- [Voiceover] The following program is a production of Pioneer Public Television.

This program on Pioneer Public Television is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

With money from the vote of the people of Minnesota, on November fourth, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm.

A non-profit, rural education retreat center, in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham and Southwestern Minnesota.

shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center, your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering luxury townhomes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Waterpark, and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event.

ExploreAlex.com.

Easy to get to, hard to leave.

(flute and oboe melody) - Welcome to Postcards, I'm Dana Johnson.

Over 30 years ago, Sonshine Music Festival was started in Willmar, Minnesota, with little more than donations and faith.

Now the festival has grown to be one of the largest and most popular in the country.

Join us as we learn about the struggles and the success throughout the years of Sonshine, that helped put Willmar on the map.

(energetic rock music) - [Voiceover] For one week every summer thousands of people young and old flock to Willmar Minnesota, for one of the largest and most popular Christian music festivals in the country.

Sonshine Festival.

- [All] Sonshine 2012, - [Men] Sonshine!

- [Woman] Woo!

- [All] Woo!

- [Voiceover] Whether they come to volunteer or to just have a good time, the family friendly festival attracts a wide-range of Christian music lovers from every corner of the United States and beyond.

- Since the mid-90s, we've had about 25 or 26 states represented in every festival.

Almost every year we hear from somebody from overseas... - [Voiceover] But this popularity didn't grow overnight.

Sonshine co-founders Bob Poe, and Gary Crowe, recall the festival's humble beginnings and the struggles of starting the event with little more than a few donations, and a lot of faith.

- Sonshine started in 1982, that was our first public event.

In 1981, I was a youth pastor in town, at a local church, and I got together with a few other youth leaders, and we decided we wanted to do a summer event for Willmar kids.

So we called a little meeting and, we met at this place up north, Decision Hills Bible Camp.

And we must'a had about 40 people that were concerned and interested about doing a summer event.

So we talked about doing a musical thing.

Everybody kinda liked it.

So we decided let's get back in a couple'a weeks, and see what the next step is.

So we met in a couple'a weeks, and there were about 20 people that showed up at that meeting.

So we decided, let's do a summer music, let's get some bands to come in, maybe a speaker or two.

And let's maybe see if we can hold it out, at that time it was Willmar College, now it's Ridgewater College.

(classic rock) Everybody said "Yeah that sounds like a good idea.

"So let's get together in a couple'a weeks and "hone the plan a little bit more."

Well, at that meeting there were four of us that showed up.

And it was kinda, part of that meeting was gonna be "Let's figure out what this is gonna cost us and "who's gonna come up with the money, "and how we're gonna proceed."

So normally when you start talking about money, you have fewer people in the room.

So there were four of us, Gary Crowe, Linda Westberg, Mar-les-ord and myself.

The summer of 81, actually, I got a call, from Bob Poe.

And he said "A few people in the community are meeting, "at a local restaurant, and "we're wanting to talk about maybe doing some kind of "Christian event, or Christian music event.

"That kind of a thing."

And wanted to know if I was interested.

And I told him, "No, I wasn't interested at all."

(laughs) And he said, "Well Gary" he said, "Just humor me.

"Just show up, OK?"

He said "I think we're gonna have a pretty good crowd, a lotta different churches, and that kind of a thing."

But because Bob is a good friend of mine, I said "OK, I'll show up for lunch."

And showed up and there was a pretty good sized crowd there, I'm gonna say about 40 people.

Represented from different churches and things like that or whatever.

Just, shot ideas around.

Bringing in some Christian artists, or things like that.

Pretty much giving, wanting to give the Christian young people in West Central Minnesota an even that they could call their own.

And so we met.

And we decided to meet in two weeks later.

When we met two weeks later, I did come back.

And there were about 20 people showed up, I guess, or whatever.

And we decided to meet, I think every two weeks.

And as we met, the crowd got smaller.

(laughing) But by the third or fourth time, I was interested.

I thought maybe something... maybe we could get something off the ground here.

Well that would'a been the fall of 1981.

So we started to try to put things together.

- So we looked at each other and said, "Well should we go ahead?"

And we said, "Well, yeah, let's give it a shot."

So we all did some fundraising in town.

We raised about $5,000 to get started with some promotion, booking some bands, all that kind of stuff.

And we were rookies.

