Writings from the Dirt Road

I’m just about done packing. Tomorrow morning I’ll be riding in a car up to rural Illinois to go to my eighth Cornerstone Festival and I’m pretty excited. It’s a pretty familiar oddity at this point as I’ve experienced all the late nights, brutal heat, sudden storms and relentless, relentless, pounding hardcore music assaulting my ears before. Nonetheless, I get a thrill every year I get to do it. Adriene and her mom are watching the girls while I’m away and I’m really thankful to them for giving me a chance to escape for a while. If my math is correct, this is the first overnight that I will be away from the girls since New Year’s Eve and the first multiple nights that I’ve been away from them since they were born. I’ll miss my little pixies, but I think I’ve earned a little break.

Plus, this week is a chance to hang out with old friends, hobnob with some somewhat famous musicians and see a whole lot of live concerts. This year will be a great cross-section as some of my friends from the Square Peg Alliance will be performing at the festival. For some of them, this will be their first ever time here. Also, Jeff Elbel will be doing multiple shows and nobody loves us more than Ping. My friend David is doing a DJ session of his own. So, aside from all the bands to see, there will be personal reasons to catch many of the shows. I’ll be doing a little creative artwork of my own while I’m there. I’ll be shooting photos of the shows and scenes at the festival and uploading them to my Flickr site. I’ll also be regularly journaling the experience on the blog on the official Cornerstone Festival website. Check the sites regularly as I’ll be updating throughout the day. The best part of the festival is discovering new bands to listen to and God almost always surprises me with a couple lessons or thoughts to take away from the festival. I’m ready to expect the unexpected.

With Adriene going to the No Doubt/Paramore concert tonight (and me staying home with the girls, that’s right, Most Awesome Husband/Father ever), I think it’s time to come clean. Both Adriene and I have been developing a little bit of girlcrushes. This isn’t like any of that dirty leering creepy stuff, just girls that we each think are pretty keen.

Here we have Adriene’s girlcrush. How much of a crush does Adriene have on Hayley Williams? Let’s put it this way. The last time she went to get her hair cut, she took a picture of Williams with her and said, “make my hair look like this!” Without the red, of course, though she did get a hint of red, so the crush is strong my friends. And how could it not be?

As for me, I think all of the DuPree sisters are pretty cool, but this picture is full of so much awesome that it put Chauntelle over the top. Rocker girls are definitely my soft spot. Both of these photos are so freaking awesome. This is why I love doing concert photography. If I can get a photo half as incredible as either of these shots at Cornerstone at the end of this month, I will be thrilled.

Overheard during lunch today….

Grace: Edward
Adriene: Did you just say Edward?
Erin: *looks at us like we’re crazy*
Jeff: Where did she learn that?
A: …….
J: Adriene
A: Okay, we watched Twilight this morning.
J: ……
E: *looks away as if guilty*
A: They liked it. We just have to teach you to like Jacob more than Edward, right Gracie?
G: No.
A: No? We’re not having this argument miss. I’ve already had this argument with *my* mother and I’m right.
J: *facepalm*
E: *looks at daddy for more food*

Happy Mother’s Day, y’all.

(Two posts in two days? What is happening? You’d think I’m finally starting to feel like myself again.)

This is the first year that I can remember since we’ve moved into our house that the azalea bush bloomed. I mean, really bloomed, not just a flower here and there. I couldn’t be happier. Now I have to remember to prune it right after the blooms fall off.

Spring. It’s a time of new beginning and new renewal. I’m eager to put this season of winter behind me and enter a new summer, both in the year and in my life.

Way back in the stone ages, musicians released 45’s. The record (called a 45 because it played at 45 rpm on the player, you young’uns, look at me when I’m talking. Sit up straight.) had just enough room for a song, perhaps two on a side. So artists released singles, perhaps with some extra song (”the B-side”) on the other side. Singles were tantamount to the success of an artist. That all started to change in the 60’s and 70’s when the longer play (”LP”, I’m just full of arcane music history tonight, aren’t I?) records started putting whole groups of songs together into a 60 minute record. Bands used to go in and record that one hit single, but now they were going in and recording a whole album session at a time (”album oriented rock”, oooh, this should be a Music History paper.) For a long time, that has been the paradigm that we’ve lived in. When you think of bands and artists, you think of full albums. I say The White Album, Highway 61 Revisited, Thriller, The Joshua Tree, and you know what bands and artists I’m talking about.

Of course, releasing a whole album at a time isn’t always the greatest thing. The “one hit wonder” came to life and the music buyer was forced to shell out money for one song and nine songs of filler. The MP3 is changing the whole game again. Once it became no longer taboo to download music from the Internet thanks to iTunes and such, people started putting two plus two together and realized they could buy and download only the songs they wanted. Now, the artist is starting to take advantage of this new-old format. The artist doesn’t have to go into the studio and pound out a whole album’s worth of songs, but instead record and release them a few songs at a time.

There are two websites that are adopting this new method that I’ve enjoyed visiting. The first is the band Mae.. During the year of 2009, they are releasing twelve songs, one each month. The first four songs make up (m)orning, the next four make up (a)fternoon, and the final four make up (e)vening. The listener pays a dollar for each song each month and participates in the development of the songs by participating on the Internet with the band in discussion about the songs. It’s a very interactive procedure that helps pull down the wall between the artist and the listener a little bit and it lets the listener feel like they are on a journey with the band in the development of the songs. The second site that I’ve been visiting a lot is Brite Revolution. The listener pays a flat monthly fee and can download as many songs as they would like by a group of artists such as Caedmon’s Call, Waterdeep, Andrew Osenga, and Matthew Perryman Jones. The artists release new music monthly. No waiting for a new album to drop, there’s new material all the time. This gives me a chance to listen to artists I wouldn’t normally listen to, because I don’t have to pay anything extra to download tracks.

All of these are methods by artists to get their music directly to their fans. For years, we’ve heard a lot of talk about how the Internet will change the music industry and now we are starting to see the infrastructure to implement those changes. It’s an exciting time to be an aritst and to be a fan.