<\/p>\n
Thirty minutes before Jo Dee Messina\u2019s sold-out show in Layton, Utah, several fans lined up for a special meet-and-greet to chat, take pictures and get autographs.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s love for Swig and even performed an impromptu duet of Carole King\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019ve Got a Friend\u201d with singer Alex Boye.<\/p>\n
The artist behind hits like \u201cHeads Carolina, Tails California\u201d and \u201cBye Bye\u201d has been to Utah a number of times throughout her career \u2014 including to film two episodes of \u201cTouched By an Angel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love Utah. We have a huge fanbase here, and it\u2019s always a blast,\u201d Messina told the Deseret News shortly before her July 31 show at The Kenley Amphitheater. \u201cAlways looking forward to coming here.\u201d<\/p>\n
And based on the crowd\u2019s reactions to her show in Layton, the feeling is mutual.<\/p>\n
About 30 minutes into her show, Messina surprised her Utah fans with a new faith-inspired song she wrote just a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n
She recalled the songwriting process for \u201cIf He Knew Jesus,\u201d and how she started crying after just the first line.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a happy song, but it is a true song, and so I\u2019m going to share it with you if I could,\u201d she told the Layton crowd, which seemed more than happy to oblige.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf He Knew Jesus\u201d is part of the country singer\u2019s shift to more faith-driven music \u2014 a change she told the Deseret News started about 10 years ago when she \u201ccame to know Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, the singer said, she\u2019s regularly incorporated her testimony into her shows. And while that often means she gets a little more vulnerable with audiences, Messina said it wasn\u2019t a difficult decision to make in terms of her career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that when Christ comes in and he makes the change in your heart, that changes your desire,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just what you desire to do. It\u2019s not an effort. … It\u2019s not a hard shift at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you really love someone, the best thing you can ever give them is the gospel,\u201d she continued. \u201cAnd so I try to share that wherever I go because that\u2019s really what I\u2019m about. You don\u2019t see us drinking on stage or being wild. We just share Jesus with people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thirty minutes before Jo Dee Messina\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1947390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[339680,339678,339679,22167],"class_list":["post-1947389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-deseret-news","tag-jo-dee-messina","tag-layton","tag-utah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Country-star-surprises-Utah-fans-with-new-song-about-Jesus.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1947389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1947390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1947389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1947389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1947389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}