We'd never done anything similar, or close to an event like that.

- We didn't know how to contact artists.

We'd go to the record store, (laughs) and we'd look through records, on the back of records and try to find telephone numbers, "How do we contact this guy?"

We didn't know Christian artists had agents.

We knew nothing.

Maybe it was because of our ignorance, and that we just kept going.

And making a few contacts and things like that.

And so, that's really how it originally started.

(driving rock music) - [Bob Poe] We think it was just the right time to do it.

And we put some pieces together, got some bands, and back then, you could have the top three or four Christian bands in the country, because there were only about six.

But it was a good share of the top bands.

We had 1800 people show up the first year.

Which was a big surprise to us.

Year number two, we just about doubled that.

So it became obvious at that point that it was gonna be something more than just a local event.

This is gonna be at least a regional, if not a national festival.

- [Crowe] And I think, you know, countwise, I believe we had about 1800 people show up the first year.

We didn't know if that was good or bad.

(laughs) But, I mean, we were excited about it.

It was a one day event.

So we decided to do a second year.

- [Voiceover] Just as the crowd began to outgrow the original site at Ridgewater College, the festival experienced a sudden lack of sunshine.

That prompted a much needed change in location.

- Our last year at the college, we had a storm that came through, basically, during the festival we're always in tied with the radio stations and different people like that that are watching the storms.

And so we knew one was coming.

And we warned the crowd and that kind of a thing.

But we were really told that the storm was going north.

The major part of it.

And probably less than ten minutes before the storm hit, we were told, the local radio station then, the police and law enforcement called and said "The storm is taking a turn, it's coming right at you."

And it did.

- When all the tents went down, and speaker towers toppled over.

There was so much electricity in the air people's hair was standing on end.

- The most memorable moments are usually those hard moments.

So, I think it was year four, we were still out at the college.

We had a tremendous storm come through 70 mile an hour winds blew everything down, blew speakers off the stage.

I mean it was a disaster area.

- We're at Willmer Community College.

And we're just east of the actual college here, on the hillside.

And this was the first five years, actually, we had the festival was on the hillside here.

It's, as you can see, it's a great great place to have a festival or an event because of the hillside, it's just natural seating.

Stage was down below there.

And then when the fifth year hit, we hit the storm.

And pretty much threw us to a loop here.

(laughs) We had sound towers that were about halfway up this hill.

They went down in the storm.

Our stage held, but our top went down.

All the tents for eating and concessionaires and stuff, they all collapsed.

10,000 people plus were running up this hill when the storm hit.

It was just all mud.

There was a lot of damage and stuff.

And we, at that time, I'll be honest with you, we wondered, was there gonna be a sixth year.

But, we moved out to the civic center area in Willmar there, and been there ever since.

It's been going good.

(country rock) - [Voiceover] Just as the crowds outgrew the space at Ridgewater College, the music at Sonshine festival has outgrown the stage.

- [Poe] When Sonshine first started in 1982, we had one stage, and I think we started at noon and we were done at eight o'clock.

If you fast-forward that, to last year, we had five stages, we started at nine o'clock in the morning we finished about midnight.

We have two giant video screens.

It's become more than just a concert.

It's become an experience.

So, not just hearing the music, but seeing and feeling and being involved in it.

Main stage is where we do the bulk of our music.

That's pretty much a general picture of music.

So we'll have some hard music, we'll have some hip-hop.

We have rock 'n' roll, we'll have some adult-contemporary.

♪ kingdom is comin' ♪ ♪ And the people said amen ♪ We have an indoor stage, we call the HM Stage that is just hard music.

(hard rock) The HM Stage is a more active crowd.

And over the years, the style of that crowd has changed.

So it used to be mosh pits.

It's always more physical than than an adult-contemporary stage.

- [Voiceover] Some of the biggest bands at Sonshine got their start on the smallest stages.

- Yeah I love the multiple stages here.

It's fun for us, now being on the main stage to go over and check out some of the younger bands, see what's new and upcoming.

- Coming back to Sonshine, I can remember how I felt as a little kid, coming before I even played.

And then the years where we just played little stages.

And we were stoked if 50 kids came and watched us.

- And we played, we affectionately call it the Donkey Cart Stage.

It was a really small little roll-up, pop-out stage that we played.

And it's one of my earliest memories.

