LifeLight 2007
It’s Labor Day again, and so we had another trip to LifeLight. Technically, it’s still going on as write this, but due to the heat in Sioux Falls and the long list of things to do at home, the Hostetler’s left in the late afternoon. But we still had a good time. These are my highlights. Other people will have different ones.
I was very excited when I learned that Derek Webb was coming. But, when Gina and I saw the schedule we were extremely disappointed that he was playing at 2pm at the Main Stage and then playing again 90 minutes later at the Coffeehouse. But I wasn’t disappointed in his Main Stage performance. He just appeared by himself with his guitar and played his heart out. He is just as outspoken in his talk between songs than he is in his music. At one point, when he was talking about loving and taking care of people in Africa he said, “And most people in American churches don’t give a shit what is happening in Africa.” There was a shocked silence. Didn’t he know that this was a Christian music festival? And he continued: “And most of you are more offended by that word I said than what is happening in Africa.”
Gina and I headed over to the Coffeehouse to see Derek’s next set and a seminar was just finishing. It was a captain who finished serving in Iraq. The audience was engaged in the subject but it probably wasn’t the ideal audience for the guy who wrote My Enemies Are Men Like Me. When the soldier finished, a band started setting up. The singer of that band announced, “I was just asked to say that Derek Webb will not be performing tonight in the Coffeehouse.” Being a conspiracy theorist, I feel that Derek saying “shit” and he sudden non-performance is connected, but maybe not. Everfound seemed very ready to go for an hour and a half notice so it could have been planned. We listened to Everfound for a little while and they were pretty good.
Leeland was just as good live this year as last year. Probably even better. And they moved up in the world — instead of playing at 4pm on Saturday (like last year) they played at 8pm this year — just before the big artist of the day. Good for them! They deserve it.
Gina really like Phil Joel. I was taking Leah back to sleep when he was singing, but what I heard made was good.
Seems short this year, huh? I guess that it is a little bit. Oh well . . . I had a good time.
September 13th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Was’nt Derek Web’s AFrica comments about being more offended by what he said something that Tony Campolo used a lot in lectures twenty years ago? The only person I have heard use that to get attention to his topic cited Campolo. Derek is a good musician. I was sad that I lost my free copy of Mockingbird when one of our hard drives died.
Chris Rice played at our large street festival about a month ago and it was just him on a guitar and a guy playing drums with his hands. It was nice that they didn’t go heavy on background tapes like many artists seem to do now. It seems be be the trend to show up at the festivals without a band with you and then have tapes as your background as kind of a kareoke performance. Jars of Clay, Cleotis T Judd, and Boys II Men performed that way two years ago, though Jars did have the two guitarists and the keyboardist. They just had no drummer and all of the percussion stuff was on tape. The other two did it with no one with intruments at all on stage as did Point of Grace this year.