Headliner:

• Andrew Peterson

Co-Headliner:

• Jess Ray
• Jill Phillips
• Andy Gullahorn
• Andrew Osenga
• Skye Peterson
• The Arcadian Wild

Behold the Lamb of God is the kind of project that could probably only come from the mind of a fantasy book-loving pastor's kid who listened to hair metal and ended up at Bible college.

Singer/songwriter/novelist Andrew Peterson believes in the power of story in the human experience. It's this belief that fuels the motivation behind his 20-year passion project, Behold the Lamb of God, a recorded concept album and live concert event that tells the "true tall tale" of the coming of Christ.

Growing up an avid reader, Andrew has long been a lover of story and music as a means to awaken us to the beauty of life through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. "Unlike most of my friends, I didn't want a truck or a job or a scholarship; I wanted a horse and a quest and a buried treasure." As Andrew tells it, "Music was the call to adventure."

But it was 1980s concept albums that inspired Andrew to use music to tell a story over a series of songs - to interweave themes and variations into a tapestry that told a larger story, but not one that was simply handed over to the listener. "Listening to the albums again and again was like trying to solve a puzzle ... the story was just vague enough to keep me listening, hunting for clues," Andrew recalls.

All those influences - the church, fantasy novels, the hair metal records - were "bubbling in the cauldron," as Andrew puts it. Waiting for more ingredients that would one day solve a puzzle of his own: What had God called him to do?

More clues were discovered when Andrew encountered the music of Rich Mullins at age 19. This experience led him to ultimately ask the question, "God, will you let me sing about you, too?" And with that question, another ingredient was added to the pot.

Bible college provided a new perspective for the young artist. Having grown up in the church, with a Sunday School familiarity with the Bible, he began to realize the stories he was always told were actually true. "That was huge for me." Andrew remembers, "Rich always talked about God's grace, that God loved me and liked me, too. I began to realize the Bible was one big unified story and Jesus was the center of the whole thing. I remember thinking, wait, Jesus is a part of the Old Testament? I figured if I didn't know, lots of other people probably didn't know either."

It wasn't until Andrew sat in the wooden pews of the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee that the final ingredient was added to the stewing pot. Andrew drove from Florida to see Rich Mullins play that night, and snuck backstage to meet him. Two years later, Mullins would be killed in a car accident and Andrew and his wife Jamie would be moving to Nashville. Soon, Andrew was signed with a record label, launching his career as a singer-songwriter. And still, the itch to answer the question he'd been asking since age 19 was ever-present.

It was a Christmas concert attended with a friend that brought all the pieces of the puzzle together and gave way to the birth of Behold the Lamb of God. "When you really look at it, there's a narrative flow to the Bible. It's God telling us a story. That's the heart of Behold the Lamb of God. I left that concert saying, what if we wrote a collection of Christmas songs that told the full story of Jesus? What if we did a show about it and made it sound like Nashville, like the music we love?'"