- At this point, we've played every stage that Sonshine has ever had, ever.

But we started off, I'm trying to remember.

We started off the first year we played was on the Showmobile stage, which was behind the indoor stage.

- Sonshine fest is amazing.

I mean it's something that's been a big part of our career along the way, actually.

We've played this festival for over a decade.

Every summer, and kind of played, in the gymnasium rooms, to side-side-stages, to the side-stage, to this is actually our first year headlining main stage, so, We just feel blessed to be here doing what we love and we love doing it, and Sonshine's been an incredible organization and festival.

- Aww man, Sonshine is our hometown festival.

And so, it's our best show of the year, easy, I would say.

And it's so much fun, and it's just crazy.

- For me, Sonshine is, we like to call it our hometown festival.

We're from Minneapolis, and we've all been coming here since we were like 16 years old.

So we've always been looking up, like "Ahh look at the main stage, look at all these bands."

(rock music) - [Voiceover] Throughout the years, Sonshine's positive mission has remained unchanged.

The music and attendees, however, are a different story.

- All sorts of different bands play at Sonshine.

I think there's something, probably, for everyone.

When Sonshine started, there wasn't the variety of Christian music, or the amount of Christian music we have now.

- I was actually looking at the lineup today, for Sonshine here.

And it's such a diverse bill.

A lot of hardcore bands, a lot of more dancey music, rock like us, some poppier stuff.

And, I love that, I think it's pretty unique.

(funk rock plays) ♪ I'm broke, broke as a joke ♪ ♪ Think about moving back in with my folks ♪ - [Poe] In the past year here, like every year we've had some pop artists.

We were talking about Family Force 5.

See, that group used to be called The Brothers.

- Family Force 5, we started in Atlanta, Georgia.

And, we've, the three of us are brothers right here.

Me, this guy, this guy.

And then we just picked these two guys off the road.

- We were dumpster divers.

(laughing) - At one point.

♪ In this parking lot ♪ ♪ My momma raised me in the dirty south ♪ ♪ A country gentleman son you best watch your mouth ♪ ♪ My momma raised me in the dirty south ♪ ♪ A country gentleman that's what it's all about ♪ It's real Southern Rock 'n' roll, with some electro hip-hop elements, and we definitely, it's kind of funky.

♪ A country gentleman that's what it's all about ♪ - [Poe] Oh the audience, audience change over the years, is mostly visual.

And you can kind of tell the years by the clothes that they're wearing.

(laughs) 1982, we wore goofy stuff.

Some of that has come back, and gone again.

But, in general, our crowd is teenagers.

Kids are kids.

So a lot of our pictures are gonna be pictures of kids doing some silly things.

- My name is Goggleman, and I am very enthusiastic, most of the time.

The people are great.

They're very receptive and very welcoming.

So I can always depend on a lot of people just yelling out "Hey Goggleman," always giving encouragement.

This feels like I'm a celebrity that everybody loves instead of one that, you know... - [Man] Goggleman!

- See, just like that.

- Sonshine is just, I mean, just like any other festival.

Kids are just stoked.

They're just really excited to be here.

And they just, everyone just does crazy things 'cause they're so excited to be here.

- [Man] The one thing that's unique about Sonshine, than a lot of festivals is, I feel like a lot of people come out on Wednesday and stay for the whole thing.

Sonshine, historically, is like, you come for the camping.

- [Voiceover] So many people stay on-site throughout the week of Sonshine, that the campgrounds transform into more of a city.

- [Poe] Our camping area we've titled Tent City.

Just because it kind of looks like a refugee camp.

We've got people that feed our security crew.

We always get some goofy folks that designed their campsite as an attraction.

Not just a place to stay.

- [Man] The community at Sonshine's camp grounds is super weird, you'll see random kiddie pools, you'll see pirate flags, you'll see igloos.

You'll see just weird stuff.

And I think the community, of just waking around late at night and meeting people is kind of what creates that sense of community.

- [Crowe] At the festival grounds, we have thousands and thousands of people that camp right there.

Whether it'll be motor homes or pop-ups or tents, or that kind of thing.

We call it tent city.

And if you walk down these roads, and stuff like that, you'll see couches, you'll see almost every house, you'll see dining room tables, you'll see almost everything there.

They basically set up a home for the four days that they're there.

- [Voiceover] Each year, one couch in particular gets a lot more attention than the rest.

