PROJECT 86 w/Flatfoot 56, Wavorly & Fight The Current March 4th, 2010 Seattle, WA Showbox at the Market Project 86 made their return to Seattle, promising a set full of “tunes we haven’t played in years and some we haven’t EVER played live.” They didn’t entirely deliver, but that’s nitpicking. Andrew Schwab, Steven Dail and [...]
Time to update my list of Bands I Have Seen Live. I am not listing every single band I’ve ever seen. There are plenty of opening acts I was forced to sit through to get to the main event. Festivals are similar… lots of bands I “saw” but don’t care about having seen. It’s basically [...]
STRYPER w/Manic Drive and Flight Patterns The Red Room on Richards Vancouver, BC November 21, 2009 Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way up front: I am not now, nor will ever claim to be, a die-hard Stryper fan. Were I not friends with a group of guys who grew up listening to Christian [...]
DAVID BAZAN w/ Say Hi The Media Club Vancouver, BC November 5, 2009 The Media Club isn’t the worst live music venue I’ve ever been to, but it’s close. A claustrophobic rectangular room where only the eleven people at the very front of the room will see anything more than the musician’s heads, with the [...]
SKILLET w/The Letter Black, Decyfer Down and Hawk Nelson ShoWare Center Seattle (Kent), WA October 31st, 2009 POW! BIFF! BANG! Korey Cooper’s encore Batgirl costume was wildly appropriate because her band pushed it GLORIOUSLY OVER THE TOP! Skillet brought ARENA ROCK back, baby, 1980s style! DRUM SOLOS! HYDRAULIC RISERS! SMOKE JETS! GUITAR SOLOS! STRING SOLOS! [...]
*Note: Being unfamiliar with the group’s material, I was unable to note the setlist. If you have it please comment! David Crowder Band Abbostford, BC October 18, 2009 David Crowder Band made a stop right here in Abbotsford last night, so why the heck not? The six-piece alternative-pop outfit put on a pretty great show, [...]
MUTEMATH w/As Tall As Lions Showbox At The Market Seattle, WA October 5, 2009 SOLD OUT MUTEMATH drummer Darren King crowd-surfed his kick drum into the crowd, stood on top of it, and grabbed onto the overhead lighting rig. It shook. (No doubt the venue staff were freaking out.) Just one of many things that [...]
RYAN DAHLE w/Debra-Jean and Prairie Cat Biltmore Cabaret Vancouver, BC September 10, 2009 Musicians are always bigger in person. No kidding. They all look so skinny in their photographs, but on stage are anywhere from “normal-sized dude” to “seriously, Jeff Martin of the Tea Party is kinda pudgy” (or was in 2002). But I digress. [...]
STAVESACRE Cornerstone 2009 July 2, 2009 Stavesacre played eighty minutes, did every song I really wanted to hear except “Minuteman,” played some new tunes, made mistakes and laughed about it, and despite being part-time at this point put on a performance that blew almost every other set at Cornerstone out of the water. Oh, and [...]
GRAMMATRAIN with FAIR and THE FORGOTTEN DREAM March 26, 2009 El Corazones Seattle, Washington I saw grammatrain live. Let me repeat that. I SAW GRAMMATRAIN LIVE! No, really. This is kind of a big deal. grammatrain was one of the first christian rock bands I really got into. I was a big fan of Nirvana [...]
AFTERWARDS Between Cornerstone itself and the epic road trip through the American mid-west before and after, it’s taken me a long time to decompress the trip. I have a few observations about Cornerstone I would like to share. Several years back, I went to Creation Festival Northwest. While I saw some very good bands there, [...]
SATURDAY It rained on Saturday. It rained ALL DAY. To be perfectly honest, there weren’t too many bands playing Saturday that I really wanted to see, so the wife and I spent the morning in the tent playing Scrabble and reading (I was going through the Lord of the Rings again). Then? We looked for [...]
FRIDAY Another beautiful day at Cornerstone, warm (and humid), but not so hot as to drain all energy. Friday shaped up to be the most interesting and entertaining (for various reason) day at the Phantom Tollbooth press tent. Grandfather Rock concluded his two-part talk on christian music. Between both parts, there was material I’ve read [...]
THURSDAY I was not scheduled for the press tent on Thursday, but the marathon the day before had me beat. After a laaaazy morning, I checked out Grandfather Rock’s “Where is the Wonder?” rant/discussion at the Press Tent. Then it was time for a trip into Macomb for an oil change and groceries at Wal-Mart. [...]
WEDNESDAY Waking up to the sun beating into your warm tent is both wonderful and stifling. “Need AIR. They have to have AIR or they’ll die!” After a leisurely morning, the wife and I wandered over to the press tent to meet other Tollboothers and enjoy a staff barbecue. The beef was so tasty, thanks [...]