Winter Jam Tour Spectacular, also referred to as simply Winter Jam (and formerly known as January Jam from 1995–2000), is an annual American music tour featuring Christian rock, Christian rap, and contemporary Christian music bands, stunt and/or comedy performances, and a speaker. It is the United States' largest annual Christian Music Tour. It has also provided a platform for non-profit groups such as Holt International, an organization that provides sponsorship and adoption for orphans. Winter Jam has featured a diverse range of big name bands such as tobyMac, Newsboys, Third Day, MercyMe, Skillet, and Audio Adrenaline, and has helped expose and popularize artists such as Hawk Nelson, Krystal Meyers, and Stephanie Smith.
Conceived and created in 1995 as "January Jam" by CCM group Newsong and produced and promoted by the promotions company, Premier Productions, Winter Jam has run annually since 1995. From its inception in 1995 through the most recent 2013 tour, the Winter Jam Tour Spectacular has toured all over the United States of America. Tickets are not required for the tour, as a US$10 general admission is collected at the door of each arena.
As of April 2011, they reported more than 1/2 million in total attendance, and 90,000 "decisions for Christ" for the Winter Jam Tour Spectacular 2011, first quarter. The tour outpaced attendance for all other tours in the first quarter of 2011, including Bon Jovi, U2, X Factor Live, Lady Gaga, Brad Paisley and Justin Bieber, according to Pollstar's 2011 Worldwide First Quarter Ticket Sales "Top 100 Tour" chart. In 2009, the tour started using text messaging and e-mail as a way to communicate and keep track of the number of people who have made these decisions. The record attendance for a single show was 21,000, which was set at the Greensboro, NC show on February 5, 2011.
Read more about Winter Jam Tour Spectacular: West Coast Tour
Famous quotes containing the words winter, jam, tour and/or spectacular:
“So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin’d
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,”
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
“We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn’t just ours—it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can’t beat it.”
—Greil Marcus (b. 1945)
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Western man represents himself, on the political or psychological stage, in a spectacular world-theater. Our personality is innately cinematic, light-charged projections flickering on the screen of Western consciousness.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)