Sunday Drive headlines the 2026 Gospel Jubilee

Sunday Drive headlines the 2026 Gospel Jubilee

“They called me Smiley when I was a kid.”

Jeff Treece has been the one breaking the ice in a room for about as long as he’s been in one. On Saturday, October 17, he’ll bring that — and his family — to the Bath County High School auditorium, where Sunday Drive headlines Allegheny Mountain Radio’s Gospel Jubilee. Doors open at 5:00 p.m., music runs 6:00 to 9:00, admission is a free will offering.

It won’t be their first time in Bath County.

“It’s been a little while, but we’re glad to be coming back,” Treece said.

Three generations deep

The music goes back further than the group does.

“My grandpa played for Roy Acuff, the Opry star. He was in his band,” Treece said. “That’s in our blood, I guess you’d say — it’s in our DNA. About everybody in my family could either sing or play an instrument.”

His parents started a gospel group in 1967 called Cedar Ridge, named for the Baptist church where they’d been singing.

“They started out singing in their church, and then they started going out and singing,” he said. The group went full time in 1986, and their first single reached the Top 40.

It ended the way those stories sometimes do.

“My mom got sick. She passed away with cancer at 58, so she passed away early, and that kind of put an end to the group.”

Treece went on to play keyboard for The McKameys through the 1990s, then started the Jeff Treece Band for about ten years. Then he met a singer.

“I met a girl named Misty. I’d actually known her for years — I recorded her — but I always just thought of her as a friend. And in 2008, the Lord kind of put that together.”

They married in 2009.

The family business

Misty sings lead. Jeff’s younger brother Dusty is in the band. Jeff plays keyboards.

“We sing a little bit, but she does the most singing,” he said. “We do backup and we play instruments and play along with her. I’ve played the keyboards all my life.”

“It really means a lot when you get to travel with your family and minister, and tell people about Jesus. It’s definitely a family business.”

A record that took a year

Rise and Shine came out in April, but the first piece of it landed the previous fall.

“We needed a new single from our last record — we needed to move on from that,” Treece said. “So we recorded a song that our producer brought us, called ‘Build an Altar.’ We put it out as a single, which was going to be on the new record, and it went number one for us in November of last year on the Singing News Faith country chart.”

“So we knew we had to cut a record, and we were working on it anyway. This was a labor of love. It took us over a year to get all the songs we wanted.”

One of those songs, “Mountains Are Made to Climb,” almost wasn’t finished.

“We did a key change, and I started singing the last chorus. Then we listened to it and went, no — it’s not climbing enough. We need somebody else to kind of help us on this.”

The answer turned out to live down the road. Their labelmate TaRanda Greene grew up in Knoxville, where Sunday Drive is based.

“I said, let’s ask her. And she said, yes, I’d love to.”

The song is on the radio now, and Treece says it’s working on people.

“The Lord’s really used that song to bless a lot of folks.”

Why the jokes

The humor started at home and got put to work early.

“My older brother also liked to joke around,” Treece said. “In my family group back in the day, I didn’t sing, I just played. But when you get in the service and it’s kind of stale, you just needed something to break the ice. They’d say, hey, Jeff, you got anything you’d like to say, give your testimony — and they always came out funny.”

He names Wendy Bagwell, the Georgia gospel singer who built half a career on storytelling, as the model. These days the jokes get written into the songs.

“I just wrote a new comedy song,” he said. “You can pick a guitar, but you can’t sing — they’ll just send you off. That’s the way it is.”

Expect some of that on the 17th.

“We’re going to be doing some comedy songs that night. If you put us on stage, there’s going to be some comedy. It’s what it is. That’s part of our makeup.”

What else is coming

“You’ll have smooth harmonies and musicianship,” Treece said. “My wife sounds like Karen Carpenter. We’re going to have a steel guitar player with us that night. It’s going to be a great night.”

Sunday Drive has been nominated for two Dove Awards and named Country Gospel Group of the Year and ICM Vocal Group of the Year, with Top 40 singles and stages shared with the Gaithers, Ernie Haase & Signature Sound, and the Oak Ridge Boys.

They’ll be joined by New Standard, the bluegrass band out of Virginia, and by Richard and Karen Hise with their daughter Jenna Newmarker.

“It’s going to be a great night, and we’re looking forward to meeting everybody,” Treece said.