Who made the cut you ask?

These  are the bands that made it and are moving on to play Friday afternoon at AgapeFest 2009.

John Frischer | Mark D and Surface Deep | Bream | Lowland Sea | Storyline

We’ve got info about each band up on the Battle of the Bands page.

Make sure you check them out on Stage 2 this year at AgapeFest 2009. Only 26 days left my friends. Do you have your tickets yet?

The winners will play second stage at AgapeFest 2009 and the winners of that will play Main Stage on Friday. The grand prize is a spot in the Word Records national talent search in Nashville, TN.

If you’re in the area and want to come out, please do. 1:00 PM in Greenville. No cost and you’ll hear some great music by these guys and gals:

John Frischer | Mark David and Surface Deep | Bream | Alex Ray & Last Place | Wind & Sail
Lowland Sea | The Weaker | Letters of Concord | Hot Fever | Storyline

Come on out! Otherwise, we’ll see you in ONE MONTH at the festival!!!

Directions to Greenville College and the Blackroom:

View Larger Map

Farebridge compete at the af08 Battle of the Bands

You’ve been waiting, we’ve been waiting. But today, the wait is over.

We are officially announcing that AgapeFest 2009 Battle of the Bands entry is now open.

There are exciting things about this year’s battle. First and foremost, the competition has higher stakes. Not only do the winners get to play Main Stage at AgapeFest 2009, but thanks to the Christian Festival Association and Word Label Group, the first place winning band or singer will go on to compete in Nashville, TN for a shot at an Artist Development Deal with a Word Records imprint (that’s a fancy word for one of their labels).

Like last year, entry is through Sonicbids.com which offers bands the ability to send press kits online to promoters all over the country.

There are a few more points and some official rules, so head over to the Battle of the Bands page to get all of the details.

We can’t wait to see you rock at this year’s AgapeFest Battle of the Bands, presented by Word Records.

And the winners are:

1. Farebridge Fairbridge (sorry about that misspelling!)
2. Hot Fever
3. Dressed to Kill
4. On Loan
5. Mark David and Surface Deep

Congratulations to our top five winners! It was a tough call with so many great bands playing. These five will battle it out against each other one last time on Stage 2 at AgapeFest 2008. The second round of our Battle of the bands will start at 5:00pm on Friday. Make sure you get a chance to catch these awesome bands.

And while you’re cruisin’ the web, make sure you check out their music online! Click a band’s name above to visit their website or MySpace. (more to come as I get their links)

Only 19 days left until the festival!!!

You’ve seen we’ve been adding bands to Main Stage. We’ve got exciting Second Stage news coming, but we want to make sure it’s as finalized as possible before letting it loose. So keep checking back.

If you’re wandering around the site and see some changes, it’s because we’ve been working on some upgrades here at AgapeFest.com HQ. We’ve got the commenting working better (so leave some comments!) and there’s something new built-in called gravatars. If you sign up with gravatar.com and register your email, you can upload a small image that will show up on any sites that support gravatars whenever you leave a comment. Check out my comment below to see what I mean.

News is coming, so hang on! AgapeFest 2008 is only 30 days away!

Also, we’re taking submissions for Battle of the Bands through the end of the month. And we need more bands! So if you have friends in a band that live in this area, send them to agapefest.com! The first round of Battle of the Bands is April 19th 12th here at Greenville College in our student venue the Blackroom. I’ll be there, the staff will be there and fifteen bands will be there duking it out to play second stage on Friday at AgapeFest. Whoever wins that second round will go on to play Main Stage on Saturday morning!

Hope you all had a good Easter and spring break (if you’ve had that already). We’re back in full gear here at AgapeFest HQ. We’re getting close. Only 36 more days till the festival!

Each year AgapeFest hosts a Battle of the Bands on the Greenville College campus. The winners of this first round proceed to battle again on Second Stage at the festival on Friday afternoon. Two champions are then selected and they receive a full set on Main Stage Saturday morning.

This year Sonicbids is sponsoring the Battle of the Bands. In business since 2000, Sonicbids has become the standard way for people in the music business to send and receive press kits online. The company’s main product is the Sonicbids EPK™ (Electronic Press Kit), an easy-to-use, web-based graphic interface that contains all the basic information of a musical act such as music, photos, date calendar and riders. The EPK can either be emailed to anyone with a click of the mouse or submitted in online promoter accounts through a virtual “Drop Box”. Sonicbids currently has over 40,000 bands and 3,600 exclusive partners, a list that includes prominent North American events and festivals such as MIDEM, CMJ, Summerfest, North By Northeast, Jagermeister Band Sponsorship Program, NEMO, Canadian Music Week, Folk Alliance, Locobazooka!, and the Billboard Song Contest. The rapidly growing size of Sonicbids’ network and widening acceptance of its product have helped it quickly become the leading online submission platform for some of the world’s best-known music events.

EPK submissions
Submit your materials online through Sonicbids! If you are not yet a Sonicbids member and want to submit online, visit http://www.sonicbids.com/Opportunity/OpportunityView.aspx?opportunity_id=12290 and sign-up for the Sonicbids Combo Package (includes your submission AND a discounted Sonicbids membership). If you are already a Sonicbids member, log in to your account and visit the Promoter Drop Box to submit.

For full information visit Sonicbids.com

Related Links:
Bands
Second Stage

Well we have a few updates for you. First off the to be announced space in our lineup is now filled. We had The Send, then they weren’t able to come so we have been trying to fill that spot with another great band–and we’ve found one. Children 18:3 is going to be filling that place. It’s pretty exciting really!

Secondly, at this point if you are in a band and you already have a Sonicbids account you can start the application process for our Battle of the Bands. If you don’t have an account we will be putting up the necessary info hopefully (fingers crossed) by the end of this week today.

Finally, we felt like it would be cool to let you all in on who we are as a staff. So sometime soon we are going to be putting up a sort of “get-to-know-you” thing with all our names, majors, staff positions and favorite ice cream flavors–or something like that.

And, I’m going to end this with a random question:
Where are you traveling from to be at the festival? Let us know in the comments!

Plans aren’t finalized yet, so I can’t announce anything formally, but check back here in a week or so for some really exciting news about AgapeFest BOB 2008. You won’t be disappointed.