Ten years can make a whopping difference in the life of anyone - the best-selling Christian music star of all time not excluded.

The last Twin Cities appearance for Amy Grant was a May 1998 show at Illinois State University's Braden Auditorium.

And it came on the brink of one of the biggest turnarounds in her life.

Her latest appearance is a Christmas show Saturday night alongside mate Vince Gill in the U.S. Cellular Coliseum.

And it comes roughly eight years into the second major turnaround of her life.

In Grant's 1998 interview, shortly before her marriage to fellow Christian pop singer Gary Chapman ended, the subject of being the center of attention dominated the conversation.

Among the areas discussed: her ambivalent affair with being a public figure and official role model adored by millions.

"For me, personally, I have to ramp up to being in public," she confessed. "Once I get over the hump of being the center of attention, then I can really look forward to it every night."

But the hump, she added, was something always to be surmounted.

"I'm a private person. And it's not a normal human experience to be stared at by a lot of people," she continued. "If there is such a thing as reincarnation, and I don't know, I think I would prefer to be wallpaper the next time around."

Alas, Grant's marriage woes soon became the stuff of tabloid headlines - a status about as far away from wallpaper as an un-reincarnated human being can get.

The singer who will take to the stage of the U.S. Cellular Coliseum this weekend has weathered that upheaval as gracefully as a person can who must cope with the abnormal human experience of being stared at by a lot of people.

For close to nine years, Grant has shared her life and music with another celebrity, country long-runner Vince Gill, whose career timeline has paralleled hers in its duration, as well as its up and downs (his first marriage was to a fellow singer, too - Sweethearts of the Rodeo singer Janis Oliver - and it ended around the same time as Grant's did to Chapman).

They are sharing the intimacy of that union on the 15-date "Christmas with Vince and Amy Tour," timed to the release of Grant's latest holiday CD, "The Christmas Collection."

Will audiences see a different Amy Grant this weekend than they did a decade ago?

"I'm not sure," she begins. "I think that we are all still basically wired the same way."

Even so, "I just ended a tour in October and November where we did songs from the first 10 years of my career, through 1988. And I had the most fun watching the crowd transform after I told them that we'd only be doing old songs."

The flashback was keyed to the 20th anniversary re-release last summer of her seminal 1988 album, "Lead Me On" - the point at which Grant began her sometimes-controversial segue from the sacred to the secular with mainstream Top 40 hits like "Baby, Baby," "That's What Love Is For" and "Lucky One."

On a second disc, the re-release features newly recorded acoustic renditions of the album's songs.

Flashing back, past the tribulations of 10 years ago to the heyday of 20 years ago, says Grant, "was a way to remind me of a much younger version of myself - not just in the face and body, but in the spirit, the passion and the energy levels. I had gotten a little bit dazed from life, and so, in a really unexpected way, I found that a lot of her is still present in me."

Out in the audience, women who had grown with her over the same 20-year-haul were following suit, she says.

"Every night, I started off by saying, 'this is all about unearthing you, not my career.' And at the end of each night, there was such a beautiful transformation that had taken place," Grant marvels.

"I talked to so many of these women with salt-and-pepper hair saying, 'I needed this soooo bad!'"

And not, says Grant, in terms of a simple nostalgia fix via '80s hairstyles and fashions. Rather, they were channeling the same rediscovered reserves of energy and passion that time had not diminished.

Along the way, Grant was pleased to discover, too, that her vocal powers had weathered the passing years, too.

"I think my voice is aging as well as it can," she says. "One of the great things about doing this tour is that I had to get in really great vocal shape because I used to sing really hard back then. By comparison, the Christmas songs (on the current tour) are really, really easy."

The "Lead Me On" songs themselves, she notes, surprised her in their own way, especially when she recorded the new acoustic versions on the re-released album's second disc: "It was so amazing to me that they, and their messages, had stood the test of time."

Now along comes the "Christmas with Vince and Amy Tour," complete with husband Vince at her side, her stepdaughter Jenny as harmony vocalist and a jazzier than usual 12-piece backing band (as opposed to the full orchestras that Grant has traditionally employed on her Christmas tours).

"The fascinating thing about doing these Christmas tours," she says, "is that they have very little to do with the artist, and everything to do with the music."

Even so, there will be no ignoring the fact that the audience will be getting added-value for their ticket dollar, with two major stars sharing quality holiday time together.

The mood, she advises, is strictly casual.

"Very, very casual … very, very friendly … and very, very familiar," she says. "This show is our way of giving the gift of each other."

