I just wanted to share a few things with you as far as things going on with Tastyfresh.com’s official generator stage. Many of you know and have seen pictures that show the great success the generator stage had in promotion of our main venue at the Cornerstone Music Festival.  We pretty much had music, fellowship, lounging, and overall a thick hanging-out vibe occurring from noon to 7 pm each day of the festival.  Jeremy Kadinger was the ring leader of the generator stage last year and did a phenomenal job.  He set the timeslots, set up and tore down every day and brought a van down as a DJ Booth. Those of us who went to Cornerstone looked at a lot of the things that happened at the generator stage as seed planting.  People were reminded to get their behinds down to the barn for Afterhours each night as they heard thick beats and nice melodies emerging from the speakers at the generator stage.

Jeremy Kadinger has turned the generator stage and its inner workings over to me for this year. I am very honored to have the responsibility to follow in the footsteps of Jeremy.  There was not a harder working individual at Cornerstone working with Tastyfresh and I will strive to uphold the quality, dedication, and leadership he showed us last year.

Some things will remain the same at the generator stage this year.  First of all, through all the generous donations last spring, Tastyfresh has purchased a top of the line gas generator.  We own that and will be bringing that down once again.  Second, we will feature a full schedule of dance artists who will be performing all day into the early evening at the generator stage throughout the week.  We will have communion once again.  This was perhaps the highlight of the generator stage last year and it will remain a staple there.  These things will remain the same.  There are changes coming, however.
The van that Jeremy brought down last year, i.e. our stage, is not coming to Cornerstone.  Jeremy has concluded that it is not safe for him to drive all the way from Wisconsin to Illinois once again with his van.  His van is the vehicle that he uses for work around town and he cannot afford for it to break down.  That being said, we need a new solution.

We started dreaming and looked at large tents.  I personally thought a circus-type tent would absolutely rock.

The prices for rental or purchase of this type of tent would not fit in our budget at all.  We also looked at military tents and other large pole-structure tents to purchase.

Again the options to buy were at the cheapest $4,000 dollars and just about a 1/3 of that to rent.  We didn't feel comfortable asking for that much money for fundraising.  We have not forgotten our initial ideas and thoughts on this issue.  Obviously we want a permanent solution so fundraising costs and overall planning will go way down per year.  We will continue to keep our options open for future years in finding that permanent solution.

We have decided as the Afterhours planning team to rent a tent from Cornerstone Festival themselves.  This solution will greatly decrease our setup and teardown time as the festival staff themselves is going to work out the details of this.  We will still have to set up the booth, the sound, and the kitchen.

There are some other changes happening that we are super excited about.  We will be serving food at the generator stage Tuesday through Friday.  We have 4 different chefs lined up that will serve you food to eat while you listen to some of the best DJs in the world.  We also are adding a seminar series that will run once a day from Tuesday thru Friday.  We are excited about this as some leaders of the scene will lead this series.

Once again, like last year we once again are going to raise money for expenses outside of the allotted budget from Cornerstone.  We need to raise money for:

Rental of the tent
Materials to build the generator stage
Food for the generator stage
Promotional materials
Gasoline for the generator itself
Rental of the sound system for the generator stage

Our DJ lineup has begun building as some of the current Afterhours DJs are booked at the generator stage.  If you submitted a demo for consideration for Afterhours, then your demo is good for the generator stage.  We would love to have you mix it up at the tent.  If you are interested in playing the generator stage please email This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and we will get you dialed in on what needs to happen so you can be part of this exciting venue.  Skill level is not of the utmost importance, but rather a willingness to help us use the generator stage to promote the late night activities of Afterhours.  Thanks and we will see you at the best generator stage at the festival!

For more information on donating to the Tastyfresh.com Generator stage please vist http://www.tastyfresh.com.

Doug Theodore
Tastyfresh.com
Generator Stage Manager