Marching Thru The Wilderness
by State Bird (2006, Self-Released)
This year’s Cornerstone Festival was the first one I had attended in five years, and as such, there were some notable differences between my experience this year and my experiences from years past. Perhaps the biggest difference was that my primary focus this year was not on the music side of the festival, but rather the film side. As such, the number of concerts that I attended can be counted on two hands—a mere fraction of the concerts that I’ve seen in the past.
Even so, as I made way through that paltry number of shows, there were still things that I was hoping for. Namely, a band that would come completely out of the leftfield, that would leave concertgoers picking their jaws up off the muddy ground—or at least scratching their heads full of rarely washed, nappy, campsite hair.
In years past, that bill was filled by such acts as S.S. Bountyhunter, Danielson, Fine China, Soul-Junk, and Psalters. For Cornerstone 2007, it was State Bird. And for a while, during their late night show full of insanity—Native American stylings, conga line—it was like those five years had never occurred. I was back in those Cornerstones of yore, and I couldn’t wait to run back to my campsite and grab all of my friends to herd them back to the Encore Stage.
