World Pulse Fest 2009

Spent all day today at the World Pulse Fest here in South Bend. This is the annual FREE Christian music festival that just gets bigger and bigger. I believe the crowd estimates today were about 50,000. It rained pretty hard in the morning then got really hot in the afternoon. For the first time, I borrowed a canopy and took it along, which really helped.

As we always do, we hosted a "pre-Pulse party" at our church for some visiting churches from Michigan and Ohio. The Ohio church group were brought over by my nephews Jonathon and Benjamin (sporting his recently shaved head, a contrast to Jonathan's ample hair supply). Dorene and I stayed up until about 1:30 a.m. playing games with the Ohio group. Played some game where you basically beat the crap out of someone with a rolled up magazine as you try to guess what cartoon character they are.

As for the music this year, things started off with the Robbie Seay Band, who provided a painfully bland set of unmemorable music. They were followed by Aiyesha Woods, a talented voice, but not much to get excited over. I dozed off a bit during her set, catching up on the lack of sleep the previous night. But I knew good things were to come, and they did.

Next up was Hawk Nelson, a Canadian group that has really hit it big in the last few years. They are a very energetic group. Not real deep on the lyrical content, but a very fun group to see live. In fact, the lead singer said, "I'm not good at speaking, I'm better at using music to speak." A lot of singers should take that advice because nothing's worse than trying to hear someone be profound when they have no public speaking skills. I like this group and had seen them once before and really enjoyed them. They are very popular with youth today.

It was the next group that I looked most forward to seeing. I had heard that David Crowder Band was a very good live act, and wow, that was certainly an accurate assessment. This is one talented guy and probably one of the most unique personalities in Christian music today. He is a very gifted writer and his concert went against my expectations. I mean, he has kind of a strange look and with his deep lyrics, I was expecting an introspective concert with a lot of deep insights. Not at all. This guy is FUNNY, and in a very offbeat way. Kinda hard to describe. For example, at one point he gets out his keyboard guitar, and deadpans, "Behold, the keytar." He keeps playing it for the next song because, "I can feel the keytar, are you feeling it?" Very offbeat sense of humor, but I just loved it.

There were no deep insights (he just let the music do the talking). Some of the banter back and forth with his bandmates was really funny. Crowder has a unique look and voice. You think he'd be pretty calm on stage, but then he's off jumping up and down with the other guitarist. I love this guy! If you ever get a chance to see him in concert, please do.

You know what else he does? He has fun on stage. There is a joy in his performance that to me is missing with a lot of Christian performers, particularly in the worship genre. There seems to be this notion that you can't just have a concert and certainly can't have fun at it, but that you have to provide a "worship" experience, otherwise it's not legit or something. What makes one concert worshipful and others, like Crowder, less worshipful? He's easily one of the best songwriters and performers out there right now, but he doesn't take himself seriously, and didn't force us to have a "worship" moment all the time (you know the drill: stand up, raise your hands, close your eyes, go accapella on the last run-through, look upward, and be careful not to smile too much, otherwise it might look like you are enjoying yourself).

Mr. Crowder, you just made one somewhat marginal fan a HUGE fan today.

There was another act to close out the day. The Pulse Fest has a way of having this great act followed by a mediocre one that is a huge letdown. A couple years ago, Kutless had an awesome set and were followed by Michael W. Smith. Last year Toby Mac's adrenaline rush of a performance was followed by Casting Crowns (who I'm sure provide many "worship" moments). In both cases, we skipped out. Today, after the awesome David Crowder performance, he was followed by Jeremy Camp. Yep, we skipped that one, too.