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At a glance

What: Christmas with Vince and Amy

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: U.S. Cellular Coliseum, 101 S. Madison St., Bloomington

Tickets: $39.50 to $59.50

Box office number: (866) 891-9992

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More about Vince and Amy

Vince

• Born: Nov. 25, 1960

• Home town: Norman, Okla.

• Main instrument: guitar

• Breakthrough debut: 1978

• Circumstances for above: as member of country-rock band Pure Prairie League

• Breakthrough album: "Turn Me Loose," 1984

• Breakthrough hit single: "When I Call Your Name," 1989

• Grammy Awards: 19

• First marriage: fellow country singer Janis Oliver (Sweethearts of the Rodeo), 1980-1998

• First marriage consequences: one daughter

• Second marriage: Amy Grant, March 2000

• Second marriage consequences: one daughter

• Favorite team to root for: Nashville Predators (hockey)

• Hall-of-famer: Country Music Hall of Fame, 2007

Amy

• Born: April 12, 1957

• Home town: Augusta, Ga.

• Main instrument: guitar

• Breakthrough debut: 1977

• Circumstances for above: self-titled solo album

• Breakthrough hit single: sacred, "El Shaddai," 1982; secular, "The Next Time I Fall," duet with Peter Cetera, 1985

• Breakthrough album: "Age to Age," 1982

• Grammy Awards: 6

• First marriage: fellow Christian singer Gary Chapman, 1982-1999

• First marriage consequences: one son, two daughters

• Second marriage: Vince Gill, March 2000

• Second marriage consequences: one daughter

• Favorite team to root for: Nashville Predators (hockey)

• Hall-of-famer: Gospel Music Hall of Fame, 2003

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Vince, Amy's visit yields $5,000 check for local charity

BLOOMINGTON - When a concert is billed as "Christmas with Vince and Amy," there's an instant level of intimacy established.

No need to mess with last-name particulars where this couple is concerned.

When the concert was announced several months back, Vince and Amy (and the U.S. Cellular Coliseum) gave their fans the chance to get even more up- close-and-personal with them Saturday night.

In addition to the concert's regularly priced tickets ($39.50, $49.50, $59.50), the Coliseum peddled a special VIP package at $100 over the highest-price concert ducat.

First, the bad news: the package is sold out.

And with good reason: besides premium floor seating at the concert, the ticket gains entrance to a splashy pre-show gala at 6 p.m., with the stars in attendance, dinner and drinks in the Coliseum's Corn Palace Restaurant, and a raffle of signed Vince and Amy memorabilia.

(About those drinks: the wines are coming straight from the grapes of a recent Coliseum visitor, skating queen Peggy Fleming, whose sideline is the Fleming Jenkins Vineyards & Winery in Los Gatos, Calif. Earlier this fall, Fleming hosted the all-star "Skating for Life" event taped for NBC broadcast a week later,)

Now, the much better news: the fast VIP ticket sellout has resulted in a nice, big, fat $5,000 check being inscribed to Bloomington's Clare House food pantry.

You can thank the husband-wife stars directly for that net result.

"Vince and Amy requested at each of their tour stops to partner with a local charity - so they were definitely on board with doing the dinner and giving the proceeds to a local charity," confirms Melissa Ash, the Coliseum's director of marketing.

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Country 'Idols' square off on ice

By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

BLOOMINGTON - Country fans who go to see Vince and Amy this weekend at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum and leave wishing they knew someone who could do that, too - listen up.

Your chance will be here sooner than you may think.

With a little help from the Bloomington PrairieThunder hockey team and the Illinois Country Music Association, the Coliseum stage is being opened up to a half-dozen local country performers hoping to go the whole nine yards.

The occasion: "PrairieThunder Country Idol," a four-round talent contest to be waged at a quartet of upcoming hockey games.

For the event's premiere year, six area performers have already been chosen by their peers from the ICMA.

Each musician has recorded and released CDs, but has yet to be signed by a professional recording company. They are: Mike Porter, Travis Parks, Jordan Carter, Anjanel Folkens, Stephanie Foster and Missy Vail.

The competition's first round is set for Dec. 27, and will occur during game's first intermission, as will all succeeding contests.

Squaring off will be Folkens and Porter. The remaining competitions are: Vail vs. Carter, Jan. 17; and Parks vs. Foster, Feb. 21.

Contestants are limited to a four-minute performance, with audience voting to take place during the game's second intermission.

Winners of three preliminaries will be decided by a panel of judges appointed by the ICMA, as well as via the votes of fans attending the games (judges' votes count 75 percent, fans' votes count 25 percent).

Everything will come to a head at the finals on March 17. In addition to three semifinalists squaring off, all six competitors will appear in tandem in a group performance.

The grand prize package includes five hours of free production time in a recording studio, a pool table and 30 professional marketing packets.