BLUE HILL – The Glorybound Gospel Jubilee will be held Thursday through Sunday at the Blue Hill Fairgrounds.

This is the 10th year Rick and Retta Kelley of Hampden have organized the event that is considered to be the largest gathering of Southern gospel performers in the Northeast.

Just as in years past, the music is secondary to the message, according to Rick Kelley.

“We are very, very careful about the groups that we book,” he told the Bangor Daily News last year. “The main thing that we want is to reach souls for the Kingdom of God. The groups that we have coming, that’s their first priority – ministry, not performance.”

The idea for the event was born 12 years ago when the family attended a Southern gospel jubilee in Boone, N.C.

“It was the first full weekend in August [at the North Carolina jubilee] and we got up one morning and there was frost on the grass,” Rick Kelley said. “I figured if they could do it down there and draw people with a variety of weather conditions, especially their bad thunderstorms, I figured we could try it up here.”

Over the past nine years, he said, the jubilee has grown.

“We are praying this year for the following: souls to be saved; good weather; and for enough people to come that we might break even financially.”

In addition to Glorybound, the group made up of Kelley, his wife, Retta, and daughter Dawn, the Mars Hill-based group the Kinney Trio will perform.

Other performers this year include: Erdie & Julie Price of Ludlow, New Brunswick; Karen Peck and New River of Dahloaneg, Ga.; Kevin Spencer & Friends of Shelby, Ohio; the Dixie Melody Boys of Kinston, N.C.; Mark Bishop of Irving, Ken., the Freemans and the Tribute Quartet, both of Nashville, Tenn.

The program will begin at 7 p.m. Thursday and at 6 p.m. Friday and Sunday. A church service at 10 a.m. Sunday will close the event.

Tickets are $20 per person per night and includes free camping. Children under the age of 12 are free.

For more information, call 862-4258 or visit the Web site, www.gloryboundjubilee.com.

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

990-8207