HUNTINGTON -- Christian music performer Matthew West, a multiple Dove Award nominee, will perform as part of his "Something to Say Tour" at 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, at the Renaissance Center, 900 8th St., in Huntington.

The 14th annual Essence Music Festival presented by Coca-Cola will celebrate another momentous year in New Orleans this July 4, 5 and 6 with the biggest names in entertainment and the nation's most influential speakers, artists, authors and leaders.

As with most Christians, Wendell Birdsong has found that it hasn't been easy to put self-will aside and live for God's will. After a hedonistic lifestyle playing in a San Francisco rock group, he swore off playing music in a band setting ? and yet he's now the patriarch of his family's band.

KEARNEY ? The Barlow sisters first found national attention at a music seminar in 2002. They were offered a paid trip to the Gospel Music Association?s Music in the Rockies gathering at Estes Park, Colo.

CRAPONNE SUR ARZON, France (JTA)?Think Jews and country music and you?ll probably come up with Kinky Friedman, the cigar-chomping frontman of the iconoclastic Texas Jewboys, who is also a humorist, mystery novelist and failed but flamboyant candidate for Texas governor.