This year's festival experience began earlier than usual. As the recently recruited bassist for Every Day Life, I was preparing to leave for Northern California dates on the weekend just prior to Cornerstone '98. Since I would be flying to Illinois directly from EDL's San Jose, California, shows, packing for the festival couldn't be put off until Sunday night. Additionally, I had the happy burden of preparing for the Farewell to Juliet concert on the New Band Showcase stage. This year, it wasn't just about bringing clean underwear, sun block, and my guitar-tech kit for volunteering on various stages. I also had to bring my own guitar, sound processing gear, and all the product for the FTJ booth in the Exhibition tent. It must have taken four days of packing and un-packing to figure out what I really needed and could afford to transport. When EDL finally left on Friday morning, June 26, it was a relief; whatever I had left behind, it was too late. No sense in worrying now.
The Every Day Life van spun by eight-and-a-half hours of California scenery to our Campbell show. We played in a gymnasium to a small but enthusiastic crowd. The borrowed bass rig sounded great, and Tedd (Cookerly, vocalist) didn't wreck any of my own gear during his on-stage flailing, so the show was considered a success.
We left Campbell, and drove a couple of hours to our motel in Manteca. Our Saturday night show would be at a church another 45 minutes down the road. On Saturday morning, I discovered that I had left my coat and tie at home, which were required by the dress code for the Delta Air Lines standby ticket I had purchased through a family member/Delta employee. Tedd and I drove to the local Salvation Army store, and after a forty-five minutes, turned up a brown pin-stripe, double-breasted jacket and solid brown tie which vaguely matched my olive green dress pants. We also found a pair of Manteca Youth League soccer jerseys, which we wore to the show that night. I spent seven dollars.
The Manteca show was both good and bad. The church treated us to food from the excellent local pizzeria, and the crowd grew to several hundred. The opening bands were good, but played extended sets. By the time we started playing, it was twelve minutes before curfew. The EDL fans were not pleased with our three-song set. Neither were we, but we did get to hang around and talk to everyone for a couple of hours.
The next morning, everyone had a good laugh at the suit I was wearing. ... but I got on the plane to Chicago.
A long-time friend and Farewell to Juliet supporter named Monica met me at O'Hare airport, and we went to dinner at 11:45 p.m. She helped me dye my hair black when we got back to the apartment, and even let me sleep on her futon couch afterward. After perhaps four hours' sleep, I rode into town with Monica on her way to work, picked up my rental car, and drove to Champaign, IL.
Once in Champaign, I called around to the Farewell to Juliet crew to touch base. Everyone was at work, except for our singer, Brant Hansen, who was sick at home, nursing a sore throat! That was scary news, since our Cornerstone set was only two days away. It was also unfortunate in the immediate sense for Brant, since he makes his living on the radio.
I met bassist/keyboardist Stacey Krejci at his office on the University of Illinois campus, and we drove to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. I'd have to say that this was a questionable move. To generalize horribly, there are no good Mexican restaurants in down-state Illinois. That said, there are no good pizza places in Los Angeles, and there are amazing pizza places all over Champaign and Chicago.
Farewell to Juliet was scheduled to rehearse at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, on a farm outside of town. The farm had a shed that was used by Stacey's church for music rehearsals. It already had a full P.A. set up. I was looking forward to a low-stress evening, without having to haul amplifiers around. It would be great to see the guys again, and go over the set for the Cornerstone Festival. I just had to wait for everyone else to get off work.
Everybody got off work at just about the same time that the tornado warning hit.
While I was willing to drive around the cornfields past falling trees and power lines, the three local FTJ players (also including drummer Chad Dunn) are young family men with sensible wives who refused to let them out in the elements. We waited out the tornado warning, while I saw our rehearsal window shrink. Brant had to be up for work at 4:30 a.m. the next day, and he didn't feel good anyhow. And we were going to play new material.
Then the power went out.
Once the tornado warning ended, Stacey and I called Chad and Brant and decided to rehearse downtown, since the farm had lost power. Still, Stacey and I had to drive to two different locations in Urbana, and the farm in Champaign, in order to get the equipment we needed to practice.
We finally made it to our rehearsal space somewhere around 8:30 p.m. Brant croaked his way through "Holiday on Ice," "Seconds Count," "Bittersweet," and "Thermostat." We played the brand-new song twice, then he went home. Like I always say, "Thirty minutes of rehearsal before the big shows, whether we need it or not." The rest of us went over arrangements for another half hour or so, and packed up.
I left for Bushnell on Tuesday morning. It was a beautiful day; only the downed tree limbs and lingering power outage in Stacey's neighborhood hinted at the nasty weather from the previous night. I made it to Bushnell in about four hours, and drove straight to the festival site. I planned to set up the FTJ booth in the Exhibition tent, and try to find some of my friends from JPUSA to help out with their preparations.
Once on-site, it was clear that I wouldn't be setting up the FTJ booth any time soon. The high winds that had blown through Champaign had also blown through Bushnell, and had destroyed many of the festival tents, including the Exhibition tent, HM tent, and Encore tents. I hung around for a few hours, and located the new Ricochet Internet Magazine sampler CDs which had been drop-shipped to the festival site. I had mastered the disc, and had a couple of new tracks of my own included, so I grabbed a copy for listening while passing the time. At 3:30 p.m., I retreated to the Western Illinois University dormitory in Macomb, where I was staying for the week.
