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Last Weekend: Cornerstone & Kentucky
Tue., Jul. 5. 2005 10:23am EDT
O.K., we'll be honest with you. We didn't know what to expect from our concert at Cornerstone festival on July 2.
Fans have been telling us for over a decade that we needed to play there, but getting invited to play was no easy feat. It literally took years. Cornerstone is the most "hard core" of the big festivals, but finally some key people behind the scenes convinced the organizers to take a chance on a "novelty act" like ApologetiX.
That got our foot in the door, but we still didn't know how well we'd be received. There are many stages on the grounds, and we certainly weren't on the most prominent one (nor did we expect to be), and we were the first performers on the schedule, playing at 2 p.m., with only 30 minutes to play. Consequently, an hour before the show, we weren't surprised to see a sparse audience, consisting mostly of fans who've been to see us before.
Some people call Him "the God of the 11:59," referring to how the Lord often performs miracles at the last minute. On this day, we'd have to refer to Him as "the God of the 1:59," because a minute before showtime, the place was packed ... and then some. We were playing in a large circus tent, and there was no more room inside. A friend of ours counted 300 people OUTSIDE the tent who couldn't fit inside and still stayed to watch the show.
The audience response was tremendous. It was great to see so many old fans, and we made many more new fans. God even gave us great favor with the sound crew. One of them told us we were the favorite of all the bands he'd run sound for that week. As the Bible promises, God is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20), and He did that for us at Cornerstone. Thanks to all of you who prayed for us and rooted for us.
Our funniest moment of the day, however, did not come at the festival. We'd spent the night before in Champaign-Urbana IL, and on the three-hour trip to Cornerstone, we stopped at a convenience store, where an old man asked us if we were part of a basketball team (all five of us are over 6-feet tall). When we told him we were a band on the way to a festival, he asked us if we were playing at the "Cobblestone" festival in Bushnell.
Cobblestone!
He was out the door a moment later, but he will remain a part of ApologetiX lore forever. We couldn't help but smile the rest of the way to the festival, no matter what awaited us. We knew we'd never be able to think of Cornerstone the same way again, and the rest of the blessings God had in store for us cemented that sentiment. Cornerstone might have been intimidating, but "Cobblestone" was a blast!
We even grabbed a couple quick video clips with Karl's digital camera.
In the van with the band arriving at the festival:
Movie Clip
The crowd:
Movie Clip
INSTRUCTIONS: Click on the video, and let it load and start on its own. It'll take a while on slow connections.
Our concert the next day in Mayfield KY was icing on the cake. Mayfield is conveniently located not too far from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Tennessee, and fans from all of those states were in attendance. Even the mayor of Mayfield was there, and he didn't tell us to turn the volume down once (or twice, or three times, for that matter :)
Not to be outdone, our friends Anne and Marissa drove up from Alabama to run our merchandise table. Thanks, ladies! Thanks also to "Superchick" Jenn, who ran our table at Cornerstone in Illinois, driving all the way from Pennsylvania. Honorable mention to the mother-daughter team of Kim and Little Ax'l who came to both concerts this past weekend ... plus Atlantafest two weeks ago.
Another highlight of the Mayfield concert was meeting ten-year-old twin brothers named Kenton and Kyle. ApologetiX fans who are also aspiring musicians, Kenton and Kyle play guitar and drums in a band they call "Blind Faith." Although Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and company had that name first, it's a perfect fit for Kenton, who is legally blind, and Kyle, who is totally blind. They've got the "faith" part down, too. Speaking to them, it was obvious God has given them spiritual eyes that see quite clearly.
We'll be back in Kentucky this Friday for a concert in Lexington, followed by the LiFest festival in Wisconsin on Saturday. Based on last weekend's results, another big Midwest festival and another Kentucky concert sounds good to us!
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