When worship music started to move from something more organic to something more corporate (quite a coincidence how every artist seemed to be “inspired” to create a worship album about 5-10 years ago, inn’it?) that style music began to be viewed with a lot of skepticism by artistic-minded fest-goers at Cornerstone Festival. An artist with that style of music would have an uphill battle being accepted by some of the more jaded element of Cornerstone.
It should say something then that David Crowder has been warmly embraced by Cornerstone Festival, playing several years and returning this year again to play on the Main Stage. The authenticity and artistic creativity of the David Crowder Band has brought a welcome change-of-pace to the typical screaming and growling and coded messages commonly heard at the festival. There’s a place for all kinds of music at Cornerstone and I’m glad this band has found a niche here, too.
This particular video always amuses me because of the addition of the “Guitar Hero” prop by Crowder in the song “Neverending”. Of course the Super Mario sound effects don’t hurt either.
I’m really not a huge fan of most worship music – it seems repetitive and kind of shallow to me. Plus, I don’t really like paying money to go to concerts where the band just tells the audience what to sing for an hour (a trend that reached its nadir at the Newsboys worship show at Cornerstone a few years back). I’m paying YOU to sing!
That said, I always like the Third Day worship albums (which were legitimate albums, with actual songs including stuff like Dylan covers, and which seemed to flow naturally from what they’d been doing in their sets all along). Crowder’s stuff seems to be along those same lines – actual SONGS and not just choruses, and although the crowd is encouraged to sing along, the band actually performs and does a show. So while I don’t own any of his stuff and wouldn’t generally seek him out specifically, I tend to enjoy Crowder’s shows when I see them.