so we spent two days at cornerstone but actually only played once each…winston jazz and state bird were both slated to play “the decapolis stage” from around 9-10:30 or so on what was called a label showcase…discover america was then slotted to play at around 11:30 on the “anchor stage”…

so since twjr and us are both “record machine” bands most of the record machine guys were there to help promote the show and run the merch table, etc…i had only met nathan before but he’s actually only 1/4th of trm…mike and mark are two of the other co-runners i guess you could say and they both made the trek from nyc to be at c-stone…it was good to meet them both as they are really cool guys and doing alot of nice things for our respective bands…

i spent alot of the day just walking around and taking in the whole cornerstone experience…i caught two sessions given by shane claiborne in the speaker area so that was really cool…i hadn’t actually heard him speak before but had heard alot about him so i was really glad to finally have a chance to hear him…he drew a pretty big crowd and had alot of good things to say…i’d go more into it but this is a tour blog so i best be moving on with talking about the tour…

we started getting ready for twjr and state bird’s shows around 8pm and then winston went on at 9pm…we were a little scared when we first got to the stage because the band before them did not draw a very big crowd at all…but as soon as 9 rolled around the kids started flooding in…the turnout was really great…i’m not sure how many people were there but i’d venture to say 250-300 or so for winston…a few people peeled off before our set because we were playing the same time as alot of other popular bands like the myriad and switchfoot…that was kind of a bummer for us but there were still probably 200+ around for our show…the crowd got really into our set which made it a blast for us…it was also dark out so they had the stage lights going…that feeling is just incredible i have to say…the lights, the crowd and the energy…it’s pretty amazing…we even had an encore when we finished so they allowed us to play one more song…

i took quite a few pics of the winston boys set but didn’t have anyone to take pics with my camera of our set…there were a few people taking pics during our set though so hopefully i can grab a hold of them and put them up on the flickr page…

mewithoutyou played directly after us on the same stage…we finished around 10:30 or so and they didn’t go on til 12am but already people were getting in front for their show…that probably helped our turnout as well which was cool…they played an incredible set and have an amazing live show if you haven’t ever seen them…i only got to catch a little bit of it but they packed the tent out…there were people standing outside in every direction…i could barely see the stage from where i stood…earlier in the day after one of shane claiborne’s sessions, aaron from mwy took anyone who wanted to out to look at their tour bus which runs on used vegetable oil…they also played a generator show earlier in the day thursday which is pretty rare for a band of their stature…

i got the chance to stay in a hotel friday night but i’ll save that explanation for the next post as this one is getting pretty long and we’re about go on stage here in virginia beach in a few minutes…

p.s. - thanks to everyone who’s expressed concern following the incident in kc…we all appreciate your prayers and thoughts while we’re out on the road…

######Note: This post is from a tour blog that I dutifully kept during the summer of 2007 while touring with the band State Bird. It lives on solely so that one day I can prove to my children that I was once cool.