Cornerstone Festival - Friday

Friday, we headed down to the Festival around the "usual" late afternoon time frame. N had seen a promo for a band called Blissed that wanted to check out and we both wanted to hit the merch tent before the nighttime acts on the Main Stage. We were pretty excited since the lineup was Pillar, Flyleaf and Switchfoot. Friday night is a short lineup of music, since they have a worship service around dinner time. We decided to hit the merch tent and eat during the worship service - I can hear it already - some scripture reference about God and money. The worship service was run by Jesus People USA (who put on Cornerstone) - http://www.jpusa.org and I suspected there would be an altar call and a love offering. Not that we wouldn't have enjoyed the worship music but I've heard the altar call talk enough times.


Nate made a good choice with Blissed. They are a band out of Toronto who play what I would call 80's rock. Just check out the singer in the pic. The music was good though N said it more my type than his. Funny moment during the half hour set - two guys who were older than me did a chest bump during one of the songs - I said "adult moshing", N says "senior moshing" - nice...


After Blissed and a little dinner, we hit the merch tents - hard. It's possible that Mr. P would still be there buying stuff and talking to vendors, bands and organizations. I bought some shirts and CDs but didn't really have time to hit all the stuff before the time came to head for the main stage. A plan was made to get there earlier on Sat., both to maybe catch so other "new" (at least to us) bands and to have more time in the merch tent. N headed up to the Main Stage and I went to the car to drop off the loot.

N did very well on scoring a good spot - I found him the front row on the (audience) left of the stage. I took up my picture taking spot - a little left and back. Even w/o moshing, the front row is no place for me and my camera. Although the crowd for Pillar was good, the ones for Flyleaf and Switchfoot were the biggest so far. N and I decided it was "mainstream" night since they both have had crossover success. God treated us to another spectacular sunset....

Pillar rocked the place as expected, playing old and new stuff. Flyleaf was amazing - their lead singer, Lacey Mosley, is this pixie of a girl who is so passionate and emotional in her singing. A lot of their songs are based on her personal experience which was pretty rough. Switchfoot was flat out great - they rocked, they were tight and the sound was good (even next to the speaker with earplugs). One cool thing was that both Lacey and Jon Foreman (Switchfoot's lead) did a little "preaching" - both bands are "Christian by faith, not genre" - I guess at a Christian event they can let their guard down a little. Jon talked about being "one" - not dividing the body of Christ before they did "We are One Tonight".

Flyleaf & Switchfoot

After the Mage Stage acts, N and I headed to a set that we had circled on the schedule as soon as we saw it - Disciple. The show was in one of the "encore" tents and started at midnight, so it was a smaller crowd. It was, though, one of the best shows we saw - it rocked, it had worship and had one of the craziest mosh pits we saw the whole festival. (An aside on moshing - I'm not sure I like it, especially at a Christian event. I know it's just supposed to be about energy, but it always, to me, seems to have an edge of trying to hurt each other). Nate and I were just behind the mosh pit and the music was awesome. Even better, right in the middle of the set, Kevin Young, the lead singer, read from Psalm 139 and talked about how God loves us unconditionally. It was probably the best teaching I heard all week. This show embodied what I like about Chritian rock - it's loud, but teaches and worships God.