Rock and religion come together… Terre Haute band opens for Grammy award-winning Jars of Clay

MARTINSVILLE, IL — A speckling of fans stood in the hot grass as bands warmed up Monday afternoon, making sure they’d have a place when the concert started.

“I think it’s amazing they’d come to a town this small,” Angela Short said of contemporary Christian artists Jars of Clay. The Merom resident brought her 13-year-old son Ben out to the Martinsville Ag Fair in Illinois’ Clark County, where the band with three Grammy Awards, nine GMA Dove Awards and five BMI awards was ready to rock out inside the fairgrounds track for about 2,000 people. “We couldn’t pass up coming,” she said.

Jars of Clay performed at 9 p.m. Monday, and sound checks were ongoing from 4:30 p.m. onward. Opening up for the national act was NEEDTOBREATHE, as well as Scot Longyear and Justin Hoeppner, both of Terre Haute’s Maryland Community Church.

“I think it’s a unique opportunity,” said Hoeppner, whose Justin Hoeppner Band opened up the night at 6 p.m. An Orange County, Calif., native, the lifelong surfer came to Terre Haute “a year ago today” to serve as pastor of worship arts at Maryland. “I’ve been in bands my whole life,” he said, explaining that his brother is a record producer in Los Angeles. But the ministry’s call led him and his family east, a move Hoeppner said he’s glad he made. “There’ll be tons of people here from Terre Haute,” he said before the night’s performance.

Longyear, teaching pastor at Maryland Community Church, ministered during Hoeppner’s songs, and throughout the concert it was clearly a Christian event, with a prayer tent available toward the back of the crowd.

Nick Sanders, a Terre Haute resident and parishioner of Maryland Community Church, made the drive to Martinsville to watch his ministers jam with Jars of Clay. “I love their stuff,” he said of the headliner, noting as did others throughout the event that a band like that doesn’t often show up in places like Martinsville. “I think it’s great they go to the smaller towns.”



Brian Boyce can be reached at 812-231-4253 or brian.boyce@tribstar.com.

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