Country singer Hal Ketchum plays at the Rally for Hope and Hunger in Greenville this Saturday.

The big show: This event's gotten bigger every year and that's good to see, considering it raises money for God's Kitchen and Van Andel Institute. It's Saturday's Rally for Hope and Hunger at Wabasis Lake Park, 11220 Spring Hill Drive, Greenville. All non-bikers need to know is the concert -- running from noon to 4 p.m. or so -- stars renowned country singer Hal Ketchum and Grand Rapids' own Mid-Life Crisis. Bikers can take it a step, er, wheel, farther by riding motorcycles from Cannonsburg Ski Lodge to Wabasis Lake Park starting at 11 a.m. (registration/breakfast begins at 9). The concert costs $5 (12 and younger are free). Rallying bikers pay $20. Advance tickets can be had at Rockford Construction, God's Kitchen, Van Andel Institute, Harley Davidson dealers and WLAV-FM. Visit rallyforhopeandhunger.org.

Blind Melon will play at the Intersection next Sunday, July 27.

Among the '90s alt-rock bands least likely to reunite was Blind Melon. The band, best known for "No Rain" and the cult audience that has developed for its second album "Soup," broke up in 1995 after singer Shannon Hoon died of a drug overdose. In 2006, however, a young singer named Travis Warren convinced the band to reunite.

My story on the band is in today's paper. I spoke at length with guitarist Christopher Thorn about the band's reunion, Blind Melon's initial burst of fame and whether "No Rain" could have happened in 2008. Here's a transcript.

Press: How many tours have you done since getting back together?

Thorn: This is like the fifth tour. Last November, we did a couple of runs at the end of the year, just to kind of feel it out, and we've been touring, really, ever since. The record just came out in April, but we wanted to get out there and play some shows as soon as possible.

That was the one thing that we really didn't know, was we didn't have a feel for how many people still cared about the band, so that was one of the reasons to go out. We sold out a small club tour, so it was great. People showed up, and it was great.

I take it the response, then, has exceeded your expectations.

Yeah, it really has. We spent last year making the record without really any concept as to who still cared. I think, for us, when we put the band back together we started to connect more with the fans on the Internet, and we were all really blown away as to the response, and that was even before we went on tour.

And we still didn't know how many people were going to show up. It's one thing to say, "I love your band," but to actually go buy a ticket, put gas in the car and drive there is a whole different thing. We were all super blown away. Those first few shows were a huge sigh of relief, I think, for both parties. The fans wanted to make sure we were doing this for the right reasons. They came out and they saw Travis and they fully embraced him immediately. That, for us, was a sigh of relief. We believed in him, and that was the reason we put the band back together.

So, hey, let's rate Pitchfork for a change. This weekend was the third-annual Pitchfork Music Festival, taking place as always in Chicago's Union Park. (The publication curated the Intonation Festival the same weekend and at the same location in 2005, so technically this is the fourth.)

I've gone each year and, as usual, I enjoyed myself. But let's get down to specifics.

The bands -- Where else are you going to see groups like Spoon and Animal Collective perform "event" sets in the headliner position to tens of thousands of fans? The wildly eclectic-within-its-demographic lineup also included Dinosaur Jr., Spiritualized, !!!, Vampire Weekend, the Hold Steady and a ton of others. Rating: 9.2

The concessions to other genres -- Each year, there is at least one olive branch extended to metal fans, and this time it was Japanese group Boris, who played a blistering show early on Sunday. Despite it being about 2 in the afternoon, there was a fog machine. Righteous.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Local pastor and six-time Grammy nominated Marvin Sapp is one of the hottest acts on the charts right now with his inspirational smash, "Never Would Have Made It," an homage to his father, the late Henry Lewis Sapp Jr.

The song has spent 42 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's gospel radio charts and also has crossed over to urban adult contemporary radio as the No. 1 song in the country. And, according to Billboard, it has become the longest running No. 1 single at radio across all genres in the history of Billboard analysis.

"It's a powerful, powerful song," said Tyrone Bynum of WMFN-FM (640). "It's our station's most requested song. Even if I play it, people will call right back and say, 'Can I hear it again?"