh says. “I was like ‘Man, this is amazing to see this happening at a contemporary worship show. I wanna see this happen in the underground, in hardcore shows.’ I thought that was a heavy thing, one of the heaviest things I’ve ever witnessed.” Singh brought this experience back to his band mates in The Great Commission and they tried to partner what was going on there with heavy music, put them together, thus giving birth to their latest album, Heavy Worship, which was released in July. Heavy Worship was kind of the icing on the cake for an impressive year for The Great Commission, one that has seen a lot of the time and work they have put in paying off. “The year has been incredible,” Singh says, “this is the year our new album came out. We waited two years before signing to a new label, before putting out any new material. So that’s always a scary thing when your band hasn’t really ... I mean, we consistently toured Every Knee Shall
feature and phOtO BY reGGie edWardS
Bow, but we hadn’t put out any new songs and waiting on God, to be honest, to open up a new opportunity, to open up a new door. “We had some offers from other labels here and there, but I guess we were just waiting on God to be like ‘This is the one I want you on, this is destiny.’ “When that offer came, everything just came together perfectly. We had our album at Cornerstone, told the label to start selling them there, got to meet a lot of people who still support the band over the two year period and the album came out a couple days after that, I believe. It’s doing incredible, doing a couple hundred a week, we couldn’t be more happy. And what’s cool is that people are finding worship out of it and that means the world to us. Heavy Worship shows the band experimenting with different sounds from their debut record, Every Knee Shall Bow, an album they wrote as a sideproject band. One thing that is very evident is that the album is much more melodic than the debut.
“The album is a lot more melodic and has more singing and a lot of different aspects to it, and if you listen to the songs,” Singh says, “not all the songs sound similar to each other. They may be structured similar, but musically they’re different and we just spend that time. I spend that time
in prayer about lyrics. We wrote that album collaboratively in that we wanted to reflect where we were at that time so each song, I feel, has its own emotion.”
The band may be called The Great Commission, but the band’s name is not merely just a name. In fact, during the recording of Heavy Worship, the band got a chance to put their name to work with an unlikely person. “We recorded with a guy named Andrew Glover, who’s in a secular band called Winds of Plague, and we recorded in his studio in Rancho Cucamonga,” Singh says. “He’s an atheist and it was kinda cool for us to write worship songs in an atheist studio. It was kinda funny, because at one point, he also did the new Sleeping Giant album, so we were saying he’s America’s number one Christian Atheist producer, which we thought was pretty cool. “We got to share a bunch of our views and beliefs, when I was tracking vocals he’d be asking questions like ‘What does ‘Let the dead bury the dead’ mean’ or what does this mean or that mean? So, it was cool to be able to explain that to him and a lot of our views on religion and Jesus, he was really turned on to those ideas. I feel like just the culmination of who he was and the culmination of his thoughts and ideas and our music and our involvements put together, really created Heavy Worship.”
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If you love to camp but don't have the equipment or the will to haul everything you need, the solution awaits you at Sonshine Festival this summer! We realize that while you love the outdoors, you also might not have the equipment or the ability to haul everything. To offer a solution to this dilemma, full size, roomy safari style tents will be set up on-site and available for rent for the duration of the festival. Tents are heavy-duty, with plenty of headroom and can sleep a maximum of six people.
LIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE, RESERVE NOW! Two cots are included for this price. Additional cots are available for $20 each (six cots max per tent). This is a great opportunity for families, youth groups and churches. Rental fees for tents are only $280 for the week of the festival.
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R A M L L I W A E R L A A V I T S E S F C I E S U M K E N I LA TO SONSH HOME
Where to Stay Hotels & Motels - Campgrounds Resorts - Bed & Breakfasts
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Attractions - Lakes Trails - Shopping - Events
800.845.8747 www.willmarlakesarea.com
They will celebrate and sing about your matchless mercy and your power to save. Psalms 145:7(CEV)
What could be better than the best in the Christian music world - in one place - for three days? 20,000 people you will worship with each day or a personal encounter with the One we worship.
Sonshine Festival - Minnesota’s Largest Family Christian Music Festival - July 11-14 - Willmar, MN