new website

The new GospelFest Ministries website will be launching shortly after Memorial Day! Be sure to check it out: www.gospelfestministries.com, and be sure to sign up for our monthly e-newsletter!

An Evening with Fanny Crosby

Tomorrow night, the GospelFest Singers will be presenting "An Evening with Fanny Crosby" at the United Methodist Church in Douglass, IL. We've been doing this program now for several years and it's always popular.

Fanny Crosby is one of America's most prolific hymnwriters, having written over 8,000 hymns during her 95 years on earth. Blind from six weeks of age, she discovered her writing gift during her early teen years. She studied at the New York Institute for the Blind and later became a teacher at the school, along with her husband who was also blind.

Fanny only wrote the texts of her hymns. The melodies were written by many different hymn writers of the day, including William H. Doane, Phoebe Knapp, Robert Lowry and William J. Kirkpatrick. She used many different pseudonyms for her hymns. One reason for this was because at one time, she was the only writer on staff at the Bigelow & Main Publishing Company and her bosses didn't want their competition to know they could only afford one writer!

Our program is a biography of this great hymn writer and talks about her life while weaving in many of her most popular hymns. This was a woman who allowed herself to be used by God, despite her physical handicap, to share His love with others. What an inspiration!

Some of Fanny's more popular hymns include "To God Be The Glory," "He Hideth My Soul," "Redeemed," and of course "Blessed Assurance." If you'd like to have "An Evening with Fanny Crosby" at your church or event, please contact us by visiting our website at www.gospelfestradio.com.

Summertime GospelFest 2009

The 11th annual Summertime GospelFest will be here before you know it! This year, central Illinois' premier southern gospel event will be held Friday, June 26th at 7:00pm at Grace Evangelical Church in Morton, IL. Ticket information will be available soon.

The GospelFest Choir is a volunteer, community-wide choir made up of folks from all over central Illinois. If you'd like to join us in the choir, we'd love to have you! Rehearsals begin Wednesday, April 29th at 7:30pm at Grace Evangelical Church in Morton, IL. Rehearsal CD's and music will be provided...come on out and sing with us! We have a lot of fun!

Happy Easter

Hope you all had a wonderful Resurrection Day yesterday! Our church had 2 services and by noon we were already tired! The girls had great fun hunting eggs (at 6:00am, before Daddy had to leave for church!)

We're now up to 8 stations airing "Shawn Degenhart's GospelFest Hour," and the first program aired this past weekend. Looking forward to getting feedback from those stations.

Rehearsals for the 11th annual "Summertime GospelFest" will begin Wednesday evening, April 29th, at 7:30 at Grace Church in Morton, IL. All are welcome to join us...please pass the word along if you know someone who'd like to sing in GospelFest this year! Concert is Friday evening, June 26th, at 7:00pm.

Finishing up taxes and now have all the paperwork filed to incorporate "GospelFest Ministries" as its own non-profit entity! Pretty excited about that. Stay tuned for more info...

Stations Added

It's been an exciting week around here. After the "first-wave" of promotions for "Shawn Degenhart's GospelFest Hour," there have been 6 stations that have decided to air the show! We're so thankful. Those six stations are in Michigan, Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama,  Mississippi and North Carolina. For more complete information about the stations, check out the "News" section on our website, www.gospelfestradio.com. While you're there, you can also sign up for our monthly newsletter.

Dates for this year's 11th annual "Summertime GospelFest" have been announced: June 26th at Grace Evangelical Church in Morton, IL. Choir rehearsals will begin shortly after Easter. E-mail me for more information...we'd love to have you!

Have a great weekend!

Progress!

We've gotten a green-light on the revised demo we sent to Westar Media Group! One minor adjustment and we'll be sending the demo to them in the next couple of days. The demo (along with an 8-minute "telescoped" demo) will be sent out to over 1,000 stations across the country! Continue to pray for "Shawn Degenhart's GospelFest Hour."

If you haven't yet signed up for our monthly newsletter, I'd encourage you to do that. Just visit the website and sign up in the little white box. Every month you'll get a newsletter keeping you up-to-date on the radio program, upcoming concerts and other news. The website is www.gospelfestradio.com.

In other news, I'm finishing up a songbook project for Daywind Artists "Brian Free & Assurance." This book will have close to 40 songs, from old favorites to songs that are featured on their brand new album, due out in March.

