Set Free Tour with Big Daddy Weave
BIG DADDY WEAVE is one of the top artists in Christian music: they are one of the genre’s biggest headlining artists, the second most played artist at Christian AC-Monitored radio in 2014 and the recipient of multiple industry awards and nominations, including Dove Awards, K-LOVE Fan Awards, Billboard Music Awards and ASCAP Awards. Between 2012 and 2015, Big Daddy Weave has achieved five straight No. 1 singles at radio, with the most recent “My Story” from the 9/18/15 album, Beautiful Offerings, and the previous four from the band’s career best-selling album, Love Come To Life. “Redeemed” was certified gold by the RIAA in 2015. Big Daddy Weave has career album sales of more than one million units. Formed in 2002, Big Daddy Weave is: Mike Weaver, Jay Weaver, Jeremy Redmon, Joe Shirk and Brian Beihl. More information can be found online at www.bigdaddyweave.com.
WE ARE MESSENGERS We Are Messengers is a family, band and ministry from Ireland now based in the United States. At the heart of their vision is the desire to serve God and to see His radical love transform lives and communities. They have been given an incredible opportunity to share the goodness of Jesus Christ through music and the testimony of their lives. The desire of We Are Messengers is to communicate the incredible news of the Gospel in a simple, relevant and life-changing manner, and they pray that God will use their abilities to have a conversation with a generation that is desperately searching for truth and love. We Are Messengers’ debut radio single, “Everything Comes Alive,” was added at 52 stations during its first week at radio, with the total number of 82 stations at the end of month one. The song reached the Top 15 at five different radio charts in its first month, including NCA and AC-Monitored. "Everything Comes Alive" is Word Entertainment's fastest-growing radio single since Francesca Battistelli's GRAMMY®-Award winning No. 1 song "Holy Spirit."
MICAH TYLER It’s hard to imagine how many times Micah Tyler spent his days wondering ‘what’s next,’ while driving a sausage delivery truck across southeast Texas. Surely, questioning his own discernment to quit his youth pastor gig, sell half of what he owned to move his family into a single-wide trailer and start traveling the region, performing songs he’d written.
Not an easy move for a guy in his late 20s living in somewhat-reclusive Buna, Texas with a wife, three kids, and no strong connection to the music industry, at the time. “I just knew I had to be obedient and step out into music full time,” Micah recalls. “I told the Lord, ‘I don’t know how to be a professional musician, but you’ve taught me to be faithful.’ It was a daily decision to wake up every morning and stop worrying about tomorrow.”
Fast-forward down that long road, and the same guy behind the delivery truck wheel over a half-decade prior, is now the latest pop artist to sign a national record deal and release his debut EP, Different, through Fair Trade Services. The lead single from that project, “Never Been a Moment” is not only one of the biggest radio singles from a breakout act in 2016, it turned out to be more autobiographical in context than he even planned.
“(Nashville songwriter) Jeff Pardo and I jumped in to writing this song without a specific story behind it, until after it was completed,” Micah says. “Then I realized, ‘Wow, this song is essentially a journal entry of the past six years of my life. Everything my family and I had gone through in this faith journey led up to this.”
A big part of Micah’s journey included traveling 200 days per year, performing at youth and college-aged camps and leadership conferences throughout the South. His impact and understanding of his younger audiences was immortalized on a viral parody video titled “Millennials,” which has over 65 million cumulative views on YouTube and Facebook. Most budding artists pine for such organic exposure, but Micah’s YouTube fame put him on edge, though leading him to a healthy resolve.
“Here I am, working hard toward becoming a serious musician when this funny video breaks loose—and I’m thinking this isn’t at all what I want to be known for,” Micah says. “But in all of this, God’s helped me recognize he’s provided a special set of colors on my palette to paint with, and I’m the only one who can paint this unique picture with my life and story. If he calls it ‘wonderful,’ then I need to embrace that and celebrate its worth.”
Micah’s epiphany hit him so clearly, that it inspired the EP’s title track “Different.” “Writing this record brought to the surface a lot of insecurities I’ve dealt with my entire life. Not feeling good enough. Psalm 139, David’s praise of being uniquely created felt more like a punishment to me,” Micah says. “I want to sing and look and perform like other artists, but I’m not called to be Jeremy Camp or Bart Millard. The only one he’s called me to be is Micah. There are times I’d rather be those other guys, but I’m ultimately learning to embrace who God has called and created me to be.”
With that said, hundreds of nights on the road have certainly honed Micah’s purpose for ministry through a growing list of self-penned tunes borne from a place that’s as real as the person he’s trying to be. “These songs are battle-tested,” says Micah. “I want to live the music I’m writing. There are some songs I can’t write because I haven’t lived there yet. When someone comes up to me after a concert and tells me how my songs affected them, I want to make sure they know I can relate.”