A JOSHUA CREEK CHRISTMAS...A CONCERT YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS!
Kanab Arts Board and Kane County Office of Tourism present “A Joshua Creek Christmas”,
an award-winning Americana-Country group.
Saturday, December 14, 2019 6:30pm at the Redstone Theater in downtown Kanab, Utah.
Tickets are $5 Adults (under 12 get in free). Purchase your tickets at Honey’s Marketplace or at the door the night of, but please be aware, seating is limited.
With Christmas right around the corner, ‘tis the season for families, faith and fun, the three things that form the foundation of the music produced by Utah-based band Joshua Creek. Meaning it’s also probably the perfect time to go check out “Joshua Creek Christmas,” coming to the Covey Center for the Arts in Provo this Thursday.
It’s been nearly two decades since Quint Randle, a professor in the School of Communications at Brigham Young University, first started writing songs for the band with his friend Jeff Hinton, and 12 years since the duo released their first album, a feat that couldn’t have happened without the help of musical director and lead guitarist Ron Saltmarsh and drummer James (Jim) Hollister, Randle’s brother-in-law, who both joined the group soon after.
With nearly 40 concerts under their belts so far this year and regular airplay on local radio stations, it’s safe to say Joshua Creek, with its unique, faith-centric, family-oriented country sound, has picked up quite the following.
“Generally, we try to sing about … the experiences people have in everyday life, as opposed to these grand, huge ideas,” Randle said of the inspiration behind the group’s music, and why it’s become increasingly popular. “We try to tell stories in our songs that touch people because they’ve experienced those same things.”
The songwriting was the foundation for the group, and it’s also been a driving force behind its transition from recorded music to live concerts, including Joshua Creek’s now ninth year of Christmas performances across the state, including Thursday’s show in Provo. Randle said the performances are in line with the group’s mission to share the message of their music, which is pretty straightforward.
“It’s just family,” he said. “We say we sing about faith, family and fun, and those are kind of the three things that we focus on, though obviously at Christmastime it’s a little more pointed, a little more explicit and a little more overt.”
The group has been compared by critics to a musical Norman Rockwell painting, so you can bet their holiday performance will include a healthy portion of family-friendly holiday goodness, topped off with great lead vocals by Hinton.
“Jeff, our lead singer, just has an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime kind of voice that sounds like a cross between John Denver and James Taylor,” Randle said. “He just has this beautiful, warm voice and when you combine that with the harmonies, it’s just kind of unique.”
Though Randle said the group’s demographic is “a little more Branson, Missouri, family-friendly,” it hasn’t stopped them from pushing to get their sound to a wider audience.
“We’ve been lucky enough to have airplay to get our name out there,” Randle said, before explaining how the concerts help to continue that push. “With any successful band it’s all about how much, how long and how well you’ve performed – nothing more than performing makes your band tighter, better and more comfortable, so our goal this year was to get out and do as many performances as realistically, reasonably possible.”
The group’s Christmas performances, though, will hit a little closer to home than the music they play year round, especially since, according to Randle, it was Christmas songs he and Hinton sent off to different publishers that got the group’s wheels turning.
As to his favorite thing about holiday performances, Randle said the message of Christmas is at the top, along with “that great celebration of the family and the gift of Christmas.”
“We only do it once a year,” Randle said of the Christmas performances. “All the shows we do during the spring and summer are really just a driving point to these shows because they’re the most fun.”
