Polen will be performing as a part of the 2014 JPM 5k & Musik Festival on Saturday, September 20 in Fredericksburg, OH. It is a great opportunity to get your running or walking shoes laced up and then hang out to listen to great local musicians.

Jeff Polen Music Ministry is a non-profit ministry that Polen has worked with for years. The sound system that Polen typically plays through belongs to JPM. The 5k and 1 mile Family Fun walk registrations will serve as a fundraiser for JPM, and the Music Festival featuring local musicians will be absolutely free. “Early-Bird” registration is available until thru Friday, August 15 -so sign up today.

Other events have been added the schedule, so be sure to check out http://www.polenband.com to see when Polen will be performing at a venue near you.

This past weekend Polen took our first road trip to Iowa. We left Ohio late Friday night because Jeff Kaufman had obligations with his church VBS, and then we headed for the Hawkeye State.

Driving through the night is always interesting, but we stopped somewhere in Indiana around 2am and got a few hours of sleep in a comfy hotel room. We hit the road again after a “complimentary” breakfast (that we surely paid for with the price of the room) and stopped along the way at a Guitar Center in Illinois. (As it turned out, our drummer somehow managed to leave his cymbals and kick pedal at home. We won’t name any names to save him the embarrassment… but then again, we only have one drummer so you can probably guess who it was.)

We arrived at Lower Deer Creek Mennonite Church on Saturday afternoon, a little later than we hoped, but we began setting up for the concert immediately. We were excited to be there and were met by incredibly friendly and helpful people at the church.

Jim Hersberger is the man who set the whole event up, and he was there to meet us with a handshake and a smile. Jeff Polen met Jim several years ago at Little Eden Christian Camp in Onekema, MI while Jeff was the guest speaker for the week. Immediately after that week this event in Iowa was being talked about, but it took several years for it to come together. Jim got the ball rolling in 2013 when he became a “Backer” for the “Kickstart Seasons” campaign. Thanks Jim!

We are in the middle of day 2 in the studio with Mark Townsend. Yesterday we nailed the drums and bass and today we are working on guitars and piano.

Tomorrow we will go for the vocals and we are hoping for the best. We are really excited about what we are hearing so far.