- This couch here is for Sonshine 2012.

We're getting signatures of some awesome people here at Sonshine.

And all our fellow Christian brothers and sisters, including the bands, all the way to fans.

(indistinct talking) Right here, the lead singer of Family Force 5.

- [Voiceover] Sonshine Festival just doesn't happen by itself.

Several dedicated volunteers are required throughout the week, and for everything from setting up the stage to medical and security duty.

- We have a lot of volunteers that help us.

- [Poe] Sonshine has no employees.

So we're all volunteer based.

It'll take, this year it took about 600 volunteers.

- Well I know Sonshine uses tons of volunteers.

Hundreds, I believe I heard 700 or something like that.

And obviously you couldn't do it without them.

They need 'em for security and the gate, and... you name it.

- [Jim Kroona] Right here we've got the fire hydrant open.

It's a chance every day, two or three times a day we run the hydrant so people can come out and cool off, wash off if they want.

But it helps us on a hot day like today, keep their body temperatures down, so when they go to the stage area, they don't overheat as fast.

- Obviously we're here for the first day, that the Sonshine people that are coming here.

And as you see behind me here, this is part of the reason we like to come out here.

'Cause this is fun.

But it's doing two things.

It's fun for us, but it's great for the people that come to Sonshine to cool off.

- [Randy Quiggle] Well, I've been doing security here since about '87.

So we've been, ever since they started having security doing here, but we started off, we're all volunteers first of all, so we do this just for the love of doing it.

Because we love just talking to people, and going around.

And making sure people are having a fun time.

- [Jeremy Josephson] Once the actual festival construction week starts, which is today, it's the first day of that.

It is fully staffed with all volunteers.

So, in order to gather 50, 60 people, 100 people by the end of the week that are volunteering their time to put something like this together, it's a feat.

It's amazing what they can get done in just a few days.

To put on a festival this size.

And there's a lot of work that goes into it.

- To get people to work with us, to volunteer with us, we just swing the free ticket in front of 'em, and that seems to work.

♪ Whole life, I remember it fondly ♪ ♪ Watch me walk like a zombie ♪ ♪ Zombie zombie zombie, zombie zombie zombie ♪ ♪ Re-re-re-animated, back-back-back-back from the dead ♪ - [Voiceover] Although Sonshine is most renowned for its spectacular musical performances, Bob Poe insists that the true purpose of the festival is about something much deeper.

- We spell it S-O-N, just 'cause that's our focus.

It's not just a fun-filled day, it's a spirit-filled day.

Our commitment to our people, you know the folks that have attended over the years and will attend is, it's not about a show, it's about an experience.

So we want people, when they come here to leave different than when they arrived.

If that means a little deeper relationship with Jesus, that's fine, with a friend that they came with, that's fine, or a friend they made.

We want their life to be richer in all of those areas.

(energetic piano) - For more information go to our website.

Now we leave you with a Postcard from Dawson, Minnesota.

See you again next time on Postcards.

(slide guitar) ♪ Well you see that train, running fast ♪ ♪ Rollin' down the line ♪ ♪ See that train rollin' down the line ♪ ♪ I lived near these tracks almost all my life ♪ ♪ Well there's money in that rich folk's mail ♪ ♪ That I'll never see ♪ ♪ Well there's money in there that I'll never see ♪ ♪ Can't ride no train, this po' boy rides for free ♪ ♪ Well when I work all day, slave away ♪ ♪ But my money's not my own ♪ ♪ I work all day, money's not my own ♪ ♪ Just feed the kids and the rest goes on and on ♪ ♪ When I sleep at night, toss and turn ♪ ♪ I'm dreamin' about Jesse James ♪ ♪ Sleep at night I'm dreamin' 'bout Jesse James ♪ - [Voiceover] This program on Pioneer Public Television, is funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November fourth, 2008.

Additional support provided by Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen, in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham in Southwestern Minnesota.

shalomhillfarm.org.

The Arrowwood Resort & Conference Center.

Your ideal choice for Minnesota resorts offering luxury townhomes, 18 holes of golf, Darling Reflections Spa, Big Splash Water Park, and much more.

Alexandria, Minnesota, a relaxing vacation or great location for an event.

ExploreAlex.com.

Easy to get to, hard to leave.

(mellow flutes)