Oneel dancing a jig

Whew!  It’s post-Cornerstone, and boy am I tired!  After seven months of hard work, haggling about budgets, and organizing logistics, we pulled off a very successful initial version of “After Hours – The Cornerstone Dance Club.”  I’d like to start out by thanking everyone involved; Dave Richards, Alex B, Doug Theodore, Fitzpatrick, Adam Sean, Jeremy Kadinger, Joel Armstrong, DJ Stryke, Kenneth Thomas, and Chris Salisbury.  Special thanks also to Deeflash, Jeff Stoltzfus and their awesome wives for putting up with us, Glow for just being himself, and everyone else who helped out over the course of the week.  More special thanks go to John Herin of Cornerstone Festival, Meredith Fisher of Chaotica Management, Ralph and Karen of Harmony Productions, and our super sound tech, Wil Jones.

Really, I just wanted to go into showing everybody what it took to make an event like “After Hours – The Cornerstone Dance Barn” happen.  Dave and I started talking about the possibility of taking over the Dance Barn back in December.  After getting the blessing from the previous management (Thanks Chris and Cindy! You guys are AWESOME!) we got started planning the week’s events.

The first thing on our agenda was rebranding the barn.  For years, it has simply been known as “Dance Club.”  Dance Club is about as exciting and intriguing as “Trash Pile” or “Gravel Pit.”   We decided that in order to draw a wider variety of people, we needed to remove the word “Dance” from the name, as to not scare off people who don’t dance.  Many names were thrown around (including Tastyfresh Afterdark Arena and That place You go To Jump Around Like Idiots) but we finally settled on “After Hours.”  That’s about the time we found out that our rebranding wouldn’t be available in time to make the programs, so we tweaked the name one more time to be “After Hours—The Cornerstone Dance Club.”  Cornerstone agreed to provide new signage for the building to reflect us occupying the facility, alongside the fine folks at Flickerings, who run the Cornerstone film festival.  Yea!  We have a new name and a new sign!

Next came headliners.  Knowing the budget constraints we were working under, we decided that our best course of action was to attempt to book headliners we already had connections with.  The first headliner we booked was DJ Stryke.  He played Cornerstone the previous year and absolutely did an awesome job.  Greg also views playing Cornerstone as being a part of his outreach ministry, so it was our pleasure to invite him back for another year.  Next, after consultation with Justin Moreh of Shiloh and Jeff Belfi of Blue Room Project, we decided to book Joel Armstrong.  Joel represents everything that After Hours is right now, and that’s up and coming, with a world of potential.  Lastly, we decided on Kenneth Thomas.  KT represents the Christian that comes to God after being involved in other things.  Kenneth represented the new beginning that we had with Tastyfresh taking over the Barn this year.  So, now that we had the main attractions, it was time to select those who would perform around them.

AfterHours stage

Unfortunately, the selection process had to be hurried along due to time constraints.  We were given the green light from Cornerstone rather late, so we had little time to do booking.  All the applications we received were outstanding, so it made selecting a few to play the festival rather difficult.  This process was made even more difficult when we decided to roll back from three acts per night to just two.  Even though it cut down on the amount of people involved, it gave those playing more chances to shine.  After sifting through all the entries, we decided to give the nod to three veterans; Doug Theodore, DJ 404 and Jeremy Kadinger.  All three accepted, and now we had our lineup set!

The next part is where all you, the reader/family of Tastyfresh.com came into play.  We decided that Tastyfresh sponsoring a generator stage to draw attention to electronic music was a good idea.  Jeremy Kadinger graciously volunteered to head up the generator stage, so he compiled a list of everything we needed. Thanks to the help of everyone here at Tastyfresh, we were able to procure a nifty little Honda generator to power the stage. Jeremy upped the ante by volunteering the services of his van by cutting a hole in the top, thus letting the DJ perform in what turned out to be the absolute neatest generator stage all week. The plan for the generator was made complete by covering it with an awning and flying the speakers from the awning supports.  Jeremy handled all the lineups for the now-dubbed Tastyfresh Sound System, completing preparations for the generator stage.

Kenneth Thomas, Joel Armstrong, Alex B and of course... Oneel

Logistics were fun as well.  BTU mostly handled the logistical end of the week, having to make sure everyone was where they needed to be, and that the sound system arrived on time.  All in all, 2 members of the After Hours staff traveled from Atlanta to Bushnell, stopping in Mt. Vernon, IL, 5 members of BTU traveled from Birmingham, AL to Bushnell, IL, with one stopover for two days at Eldon Hazlet State Park in Carlyle, IL.  3 members of the Harmony Productions crew traveled directly from Birmingham to Bushnell (Which is about a 12 hour drive.)  Harmony brought a 16 foot box truck with 8 dual bass cabinets, 4 tops, 2 Technics SL-1200 m3d turntables, 2 Pioneer CDJ-800 CD players, 2 Pioneer DJM-600 mixers, Ortofon Concorde needles, 8 techno beam lights, a light board, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree. BTU was also responsible for the transport of Joel Armstrong from Lambert Field in St. Louis to the festival grounds.  (BTW…I’d like to thank Leslie and Alex for making the trip to tha Lou to pick up Joel.)  The last logistical nightmare was making sure we’d secured a hotel reservation for Kenneth Thomas.  Thanks to the fine folks at Cornerstone, as well as Taylor Singer and Meredith Fisher at Chaotica, we were able to handle the situation.

Honestly, the easiest part of the whole process was when everyone arrived in Bushnell and it was time to make things happen.  The cost of this entire show?  $7,000.  Pulling off one of the best EDM stages ever at Cornerstone?  Priceless!

Once again, thanks to everyone who work, and everyone who attended.  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE email the people at Cornerstone and let them know how much you enjoyed After Hours.    Also, please be active and help us make next year’s After Hours even better!