The Shelter Tour comes on the heels of Jars of Clay’s top billing in the Rock and Worship Road Show, one of the winter’s largest multi-artist tours, and is an opportunity for the band to create a live extension of the collaborative moments offered on their Shelter album. For that critically-acclaimed project, Jars of Clay brought in a collection of both songwriting and vocal guests (including both Maher and Assad), creating a huge collaborative environment never before attempted on any of the band’s previous projects.

“We knew in the beginning that we wanted as many voices as possible in the record,” guitarist Matt Odmark explains. “We wanted to make a record about community, and we wanted the recorded process to be community. We wanted it to be an expression of what it was trying to articulate from a concept standpoint.”

In that same spirit, The Shelter Tour will offer these musical colleagues and co-creators an opportunity to form a true collaborative evening not to be missed. Multi-platinum-selling Jars of Clay will perform songs from the new release, including the album’s single “Out Of My Hands,” along with many of their numerous hits – “Flood,” “Two Hands,” “Dead Man (Carry Me),” “Worlds Apart,” “Love Song For A Savior,” to name a few – which have become concert favorites.

The Shelter Tour will be sponsored by relief organization Blood:Water Mission and Azusa Pacific University.

Jars of Clay and Blood:Water Mission will celebrate the building of their 1000th clean water well in Sub-Saharan Africa during a May 10 event at the historic Ryman Auditorium. Tickets to the “Well:Done Celebration, Blood:Water Mission's Journey to 1000 Wells” are still available at http://www.bloodwatermission.com/welldone.php.

About Jars of Clay:
Jars of Clay, made up of members Dan Haseltine (vocals), Charlie Lowell (keyboards), Steve Mason (guitars), and Matt Odmark (guitars), launched its breakout career with the multi-format hit “Flood” in 1995. Since then, it has amassed more than 6 million in career sales (5 Gold, 2 Platinum and 1 Double Platinum certification), three GRAMMY Awards (from 8 nominations), an American Music Award nod, six GMA Dove Award nominations, 17 No. 1 radio hits, and numerous film credits and BMI honors for songwriting and performing. The band’s GRAMMY-nominated 10th album, The Long Fall Back to Earth, was followed by the recent release of the compelling and community-minded project, Jars of Clay Presents The Shelter. Jars of Clay has headlined thousands of sold-out shows and festivals, and earlier this year led the successful Rock and Worship Road Show with MercyMe, which traveled to 27 cities across the country.

While celebrated for its music and writing, Jars of Clay is most concerned with the needs in Africa. Compelled to make a difference, the group successfully launched the Blood:Water Mission, a non-profit organization promoting clean blood and water in Africa. Since the band’s debut, Jars of Clay has built an extraordinary career based on the uncompromising integrity of its music, worldview, and humanitarianism. For more information, please go to www.jarsofclay.com.

About Matt Maher:
Matt Maher – worship leader, songwriter, singer and recording artist – has taken his calling as a “musical missionary” to create a substantial impact on a national and global stage. An award-winning songwriter, Maher first gained notice as the writer of the internationally renowned modern-worship song, “Your Grace Is Enough.” Highly sought after for his poignant yet poetic writing style, Maher has recently had songs recorded by such artists as Chris Tomlin; Bethany Dillon; Phillips, Craig & Dean; Brenton Brown and others. In addition, Maher’s songs have appeared in the top 10 ranked songs on the CCLI chart, marking their popularity in church worship services around the world. Matt's sophomore Alive Again solidly captures the penetrating spirit and charisma Maher has become known for in a live setting. The 12-song studio project recently garnered him Dove Award nominations for both Worship Song of the Year and Inspirational Recorded Song of the Year (“Christ Is Risen”).

Amid busy touring and writing schedules, Maher finds it important to serve alongside ministries including Life Teen and Adore Ministries, while still playing an active role with Oregon Catholic Press’ spiritandsong.com. Further, he serves as a regular host for Worship Together’s “Newsong Café.” Maher, recently honored with a Praise Award as Worship Leader’s Breakout Artist of 2008, has been featured on the covers of Breakaway and Christian Single, performed live on “FOX & Friends,” written for Billboard and is an active, bylined contributor to OnFaith.com ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/ABhGcoE_page.html), an interactive conversation on religion. For more information on Matt Maher, please visit www.mattmahermusic.com or follow him on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mattmahermusic.

