By Kelly Young

kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com

It’s still more than three-and-a-half months away, but this year’s Harvest Fest is already shaping up to be the biggest and best in the music festival’s six-year history — featuring the biggest headlining artist yet.

“The headliner for us this year is internationally known recording artist KJ-52. For us to be able to get somebody as well-known as KJ-52 is tremendous for the Harvest Fest,” said Robin Butt, organizer of the event. “When we approached his management with what we were doing, he was very excited to be involved. God really put it on his heart to be a part of Harvest Fest this year.”

One of the biggest names in contemporary Christian rap, KJ-52 has won four Dove Awards, including two in 2007 for rap/hip-hop song of the year and rap/hip-hop album of the year. KJ-52 is the stage name for Jonah Sorrentino, the only Christian hip-hop artist to ever have three of his first four albums sell more than 100,000 copies.

“He is really excited about Harvest Fest. He was planning to take the month of September off, and we are now one of the only things he is going to be doing all month,” Butt said. “His normal pricing is over $5,000, and he dropped that figure very considerably just to be able to be a part of Harvest Fest.”

Last year’s festival, headlined by Dove-nominee Krystal Meyers, attracted about 725 people from around the East Texas region. Local bands Considered Rubbish (from Nacogdoches) and Mud Creek Revival (of Rusk) opened for Meyers last year and will reprise that role by also opening for KJ-52.

Harvest Fest creator Vincent Lankford said the event has begun drawing patrons from surrounding communities in the last few years.

“I think last year was the first year we had a lot of people from outside the immediate community of Jacksonville, Rusk and Frankston come to Harvest Fest. Last year we had churches from Tyler, Athens, Douglass and Longview bring their youth groups out. It’s starting to grow outside of this area, and I think that’s a really good thing for it,” Lankford said.

Organizers have not yet lined up a main speaker for the event. James Darby spoke last year, and dozens came forward to talk to youth ministers during his invitation.

“One big thing we are bringing in this year will be an extreme sports spectacular; brought to us by Central Baptist Church. They will be doing demonstrations and giving their testimonies,” Butt said. “The details will be elaborated on more in the future, but we can now go ahead and announce this new addition to the festival.”

Lankford said several local churches have gotten involved in the planning of Harvest Fest 2008, more so than in previous years. He named Central Baptist, Woodland Heights, Grace Fellowship and River of Life churches as being particularly involved.

Harvest Fest 2008 will begin at 6 p.m. Sept. 27 inside the Tomato Bowl. As always, there is no admission; and free raffle tickets will be given to each attendee.

Butt and Lankford are still in need of local businesses to step up and help sponsor the event. For more information on Harvest Fest or to make a donation, Lankford can be reached at 903-721-4001.

“We eventually want Harvest Fest to grow into an all-day Christian youth festival up there with the likes of ShoutFest. We don’t have anything like that in our area — you have to go to the Dallas or Houston areas for anything like that — and we would like to be able to bring that here locally,” Butt said.