Alison Krauss helps Jars on new CD: The Shelter

While in the press room after accept­ing a Dove Award, Jars of Clay revealed that the band is work­ing on a new project: The Shel­ter. The new CD will fea­ture guest artists, includ­ing Ali­son Krauss, Jon Fore­man of Switch­foot, and Matt Maher.

The new CD merges togeth­er the themes of the last two albums by Jars of Clay: the rec­on­cil­i­a­tions of our hearts and the man­i­fes­ta­tions of rela­tion­ships. “We were the house band for this CD.”

“We are meant to con­tribute to each oth­er. We are the hands and feet of God. All those clich­es — It takes a Vil­lage — is true,” the band said. ” We need each oth­er and to encour­age each oth­er.”

Jars of Clay’s pas­sion is Blood Water Mis­sion, a char­i­ty that pro­vides wells for clean water in Africa while also help­ing peo­ple with AIDS. Jars is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the 1,000 Wells project. Cur­rent­ly there are 850 com­mu­ni­ties in Africa that are ben­e­fit­ing from clean water, which trans­lates to more than 500,000 peo­ple.

The min­istry “gives weight to what the things we talk about,” the band said.