After a week home, I’m going to document my week at Cornerstone Festival, mostly for my own archival purposes. This is built on posts on the cornerstonefestival.com blog with a little more details and commentary here.
Better weather has us moving around a little better today. Today is the first “official” day of Cornerstone and things are now starting to kick up. I started out the day at the press tent today for the annual RMC BBQ. Way back in the precambrian age of the Internet, the USENET forum rec.music.christian was the biggest location for discussion of Christian music. It didn’t take long for the denziens of the newsgroup to realize that Cornerstone was a centrally located spot that they could meet face to face every year and so a tradition began of gathering for lunch on one day each year. The newsgroup isn’t very prominent anymore, what with most posters migrating to bands’ web forums and mailing lists, but the tradition lives on. We enjoyed pork barbecue and cake courtesy of the hard working folks at the press tent.
On to the bands. The Flicker stage had a bit of a jumbled schedule, but we found that most of the bands we wanted to see were playing there today. The day started of with Grey Holiday and they were good enough that I sprung for their EP. Eleventyseven appeared next in spacesuits (which were shed after three or four songs thanks to the stifling heat) and kept the crowd bouncing with their punk-pop. I floated between tents next catching Wavorly and then running over to catch a little bit of The Upstairs Divine in the Gallery tent. I then headed back to the Flicker stage and saw Nevertheless. I had seen them last year and didn’t remember much about their show, but this year’s show left an impression on me, and a good one at that. Flatfoot 56 arrived next and the crowd swelled in the tent. The inside of tent soon became a racecourse as kids whirled around the tent to the celtic punk music. I wasn’t about to jump in and start pushing and running myself, but I had a great time watching it. Luminate came on the stage last and finished off the day at the Flicker stage. I’m glad to see bands that made their debut here at Cornerstone last year return for another year and hopefully they’ll continue to develop and grow and return for many Cornerstones to come.
Light rain started to fall afterwards as we grabbed dinner. It looks like the storms skirted around us and we were fortunate. Hopefully it won’t rain too much tonight as we’ll be heading down to the main stage to see the “big names” at Cornerstone. I can hide under the tents here if it rains, but at main stage, there is nowhere to run or hide from the rain.
After dinner, we made the long walk down to the Main Stage. Main Stage is quite a distance from the rest of the tents at the festival. For some people, this is where they stay all week. For others like me, it’s a bit of an investment to walk all the way down there and I was brave enough to make the hike twice. Working on my cardio, you see. We started out the night at Main Stage with Fireflight who proved that girls can rock just as much as the guys. After that, I had a decision to make. I could either stay and see David Crowder Band or walk back up to see The Lee Boys.
I figured I’ll get see David Crowder Band again sometime soon, so I hoofed it up to the Gallery Stage to see The Lee Boys. The band had driven all the way up to Miami (twice the distance of our very long drive) to deliver their pedal-steel driven jamming that is somewhat like Robert Randolph and The Family Band. The sound was smooth and the crowd was dancing. I know David Crowder Band is considered worship music and rightly so, but there was a lot of worship going on at this tent tonight, too.
We hiked back down to Main Stage to see the headliner for the evening, Toby Mac. I’m going to make an admission and both shame myself and age myself at the same time. I was a pretty big dc Talk fan way back when. I bought Free At Last in high school. I saw them in concert I don’t know how many times. After college when dc Talk broke up though, I moved on to other stuff. I haven’t really paid attention much to Toby Mac’s work since then, but I really enjoyed the lively action and music at this show.
At the end of the evening, I ended up making a quick circuit around the grounds to catch as much as I could during the midnight encore sets. I caught a little of Falling Up at the Encore 2 stage, but they weren’t as interesting as I hoped so I swung by the Gallery stage for a packed out show by Cool Hand Luke. I also stopped by the Dance Barn to check in with my friend who is running the stage this year. We walked around the grounds a little bit and shared our experiences so far.
Cornerstone is funny in how it works into your system. You can only attend so many years at the festival before wanting to add your own art or contribute to the festival in your own way. In my case it’s blogging and my photos. In my friend’s case, it’s running the Dance Barn and doing his own live PA. Maybe that’s why there are so many generator bands here. We all want to create something while we’re here for this week.