Coffeehouse is one of our absolute favorite sets at AgapeFest and this year we’ve got two great up-and-coming artists ready to grace your ears with their late-night, perfectly-paired-with-coffee-from-Jo’s Java, musical offerings.

Susan Shepherd is a Greenville College student and one of our very own AgapeFest Cabinet members. She’ll be opening the late-night set with her fantastic sounds. Hop over to Susan’s MySpace and give her a listen. And leave some love in the comments for her!

Then, Clemency will be closing the night out. If you haven’t heard Clemency, then you’re in for a treat. Their melodic indie rock will bring a great close to a full afternoon of music and prepare you for Saturday’s incredible lineup. You can check out Clemency on their MySpace too.

Coffee is provided by Jo’s Java, a local coffeeshop located on the Greenville College campus. Make sure to grab a mocha or a latté at this year’s Coffeehouse. Then sit back, relax, and sip your drink while hearing more great music.

The Friday late-night AgapeFest Coffeehouse is located on Stage 2 after Main Stage shuts down for the night. That’s about 11:15 pm. We gear coffeehouse a bit more chilled. Not only can we book awesome musicians who have a slower feel to their music, but hopefully we can offer some respite to those of you who are youth leaders or volunteers and need something a bit more calm after all the rockin’ is done.

Have you been to Coffeehouse in the past? What are your favorite memories/bands? Leave your stories in the comments!

Well this semester is going to basically be the best ever! I’m sorry I haven’t posted as much as I would have liked, but it’s a bit difficult doing too many credits in a semester and be a director of the best festival ever! But, I’m mellowing out this semester, and investing pretty much all my spare time to this festival. I was going over some ideas while on Christmas vacation with my family and got antsy…I have so much in my head and so much excitement for this festival that I just wish it was here already!

As you’ve seen we already have our Main Stage line-up done! This is huge ya’ll. I’m not sure if you remember last year but we were definitely not this far ahead. Now we are starting to look at bands for Stage 2. So that is pretty awesome. This selection is done by a student-led staff that has a majority say and we try and bring in more local bands. Let us know who you think should be up there!

Battle of the Bands: I know some of you are way stoked about applying for that again this year. We have a huge thing coming your way to add onto our Battle of the Bands. It’s going to be way more competitive this year but that is because the reward is massive! Once we have all the info we need either myself, Joel or our Artist Relations guy, Micah, will fill you in on all that info. We are going to be taking submissions through Sonicbids.com which is how we did it last year too. That will probably all come around in February and early March.

Well, I won’t bore you with much more but I just wanted to let you know about some exciting stuff that is coming your way this semester!

Have a great one!

Lys…the Director

Friday: Everyday Sunday, Decyfer Down, Disciple and Skillet

Saturday: Brooke Barrettsmith, Wavorly and Hawk Nelson

We’ll start filling in our official lineup on the Bands page in the next week or so. We’re super excited to have these bands at AgapeFest 09.

Who else are you hoping will pop up on the list?

tobyMac at AgapeFest 2005

Guys. We’ve done it. We have confirmed the headliner for Saturday night.

Can you guess who it is?

Okay. I’ll tell you. tobyMac will be joining us this year as our Saturday headliner. Some of you will remember that Toby had a conflict last year and wasn’t able to perform, substituting Relient K as a headliner.

More artist announcements are coming. Watch this space for more info or subscribe to our feed to make sure you’re always up to date. If you’re not into the feed thing, follow us on Twitter. We’ll post all of our news there as well.

More Stuff
Check out tobyMac.com

We’re sorry for the late notice, but some things can’t be avoided. RED and Tenth Avenue North just couldn’t work out their scheduling to make it to the festival. We learned about their conflicts last week and have worked hard to secure these two amazing bands to fill those slots.

As a special treat, this year’s late night Coffeehouse will feature Addison Road. We’re excited to have these three amazing artists at AgapeFest this year. Go to their websites and message boards and thank them for coming!

We are exactly 14 days away from festival weekend. That’s only two weeks. Get your tickets if you haven’t yet! This year is going to be AWESOME.

Links
Phil Wickham
Spoken
Addison Road
Updated Main Stage Lineup
Updated Stage 2 Lineup w/Coffeehouse

You know that our Saturday headliner is tobyMac. The Friday headliner is David Crowder (and his *Band). And some of you have figured out that the little slideshow on the home page is accurate – they are all bands playing AgapeFest this year. So go and check that out and fill in your lists – if you haven’t yet, that is.

There are a few we haven’t released yet. Because you do want a little bit of a surprise when the lineup is revealed right?

Also – we’ve been filling in the info gaps around the site. Ticket prices and a link to buy them are on the tickets page – make sure you get tickets early, it’s cheaper. Also, we’ve got the group rate going again.

We’ve got details on the info page of where to stay (hotels fill up fast, but if you’re camping with us don’t worry about it), what to bring, and what not. And soon we’ll have some exciting new opportunities and resources for Youth Leaders, ministry opportunities for everyone, and lots more. Come back often!

How about Nevertheless, The Send and Run Kid Run? They’ll be there. The slots are filling in. I’m hoping to have a complete lineup up on the Bands page here in the next couple of weeks.

I also want to thank you guys for the comments. The bands you recommend help us put together a great festival for everyone coming out. If you’re in a Youth Group, make sure you tell your youth pastor or leader to check out this site. And tell them you want to be at AgapeFest 2008.

Also. We have TONS of features in the works for this website including videos, festival photos that you can submit, great resources for youth leaders, and maybe even blogs from the people running the festival all year long. So definitely stay tuned.

If you haven’t subscribed to our news feed yet, click that big orange icon in the menu and subscribe in your favorite reader. A couple we use are Google Reader, Netvibes, and good ‘ol Firefox.