FreedomFest 2006 (Part 1/2)

So FreedomFest 2006, or SnohomishFest, or FrankFest as the latest nickname is, is this Christian Rock festival that takes place in Snohomish, Washington every year, for at least the last few years now. I'm going to give a rundown of a few of the bands who were there, how they were, etc.

This'll be the first post. I'll go more indepth about random other stuff next post.

DAY ONE

Zeo Doxa - They seem to have replaced their female lead singer with a male lead singer. They were a lot better than last year, judging from what we could hear of them last year.

Fair - Aaron Sprinkle's band was pretty generic pop-rock, but it was still good stuff.

Seventh Day Slumber - SDS was the goodness that only SDS can be for yet another year. They played some of their better so-bad-they're-good songs such as "Candy," "Caroline," and "Innocence." More on them to come later.

Anberlin - I don't know if I've ever seen that metrosexual of a singer at a Christian rock festival. However the concert was still awesome and despite my very limited exposure to Anberlin (mostly radio / their givaways) I managed to know most of the songs they were singing. They were fun.

MxPx - They were pretty good. First band I can remember seeing live that had a bassist as the lead singer, which was pretty cool. They were pretty fun, but probably would've been a bit more fun if I'd known their music. But they had a big enough fanbase by this show that they could get away with not really targeting anybody who wasn't already a fan.

DAY TWO

Soul Deep - This band led worship at YouthQuest 2004. They were awesome then and were now; they would've been even more awesome if I'd recognized more'n one or two of the songs they played that day, but as said they still rocked. I'm not actually sure I recognized any. Memory's a bit fuzzy there.

Gretchen - I didn't pay too much attention to this particular concert. HOWEVER, I think Shawn/Alicia liked them alright. Also, they sang a Dracula-inspired song, which apparently had something to do with Christian imagery in the movie. Fun fact: NOBODY in their band was actually named Gretchen--the name comes from some girl in a short story about Narnia or somesuch.

Kevin Max - This concert appears to have been about 20 minutes long or so. I was playing frisbee at this point with Billy and Andrew, so I didn't really see much of the concert, except when he came out in a priestlike outfit which (by Shawn/Alicia's account) he claimed was really a common thing for men in China to wear. According to what I hear (and vague snippits I picked up) he said a lot of random stuff to try and get the crowd excited, and eventually walked offstage, and appeared to be having a bad day.

KJ-52 - This guy was for me the surprise 'hit.' Last year we didn't really give him a chance, as we were making dinner out in the parking lot at the time. So we only heard what we heard from there of his show and assumed he sort of sucked. HOWEVER, we actually SAW his show this year, and it was pretty awesome. Not necessarily the music, but he was a great performer.

Sanctus Real - These guys were pretty good in concert. But the thing that made 'em really awesome was this: Unknown to at least me, Shawn had seeked out (that the right form of the verb?) Sanctus Real's lead guy and I think guitarist during the Kevin Max show, when they were in the audience, and said "I hope you play this song, because I'm here with my fiance and it's our song" or something to that effect. Anyway, Shawn and Alicia were in the front row for their show, and the singer asked if they were there, then gave a brief account of the story, after which the band dedicated that performance of the song to them and played it! As you can imagine they were quite thrilled.

DAY THREE

Falling Up - Falling Up unfortunately didn't put on quite as good a show as they did last year. HOWEVER, they were still pretty decent, worth seeing I suppose. It was also their current guitarist's first show. Funniest moment: Getting asked for a 'one more song' and then coming out and explaining that they didn't know any more of their own songs (Alicia's theory: what this really means isn't that none of them know the songs but rather that they don't collectively know enough, which given the new guitarist would be understandable). So they played this slow one with the lead guy playing keys and the guitarist apparently improv-ing as best as possible. I have to give their singer props for actually being able to play something, though.

Hawk Nelson - I don't know if any of us expected to be there longer than ten-twenty minutes of Hawk Nelson's show. However, their fairly decent dose of tongue-in-cheek attitude and pretty decent energy kept us going until almost the end of the show. We started packing up during the encore, but still. Pretty impressive.

More on the not-strictly-music stuff will come tomorrow, I think.