About Derek Webb:
Ever the musical shapeshifter, Derek Webb has once again expanded his musical boundaries and redefined his artistic expectations to produce Feedback, arguably his most ambitious and most creative project to date. Described as “an instrumental electronic album based on The Lord’s Prayer”, the scope and impact of Feedback can hardly be summed up in a tagline. Derek has managed to supersede the main complaints of electronic music (artificial, plastic, cold, soulless, etc.) with enough creativity, emotion and live instrumentation to construct an electronic album with a beating heart. Sprawling, mysterious, weighty and layered, Derek uses organic and non-organic musical elements, along with accompanying abstract pictures and paintings, to express one of the most powerful and intimate moments of the Christian faith.

A founding member of the Houston, Texas-based Caedmon's Call, singer/songwriter Derek Webb has seen career sales approaching one million records, 10 Dove Award nominations, a Billboard Music Video Award nod and six No.1 radio hits. Webb’s innovative music marketing and distribution strategies have received national news coverage in USA Today and the LA Times. More information can be found at http://www.derekwebb.com/ and at http://twitter.com/derekwebb.

About Audrey Assad:
27 year-old, Arizona-based singer/songwriter Audrey Assad propelled to the forefront of Christian music with her debut album on Sparrow Records titled The House You’re Building. Produced by Marshall Altman (Brooke Fraser, Natasha Bedingfield, William Fitzsimmons, Marc Broussard), the record released in the summer of 2010 to much acclaim. An avid reader, poems from Gerard Manley Hopkins and books were amongst Assad’s inspirations in her songwriting. Her collaborations with everyone from Chris Tomlin to Jars of Clay have marked her songwriting and vocal talent. Assad’s fresh sound was named among the best of 2010 from Relevant Magazine, Rhapsody.com, Gospel Music Channel online and more and was even profiled on CNN Online. In addition, The House You’re Building was named Amazon.com’s “Best Christian Music of 2010” and iTunes ® Christian & Gospel “Breakthrough Album of the Year.” At the close of 2010, Assad collected the title of top selling new artist of the year in the Christian genre according to SoundsScan. For more information, go to http://www.audreyassad.com/.

About Blood:WaterMission:
Founded and launched by Jars of Clay in early 2002, Blood:Water Mission is a non-profit organization promoting clean blood and water in Africa. It’s goal is to empower communities to work together against the HIV/AIDS and water crisis. The first effort of this non-profit was the “1000 Wells Project” with a goal of raising funds to build, rebuild and repair 1,000 wells in urban and rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. This year Jars of Clay will celebrate the building of the 1,000th well which will bring clean water to more than 150,000 people. For more information, please visit www.bloodwatermission.com.

JARS OF CLAY - THE SHELTER TOUR – SPRING 2011
* All dates are subject to change without notice.

MARCH
3/30 Greensburg, PA Word of Life Ministries
3/31 Morgantown, WV Chestnut Ridge Church

APRIL
4/1 Middletown, NJ New Monmouth Baptist Church
4/2 Charleston, ME Charleston Pentecostal Church
4/3 Quincy, MA Eastern Nazarene College
4/4 Alexandria, VA The Birchmere
4/8 Belleville, IL St. Matthew United Methodist
4/10 Collegedale, TN Collegedale Community Church
4/14 Due West, SC Erskine College
4/15 Haw River, NC Lamb’s Chapel
4/16 Shrewsbury, PA Grace Fellowship Church
4/17 St. David’s PA Eastern University
4/29 Melbourne, FL The King Center
4/30 Silver Springs, FL Twin Oaks Amphitheater

MAY
5/1 Niceville, FL Mattie Kelly Arts Center
5/5 Lake Charles, LA Contraband Days Festival
5/6 Humboldt, TN West Tennessee Strawberry Festival
5/7 Jackson, MS Jackson Academy of Performing Arts

For the most up-to-date tour information, please visit www.jarsofclay.com.

For more info on Jars Of Clay, visit the JFH Artists Database.