Thirty minutes before Jo Dee Messina’s sold-out show in Layton, Utah, several fans lined up for a special meet-and-greet to chat, take pictures and get autographs.
Instead of resting up backstage, or saving her voice for the show, the country music star smiled and laughed with fans as she signed a guitar, talked about her assistant’s love for Swig and even performed an impromptu duet of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” with singer Alex Boye.
The artist behind hits like “Heads Carolina, Tails California” and “Bye Bye” has been to Utah a number of times throughout her career — including to film two episodes of “Touched By an Angel.”
“We love Utah. We have a huge fanbase here, and it’s always a blast,” Messina told the Deseret News shortly before her July 31 show at The Kenley Amphitheater. “Always looking forward to coming here.”
And based on the crowd’s reactions to her show in Layton, the feeling is mutual.
Jo Dee Messina performs new song, ‘If He Knew Jesus’
About 30 minutes into her show, Messina surprised her Utah fans with a new faith-inspired song she wrote just a few weeks ago.
She recalled the songwriting process for “If He Knew Jesus,” and how she started crying after just the first line.
“It’s not a happy song, but it is a true song, and so I’m going to share it with you if I could,” she told the Layton crowd, which seemed more than happy to oblige.
Messina got some cheers after the first chorus, and when the song came to an end, she covered her face, visibly touched by the standing ovation she was receiving.
Jo Dee Messina on sharing her faith through music
“If He Knew Jesus” is part of the country singer’s shift to more faith-driven music — a change she told the Deseret News started about 10 years ago when she “came to know Christ.”
Since then, the singer said, she’s regularly incorporated her testimony into her shows. And while that often means she gets a little more vulnerable with audiences, Messina said it wasn’t a difficult decision to make in terms of her career.
“I think that when Christ comes in and he makes the change in your heart, that changes your desire,” she said. “It’s just what you desire to do. It’s not an effort. ... It’s not a hard shift at all.
“If you really love someone, the best thing you can ever give them is the gospel,” she continued. “And so I try to share that wherever I go because that’s really what I’m about. You don’t see us drinking on stage or being wild. We just share Jesus with people.”
