Though the four members of Grammy-award winning band Jars of Clay just began recording what will be their twelve or thirteenth studio album, depending on which ones you chose to count, they have managed to carve out some time for a small U.S. tour that will make a stop in Blackfoot this Friday.

    The concert, presented by Red Tie Concerts, is scheduled for Friday, July 13 at the Blackfoot Performing Arts Center, 870 S. Fisher Ave. in Blackfoot. Doors will open at 7 p.m. and the show will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets will be $20 plus applicable fees and are available at the Sunnyside Tesoro in Idaho Falls, at TBA on Main St. in Pocatello, or online at www.redtieconcerts.com. Tickets purchased online will be available at will call the night of the concert.

    Jars of Clay debuted in 1995 with the self-titled album that featured the hit single “Flood,” which became one of the highest charting songs by a band on a Christian music label.

    Since then they have released an album every few years, including a Christmas album, a best of album, and the most recent, “The Shelter” in 2010.

    Three of their albums have won Grammy awards for Best Pop/Contemporary Gosepl Album and two others have been nominated.

     Jars guitarist Matthew Odmark said the group continues to find inspiration despite all the songs and performances over the last eighteen years.

    “It’s in the collaborative process that inspiration happens. There is different strengths and stuff that come out from different people at different times, we are always surprised at what emerges. We continue to find the stuff that really captures us and really moves us,” he said in a recent phone interview.

    In 2007 the band decided they would no longer be on a major music label but rather would release music independently. They formed their own label, “Gray Matters.”  Odmark says the decision has allowed them to have creative freedom.

    “We have been able to chart our own creative destiny,” he said, “It’s opened a door to all kinds of creative options that were sometimes a problem in the old paradigm where things were kind of narrow.”

    The band does not just make music and perform concerts, several years ago they founded Blood Water Mission, an organization seeks to empower communities to work together against the HIV/AIDS and water crises in Africa.

    Odmark said the name of the organization comes from the two things it strives to provide: Clean blood and clean water, and that it is something that any one can be a part of.

    “There is something about opening yourself up to a story, to open yourself up to an experience like this and allow yourself to be near to sort of the brokenness in these other communities, it paints and more meaningful story that we can all be a part of, and that transforms us all.”

    Jars of Clay are often categorized as a Christian band, and though many of their song lyrics have a religious theme, they don’t want that to be the sole thing that defines their music.

    “It’s not a very clear descriptor. It can have many different connotations and attachments. There is certainly a large part of that part of our story that goes into our music, but we sort of see ourselves as people who wrestle with the way the world is and the way the world isn’t. Wrestling through it is a means to kind of say you have faith or you don’t. We don’t have a system we are trying to articulate and convince people of as much as we are telling our story.”

    For more information on Jars of Clay, visit their web site at www.jarsofclay.com.