Oh the joy of festival season. I say this in both a positive and sarcastic tone. As much as I love the festivals, I also hate them. For the past few years we have been building a list of the pros and cons of traveling to festivals all summer.
While this is not as serious as the usual stuff we include in the newsletter, it is a fun list. We hope you get a laugh or two out of it.
Pros
- Touring with the One Truth crew (RIP)
- Waking up Shawn from a deep sleep and telling him to hurry and get out of the van and then driving off and leaving him in a remote place on the Cornerstone farm
- Driving past back stage security and showing our fake Stand True passes as they smile and try and figure out who we are as we drive by
- Late night ice cream runs to UDF in Troy, OH
- Introducing people to Stand True
- Seeing babies saved and people's lives changed
- Getting to see some great bands (Ilia, Cool Hand Luke, MWOY, Over the Rhine, Inhale Exhale, Leeland..)
- Telling the backstage security you are in Third Day and then just walk by them as they look confused
- Restocking my t-shirt drawer
- Restocking my CD collection
- Getting to see old friends again
- Watching people look everywhere after you tell them they dropped their pocket
- Getting to do ministry all summer
- Driving the golf cart at C-stone
- Knocking people off the golf cart and watching them roll down the hill
- Passing people who ask for rides on the golf cart and telling them to get a job
- After tour pool party at Shawn's house after Purple Door
- Seeing many parts of the country
- Making fun of cheesy Christian rip-off shirts
- Watching Jodi make a masterpiece salad from organic produce
- Great prayer and devotional time at festivals
- The mountains of New Hampshire
- Going to the movies just to get out of the heat
- Truck stop novelties
- Making fun of Lewistown, PA
- Fireworks
- Emma's tall tales about the amount of girls Sam flirts with in Wisconsin each night
- Great meals at the Williams' house
- Hot Sauce adventures at the Floyd's
- Free stuff
- Going though the drive-thru of Hardees with 17 people in a 15 passenger van at three in the morning after a long day at Cornerstone while local rednecks get out of their cars in the drive-thru line to come and ask what band we are in and flirt with the girls
- Ghetto golf in the middle of Illinois at a scary gas station
- Doing laundry after C-stone at the laundry mat in Macomb, IL.
- Prayer walk in NYC with the protest at MTV
- Sing-along's in the tour van
- The Chinese buffet in Canton, Ohio with the cool coy pond
- Kingdom Bound Festival because it is in a Six Flags
- The hot air balloon at Niagara Falls
- I have lost over 60 pounds so I don't need XXL shirts any more
- The air conditioned dining room at Purple Door
- Rubber band wars in the merch tent
- The beauty and atmosphere at Soul Fest
- Sleeping in church basements and being told to watch out for homeless people trying to get in
- Pulling into Cornerstone at sunrise
Cons
- Being away from my family
- Percentages (bands and vendors know what I mean)
- People who think hippie oils can replace a shower
- Kids who run out of money the second day and try and return a shirt they have obviously worn
- The heat
- Kids who get covered in mud and then touch everything at the booth
- Bands who walk from booth to booth asking for free shirts for themselves, their girlfriends, their aunts and uncles, their cousins, their neighbors, the guy who lives next door to their friends cousin and then charges you full price for a shirt at their booth.
- Kids who ask how much a t-shirt is, telling them they are all $15 and they ask what about that one, and then telling them they are ALL $15 and then they ask what about that one
- Thinking that a meal at subway is gourmet
- Really bad Christian boy bands
- When Sam ditches tour for school
- Lame cheesy Christian rip-off shirts that should be burned
- Christian t-shirt companies who steal other peoples designs
- Christians dressed like hoochies (male and female)
- People that go to festivals just to scam and flirt
- Truck stop food
- Festival food
- Waking up in the middle of the night and piling into the van because we are being rained on and are sleeping outside
- The long overnight drive from Creation to Cornerstone
- The dirt
- The mud
- Youth groups who think it is funny to be as loud as they can at 3:00 AM
- The sudden thunderstorms
- Extremely bad music
- The youth group kids that keep asking for free stuff
- The Free Hugs people
- The loud pounding techno music in the C-stone booth area
- Getting sick on the road
- Kids that steal from the booth
- Being yelled at from "pro-choice Christians" (?)
- The smell in the van
- Cornerstone port-potties
- 13 year old put on security and thinking they have the power of the FBI
- Paying $10 dollars for a tortilla filled with one small piece of chicken and a pound of lettuce
- Rock star attitudes
- Scary gas station bathrooms
- Fast food
- Festivals that charge extra for showers
- Booths that sell anything they can as long as they slap the name of Jesus on it
- Flat tires
- Falling asleep at the wheel
- People who have to unfold every shirt on the booth
- Wet sweaty money used to pay for stuff
- Kids who walk in the center of the road and won't move to the side when a large van and trailer are trying to get through
- Youth pastors who walk around with all their youth group girls dressed like hoochies
- Parents who let their daughters wear short shorts with writing on the butt
- Bands that use the Christian festivals to make money when they really could care less about Christianity or ministry
- Wondering if the locals who keep circling the restaurant slowly are going to start trouble with us.
- The trailer falling off the hitch on a windy mountain road at midnight with a van carrying my wife and kids behind me.
I know that there are many other pros and cons. Please feel free to submit some to me - bryankemper@standtrue.com
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