GospelFest Radio

Lots happening with Hands of Love! Very soon we will be syndicating "Shawn Degenhart's GospelFest Hour" across the country! Westar Media Group will be shipping demos out to over 1000 radio stations across the country! To support the program, we've developed www.gospelfestradio.com as a source of information for not only the radio program, but also the many concerts, recordings, etc.

You can also check out the GospelFest group on Facebook as well as hear audio clips at www.myspace.com/shawndegenhart.

Christmastime GospelFest with Allison Durham Speer was fantastic and we were very excited to have her join us. There are some pictures up on my Facebook page.

Exciting things happening!

Christmastime GospelFest

Allison Durham Speer will be joining me and the GospelFest Singers for our 4th Annual Christmastime GospelFest! The event will be Thursday, December 11th, at the Five Points Washington Caterpillar Performing Arts Center in Washington, IL. Tickets are available by calling 309.472.0027. They're $15 advance and $18 at the door, $7 students and group discounts are available.

Allison has a brand new Christmas CD, from which she'll be singing at the concert, along with songs from the GospelFest Singers' new Christmas CD, "An Old-Fashioned Christmas." This album is an EP, featuring 3 original songs from Scott Kramer and myself, as well as the southern gospel classic, "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem."

Elijah Conference

We just completed the first annual Elijah Conference, hosted by Allison Durham Speer Ministries. This fantastic event served to challenge artists to better serve the kingdom of God by becoming effective communicators of the gospel. From artist/pastor relations, sharing deep spiritual truths in a concert and simply loving on people, all those in attendance--students and faculty--were challenged and sharpened through lecture, discussion and practical "lab" experiences.

Many of the students were also former students from the Stamps-Baxter School of Music, but there were several new faces. Brian & Allison Speer led a staff including Mike Allen, Wess & Susan Adams and myself along with many industry professionals who spoke on a variety of topics including pastors' perspectives on booking artists (Johnny Minick), booking dates (Kathi Mathis), Nashville Number System (Jack Clark), Marketing (Les Butler), creating a non-profit ministry (Rebecca Irwin), and producing an independent record (Aaron Minick).

What Allison teaches at the Stamps-Baxter school we were able to delve into even further with more detail and purpose--creating meaningful and impactful segues/transitions, using humor to create a comfortable concert setting, the power of scripture in your programs, how to successfully market an artist. Just a fantastic weekend!

This conference should be required for all soloists and groups wishing their ministry will have a profound effect on the kingdom of God and I can't recommend it highly enough. I am blessed to have been a small part of this fantastic event.

www.elijahconference.com.

New Dad Speer Songbook available

After 3 years, my new songbook, "Heaven's Jubilee: the songs of G.T. "Dad" Speer and the Speer Family" is now available! It was released this past January and has been selling very well. Ben Speer said it was one of the fastest moving product he remembered since they recorded "Peace in the Valley." Gaither Music has also picked up this book and is carrying it in their catalogs. You can order through me by e-mailing me at degenmusic@gmail.com. They are $10 each ($12 for spiral binding).

The photos below were taken by Aaron Crisler for the Judy Nelon Group. This is Bill Gaither & Ben Speer holding and talking about the songbook at a Homecoming concert in Nashville earlier this year. Thanks for the photos Aaron!

This year's GospelFest will be June 14th at Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria. We're excited to be joined by Reggie & Ladye Love Smith and Stephen Hill, all regulars on the Gaither Homecoming videos. This is our 10th annual GospelFest and we're very excited about it!

I returned from Nashville a couple weeks ago after attending and presenting at the "Farther Along Conference" hosted by MTSU's Center for Popular Music in Murfreesboro, TN. What a great time of discussion and learning about the varying facets of the singing convention world.

long time

Long time, no blog. Quick updates:

Eliza Rose was born September 16th, 5:50pm. She was 7lb 5oz and 19in long. Clara loves being a big sister!

Summertime GospelFest was a big success...program was set up like an old-fashioned radio show.

Gospel Music of Elvis Presley...premiered on the September RiverLife cruise. We've had an encore presentation and are getting more bookings.

Christmastime GospelFest tickets are now available. We'll be at the Gateway Building in Peoria Friday, December 14th for a dinner concert and at Grace Church in Morton on Saturday, December 15th for a concert only with their choir.

