The Cornerstone Music Festival.  Where do I start?  The people?  The bands?  The spiritual growth? 

 

Well, to lay some groundwork for those of you who don't know what Cornerstone is – Cornerstone is a 4 day music festival like Woodstock but put on by hippie-ish Christians called Jesus People USA (JPUSA).  So while it's the super-bowl of Christian rock music fests, it's also totally non-corporate, laid back and very cool. 

 

Conrad's Cornerstone Experience (Part I)

 

So I guess I'll just start chronologically.  Julia and I drove out together and we rented a brand new Chevy Impala which didn't have a CD player… it had a... (I am totally not making this up)... tape deck.

 

Yes, a tape deck.  In a brand new car.  When was the last time you even saw cassette tapes for sale?  What like 1996?  And GM wonders why their sales are so terrible.  Maybe it's because you're making cars using decade old technology. 

 

So after Julia shovels a good amount of coal into the vehicle's furnace we get on our way.  Nine hours later we hit Indianapolis, actually Lafayette, which apparently has more restaurants per capita than any other city in America.  Hopefully you know what a capita is because I sure don't.  We stopped there so Divebomber (Julia's and my band) could to practice with our drummer, Christopher from Calibretto, and a couple guys I've never met. 

 

The next day we get to Cornerstone and the nice people there have everything all orderly and ready for us.  Trevor had the correct list at the front gate, and Sally had our merch table picked out.  I really have to thank them for having everything organized before we got there.  I'd also like to thank the festival director, John Herrin, for letting me do the Decapolis Stage for the fifth year.

 

We got there and started setting up our merch table. If you don't know what "merch" stands for, it means "a bunch of crap we put on our table that nobody wants."  In about ten minutes all our merch was covered in all the dust because it hadn't rained in three weeks.  That's bad if you're trying to grow corn, great if you're trying to grow dust.

 

We'd move a little and cloud of dirt/dust would be surrounding us.  We actually were real live versions of Pig Pen from Peanuts. 

 

While we were setting up I realized that I didn't have any rope to put up my lame Decapolis banner, so right across from us was the Tooth and Nail table, and there was a super friendly guy there named Josh who gave me four zip ties. So thanks Josh, you're awesome.  While I'm talking about Tooth and Nail, I might as well say "Hi" to Amanda cause I never got a chance to say 'hi' while I was there even though I think I did see her somewhere.  Directly next to us was Rock For Life and they had some friendly people too. 

 

Melissa (Campiscool) and Katie (Spudly Kado) helped us out a lot setting up merch and running the table most of the time.  So big thanks to you guys. 

 

The next day, our stage wasn't running so after I put up a bunch of posters no one would read, I got to hang out.  The thing is with promoting stuff at Cornerstone is that there are flyers everywhere.  If flyers were bacon, then Cornerstone would be heaven.  Except that people put flyers in the porto-potties.  I don't think heaven will have porto-potties. 

 

And if you don't know what a porto-potty is, well I shall explain it to you… it's a place to collect human waste.  It would kind of be like a Nickelback concert.

 

Man, I hope you don't like Nickelback or else you totally don't get that joke and now you think porto-potties are like the best places ever with images of the cowardly lion rocking out on guitar.

 

This year the weather was unlike any other Cornerstone I've ever been to.  Cornerstone has always meant 100 degree weather.  That's because Cornerstone is actually located on the old sacrificial grounds of Pele, the volcano god.  He's also the soccer god, but that has nothing to do with how hot it is in Illinois. 

 

Two of the days it was 83 degrees.  Yes, 83.  I know, it was weird.  I was like, "Hey, it's really nice out today."  I don't think I've ever said that at Cornerstone.  I'm usually to busy saying, "Man, it's so hot, I wish I were dead."  Apparently that last sentence would make a good hardcore band name cause I referenced death.  Now if I just include references to blood or fire, I'd sell a lot of records.

 

So with the weather being the best ever, it made the entire setting for this fest to be the greatest I've ever been to.

 

Now that I've talked about getting there, some of the people and the setting - tomorrow I'm going to talk about some of the bands.  Some of them are worth mentioning and none of them using any combination of "Nickel" or "back".