Wednesday was the big day. In the morning, I put new strings on my guitar, stretched them out a bit, and drove back to the festival site. The Champaign-based Farewell to Juliet guys arrived throughout the morning. At about noon, our acoustic guitarist, John Bretzlaff, arrived from Nashville. I sat at our makeshift booth in the New Band tent and tried not to get nervous.
Five O'clock People played first, at 2:00 p.m. They were terrific. Brant commented that often, he wished that's what FTJ was (less rock, more acoustic/folk). I countered that I wished we were more like the Galactic Cowboys. That's pretty indicative of our relationship and perhaps the singer-frontman/guitarist-songwriter relationship in general. Brant and I have been great friends, butting heads the entire way, for around twelve years now.
Farewell to Juliet went on at about 3:00 p.m. What can I say? It was too short. I loved every second. These guys are my favorite band in the world, and it was great to be able to play at Cornerstone with them again. This time, I remembered to look up most of the time! Our last big Cornerstone set was in '93, and I think I compensated for butterflies by staring squarely at my microphone for the entire set. I must have looked cross-eyed to everyone in the crowd.
Highlights of the FTJ set: John Thompson of True Tunes came out to introduce us, and mentioned that immediately after seeing us play on the New Band stage in '93, he signed Love Coma, who had played immediately after us (Chris Taylor's fine new "Down Goes the Day" CD is playing now, by the way). John Bretzlaff hamming it up when tossing out a t-shirt. Having Carolyn Hansen show up to the fest just in time to come on-stage with kids Justice and Julia to help sing "Browning's Pearl." Impaling my hand on the post from my guitar's broken volume control during "Thermostat," and not realizing it until wiping my forehead and seeing all the blood run down. Tres rock and roll. Getting through the new song, "Hear My Cry," even though I had only rehearsed it twice, and Johnny B. had never rehearsed it at all!
Derek Yergler, a friend of Johnny B.'s, bought us ostrich burgers in celebration of our show. Ostrich burgers, lemon shake-ups, and elephant ears: Cornerstone traditions, all. I suppose some people survive on these alone for the entire week. I told Derek that what I really wanted was an ostrich shake-up.
I spent most of the day following the set at our booth peddling Grace and Dire Circumstances CDs, but in the evening, my friend Cathy Nieng relieved me so I could go see the Vigilantes of Love play on the Main Stage. I got to help the band out on stage a little bit, so I had the best seats in the house. This was my first chance to actually see a full-blown VoL show, although I had seen partial shows before, and had just seen the band do a short showcase set in Los Angeles at the Martini Lounge.
Bill Mallonee's current incarnation of VoL is the best yet, in my opinion. They're a super-tight rhythm unit; though VoL has always revolved around Bill's songwriting and showmanship, this quartet is a real -band-. Let it be said that my former Visions of Gray co-writer, Kenny Hutson, plays the best mandolin solos in rock music. The genre's most memorable mandolin leads, from Rod Stewart's "Maggie Mae" to R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" use the instrument as a folk counterpoint to the rock idiom. Hutson plays the mandolin as if he were Pete Townshend bashing out the lead to " I Can See for Miles."
On Thursday, I spent more time in the Farewell to Juliet booth. It was a good place for people to find me, so I was able to meet a lot friends, and try not to hard-sell them on t-shirts, CDs, and stickers. Doug Iha came by from Platinum Entertainment, and gave me a copy of the new LSU CD, "Dogfish Jones," on which I played bass.
Friday was more of the same, until I sold out of the FTJ Grace and Dire Circumstances CDs, AND the Aunt Bettys' Ford Supersonic CDs. Oops. Well, I could only afford to FedEx one crate out, in addition to what I had carried with me. Hopefully, the others who wanted CDs will call True Tunes. It was great chipping away at the production debt, but I wasn't too disappointed to close up shop; it freed me up to go to more shows, talk to more people outside of the noisy Exhibition tent, etc.
My other favorite shows this year included the Common Children show on the Encore stage (they played my favorite, "Blue Raft!") the Sixpence set on Main Stage (that lucky Slocum guy got an endorsement deal with Epiphone!), Terry Taylor's midnight set (I never thought I'd hear "New Car" live, and "The Happy Wanderer" was a hilarious encore), Joey Bellville's Echoing Green set in the N-Soul tent (where I lost my earplugs), and Steve Hindalong's loose-but-intimate set in the Prism tent.
Shows I wish I'd seen: globalWAVEsystem (Argh! When will we ever get the chance to see -them- again?), the Call, fully plugged-in and with Michael Been on bass, and Galactic Cowboys. The latter two played at midnight on Saturday, and this year, I was obligated to leave earlier Saturday evening. I think it was the first time I wasn't the last guy out, other than the JPUSA staff.
I think this year's only casualty was a new Bill Blass collared shirt that my wife, Melinda, had just picked out for me. Usually I manage to lose a combination of gear, cables, a watch, etc. Last year, I dented the rental car. I know that the people at National Rental Car must love seeing me pull up with five days of the Cornerstone dirt attached to their vehicle (I usually choose a white one).
I met Monica again late on Saturday night back in Chicago. We returned the filthy car, and spent the following afternoon downtown at Taste of Chicago (my first time). It was a fantastic, busy week, and I don't recall thinking about my day job once until Sunday night. Here's to next year's festival, and more of the same!