Tracking in Nashville

Hello! Scott Kramer and I just returned from Nashville from a 2-day session recording rhythm tracks for this year's Summertime GospelFest. We had an awesome time and made a lot of great music. All of our musicians play or have played on the Gaither homecoming videos and were wonderful to work with:

Tommy Cooper, engineer
Tracey Phillips, piano
Kevin Williams, guitar
Jimmy Carter, drums
Jerry Kroon, bass

We recorded 15 songs in 2 days. Each day had a morning and afternoon session. We also got some new Christmas songs recorded that we'll be using for Christmastime GospelFest. We'll definitely be going back to do more. It's amazing the talent God has given all of them.

Ben Speer also stopped by the studio to look over a rough copy of the Dad Speer songbook I'm publishing. He really liked the pictures that had been included and while we were down there, I received the foreword that Bill Gaither wrote for this book--very exciting! I hope to have it to the printer by the end of March, so it should be available by early May.

I'll be posting some pictures from the session, hopefully later today.

Shawn

Christmastime GospelFest

Well, it's been a while!

We had a BLAST with Ben & Allison Durham Speer at the Summertime GospelFest. I got to sing a couple songs with them and they really enjoyed themselves as well. Allison also did a great job on the RiverLife cruise the next evening.

Last month, we had the first annual HarvestTime GospelFest at the Zion Oaks Tabernacle. The week prior had been nice and warm, but the day of the concert was nice and nippy--about 45 or 50 degrees outside. It was still a great concert and we had about 150 people there--all bundled up in coats and blankets. Lots of fun.

Christmastime GospelFest is in less than a month and we've sold quite a few tickets so far. We'll be doing some great southern gospel and traditional Christmas music as well. We'll even throw in a couple of "original" songs--one written by me and the other co-written with Scott Kramer.

I've almost sold out of my third printing of the "Convention Hallelujahs!" songbook and am considering printing a new book next year--either a 2nd book of convention favorites or a bok featuring the songs of Dad Speer--a work that's been in progress for a couple years now. Not sure yet which we'll do.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

GospelFest is coming

Well, I had a great time in Nashville teaching at Ben Speer's Stamps-Baxter School of Music. We heard from guest artists such as Gordon Mote, the Florida Boys, Lori Apple, Stephen Hill, Reggie & Ladye Love Smith and Bill & Gloria Gaither.

I had 8 students in my theory class and we studied advanced partwriting, as well as ear training, dication, and sight-singing.

We're now just a few weeks away from GospelFest and it's going to be great. I was able to sit down with Allison a couple times at Stamps-Baxter and work through the concert order. I'm very excited about this concert.

The radio show continues to do very well...I hope you get a chance to listen: M-F 7:00pm on WBNH 88.5FM or at www.handsoflove.org. Just click on the "GospelFest Productions" link.

Have a great day!

Stamps-Baxter School of Music

Well, we finally got moved and our house sold...now two and a half months later, we'll still trying to find things in boxes!

We just got back yesterday from a week-long vacation in Hayward, WI, with my family. We had a great time. Clara loved her boat-ride and even the pool.

Today, I flew to Nashville for the beginning of the Stamps-Baxter School of Music, which starts tomorrow. Eric Walker picked me up, and the airlines only lost one of my bags...wait, that's 50% of my luggage!!! Hopefully it will get here tonight or tomorrow.

Eric and I and a friend from school went to Cracker Barrel for dinner after picking me up at the airport. While we were eating, in walks all of the Gaither Vocal Band and their spouses and some of Guy Penrod's kids. Then, some of the Isaacs stopped in as well. It was the place to be.

I'll keep updating about what's going on at the school.

Only five more weeks til GospelFest!

Summertime GospelFest

Happy Memorial Day! We've been very busy for the past six weeks packing up the house. We placed an offer on a home the day before Easter and it was accepted that next week. We then put our house on the market and sold it ten days later! Praise the Lord! We've been up to our ears in home inspections, contracts, repair amendments, packing, etc. We close on both of our homes on June 1st (my grandpa's 80th birthday!), and immediately take possession of our new home. Our buyer will take possession of our current home on June 3rd, so we have about a day and a half to get moved. Can't wait.

We start rehearsals for the 8th Annual Summertime GospelFest this Wednesday. It's going to be very exciting having Ben, Faye and Allison Durham Speer with us. Still getting the music together and figuring out what we'll be doing. The concert is August 25th at Grace Presbyterian Church.

The GospelFest Singers will be singing for the RiverLife Father's Day Cruise on June 18th aboard the Spirit of Peoria. The next day, Anne and I, along with Scott & Rachel, will be going on an overnight excursion on the Spirit of Peoria up to Starved Rock State Park. Should be a great couple of days.

