Ichthus Fest '08

Day 1 - Set up

It’s Wednesday 11th and we rocked up to Ichthus at around ten in the morning after driving through the night from Chicago and arriving at around 8am! Turns out that the main merch tent that we were staying in was knocked over by the wind so we had to come back and check in at 4pm. We went and passed out at the house we were staying at.

After setting up the XXXChurch booth a girl from Gotee Records who was running something backstage with the Gotee show came by and asked if we wanted to MC for the night. Steve did not but I thought it would be a fun challenge. I even got to talk for about ten minutes about XXXChurch and throw out some free XXXChurch stuff.

Day 2 - The Love Alliance

Today was the first day of the main festival. We sold some merch, talked to some people. It was fun.

I got to know David and Lauren much better. David and Lauren are a couple who are sharing their booth space with us. They are both really cool with such a sense of what’s important and just pursuing that. (Also one of the first married couples I know who are capable of hanging out with single people! If you are reading this and you are married, no offence, but you suck at this.)  Anyway, after experiencing some very frustrating times working for a popular non-profit they quit and out of that frustration was birthed The Love Alliance. The Love Alliance is their non-profit that aims to get people connected to various social action projects. It is awesome and worth supporting.

Day 3 - "Blame it on this southern wether..."

Today things went pretty well with sales etc. I forgot to mention that Steve and me had backstage passes and we really loved getting free food that tasted awesome!

The real highlight was around 5pm when the storm knocked down one of the tent poles signaling screams and panic. Steve and I went to the car to wait it out leaving our things in the tent thinking we would be returning soon: may I take this opportunity to say that if you are ever in an emergency situation always take your belongings. We never went back that day and they closed off the “compound”.

We had some fun trying to record the first Love Alliance podcast. It didn’t work because the laptop died before we saved it. Good times though… getting a little wet and all.

Day 4 - Heart Support

Today was a fun day at the festival. I figured out that I could get food back stage to take away and so I was able to get David and Lauren lunch and dinner to supplement their beef jerky diet.

The most fun was shooting some interviews for HeartSupport. We interviewed Dr. J first who is a Nutty-Professor-Creationist and a very nice and smart man who seems good at what he does: engaging with Atheists.

Next we interviewed David from The Showdown about his experiences with the openness he has with the band.

The last interview we did was, however, ridiculous. We talked to Xanadu, the Dance Guru/Choreographer of Family Force 5. We started out sitting outside the backstage porta-potty. We then moved the interview into the porta-potty because David Crowder had just gone onstage and it was really loud. After invading some guys’ privacy we decided it would be funny to get on stage behind David Crowder and do the interview there! We finished up in front of the Family Force 5 drum machine! Totally bonkers!

We wrapped it up around 2am and finally slept in the next morning…

- jon

if you want to know more about our escapades then check out Jon's personal blog here. Enjoy!