There is a version of Zach Williams that never made it to the Grammy podium: the Pantera-and-Soundgarden teenager from rural Arkansas, the regional southern rock frontman who spent years performing without a major label, who arrived at contemporary Christian music by way of a blues festival and a long personal reckoning with addiction. That biography is what gives Jesus Loves — his September 2025 album and fourth full-length record — its particular texture: gravelly vocals, rough instrumentation, confessional themes that don’t resolve cleanly. Williams brings the show to Kodak Center in Rochester on Saturday, March 6, 2027.
About the Show
Williams launched his solo career in 2016 with Chainbreaker, a debut that went platinum and earned him a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Christian Music Album. His 2019 follow-up, Rescue Story, addressed his battles with addiction and alcoholism with the directness that had become his signature; the duet with Dolly Parton from that record, “There Was Jesus,” earned him a second Grammy for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song. The 2022 album A Hundred Highways continued the run, and Jesus Loves, with a March 2026 deluxe edition featuring Thomas Rhett and Ben Fuller, deepens it. Williams has described the songs as carrying “the stories and prayers of the last 2 years of my life,” and the production under longtime collaborator Johnathan Smith leans into that intimacy: deliberate arrangements, a band sound that feels worked-in rather than assembled. His music blends the grit of southern rock with gospel and country soul, a combination that has accumulated nearly a billion cumulative streams without abandoning the roughness that separates it from the more polished end of the CCM market. The Rochester date is his second at Kodak Center in recent years; he played this room in October 2023. Opening is Emerson Day, the Southern Maryland singer-songwriter who signed with Fair Trade Services in 2022 and broke through with “Get Behind Me,” which peaked at No. 3 on the CCM radio charts and earned her multiple nominations at the 2025 GMA Dove Awards.
Venue & Logistics
Kodak Center, at 200 W Ridge Rd on Rochester’s northwest side, seats 2,400 in a theater configuration that suits this kind of touring production: large enough for full band weight, compact enough that the quieter moments still register. The venue has become a reliable mid-market stop for CCM acts in the Finger Lakes region. Showtime is 7 p.m.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. General public tickets go on sale Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, at noon via Ticketmaster. Buy tickets