"An Evening with Fanny Crosby" will be at Dayton Avenue Baptist in Peoria on June 11th at 6:00pm. Come on out for a great evening! We'll also be in Rock Island, IL, on June 25th at 6:00pm.

Happy Memorial Day weekend!

Shawn

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! What a wonderful time of year--made even more appreciable by the beautiful weather, blooming forscythia, lilacs, daffodils, green grass, warm temps...

The Radio Time GospelFest Hour has been in full swing now for two weeks and is being received very graciously. Be sure to listen every weeknight at 7:00 on WBNH 88.5FM or on the web at www.wbnh.org. This week's programs have been all about the Cross, the Blood, and Calvary.

Hands of Love is working on a new look to their website and it's really starting to take shape. You can check out the GospelFest Productions section and find out about all of our GospelFest concerts, pictures of the singers, listening samples from our soon-to-be-released CD, songbook orders, etc. Check it out!

Clara's finally walking--she' so cute watching her toddle, fall over, get back up while laughing, etc. How exciting!

Happy Easter!
Shawn

Ministry Updates

Hello all. Wanted to let you know about the start date for Radio Time GospelFest Hour. The past couple weeks have truly been a learning experience as we've been putting shows together. I certainly hope it gets quicker as I get more used to it. I've completed almost two weeks' worth of shows and hope to be three weeks ahead by the time the show starts airing on April 3rd... Yes, the Radio Time GospelFest Hour begins April 3rd and 7:00pm and will run Monday through Fridays on WBNH 88.5 FM or on the web at www.wbnh.org. We're very excited about this ministry opportunity. We're also putting together a program for our ministry events as well as a poster/flier for the GospelFest concerts.

A couple weeks ago, we presented "An Evening with Fanny Crosby" at Highview Church of God in Washington, IL, and at Grace Evangelical Church in Morton, IL. This is a great presentation on Fanny Crosby's life and many of her hymns she wrote.

With Degenhart Music, I've also been very busy with a variety of things. I'm doing the typesetting for a book that will be published by Harold Timmons later this spring. It's a compilation (the first of several volumes) honoring the Chuck Wagon Gang. Harold played for the Chucks and is now putting together songbooks featuring many of the songs they're known for. I've also been doing some typesetting for a songwriter from Chicago, IL, and am working on a songbook project for the Ruppes, a women's family trio from North Carolina.

Busy, busy, busy...

Radio-Time GospelFest Hour

Hello and Happy Valentine's Day!

Hands of Love was approached by WBNH 88.5 FM (Peoria's Moody affiliate) to take over production of their hour-long southern gospel radio program "Southern Gospel Moments" which airs five times a week. We have always had a great relationship with WBNH and are thrilled with this new ministry partnership.

I will be hosting the program and it will now be called "Radio-Time GospelFest Hour." In addition to the great current southern gospel hits, we'll also be featuring many of the older pioneer groups, such as the Goodmans, Speers, Blackwoods and Statesmen, in many of their classic recordings. We also hope to do interviews with artists and other special features.

We're currently working on the pilot episode, which hopefully will air sometime in March. We're very excited about this new venture for Hands of Love and WBNH!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everybody! Exciting things are happening for Hands of Love Ministry this year. For our 8th Annual Summertime GospelFest, I'm pleased to announce that the concert will be a special tribute celebrating the Speer Family's 85th anniversary. For the occasion, we'll be featuring special guests Allison Durham-Speer, Ben Speer and Faye Speer. We're very excited about having these living legends with us to celebrate Mom & Dad Speer's legacy of the past 85 years. Ben is the music director for the Gaither Homecoming videos and has sung with the Speer Family since age 3. He also has a studio in Nashville and serves as a producer for many recording artists. Allison Durham-Speer is married to Brian Speer, son of Faye and the late Brock Speer. Her solo career has taken her all over the world and is a featured singer on the Gaither Homecoming videos. Faye Speer joined the group when she married Brock in 1948. Her sweet spirit and smooth alto voice became an integral part of the Speer Family for the better part of the past 58 years.

The date for the concert will be August 25th at Grace Presbyterian Church. Along with our special guests will be the GospelFest Singers, Choir and Band, as well as pianist Tracey Phillips from Nashville and bass singer Eric Walker from Missouri. Stay tuned for information regarding tickets.