There are millions and billions of things I want to tell you about after spending Thursday, the first full day of the 30th annual Creation Festival, in the picturesque hills two hours west of Lancaster.
Things like the awesome time of fellowship, the great music, some excellent worship and the exhortation from several speakers.
And some excellent performances on the main stage, like harder-core Pillar and the cool, less-intense sound of David Crowder and his band.
And all of the musical artists, to hear Crowder, Britt Nicole, the Parachute Band and others get interviewed in the press tent, came across as a humble, God-first bunch.
But all of that can come later … this day, with Creation continuing through Saturday night, the first thing I’d like to address comes down to two words:
Stellar Kart.
What a rousing, high-energy show they gave late Thursday afternoon over at the so-called “fringe” stage at the Agape Campground.
Stellar Kart simply writes catchy, high-energy, surf-guitar-sounding songs with a clear message, one that talks about walking one’s Christian faith in work, school, wherever.
And they perform them well … actually, excellently.
You might hear “fringe stage” and “high-energy” and think Stellar Kart is just a band for church youth groups, but au contraire.
And that might be one of the best things about their nearly hour-long show Thursday.
The crowd of a few thousand had a good many “adult-aged” people, maybe parents who wanted to see and hear what Stellar Kart was about, and they were clearly pleasantly surprised, and enjoying themselves.
The best of the songs was its biggest Christian-music hit, “Me and Jesus.”
During the song, which earned the Phoenix-based band its first Dove Award for best rock/contemporary song, frontman Adam Agree urged the Creation crowd to help sing along.
He did, “Someone loves you / even when you don’t think so / don’t you know …”
And the crowd finished the verse, loud enough for them to hear in Hershey, “… you got Me and Jesus!”
There was a great T-shirt spotted on several young people Thursday, reading, “I LOST MY MOM IN THE MOSH PIT,” and Stellar Kart lost its bass player (Brian Calcara) in the pit and crowd for a while.
Calcara could be seen heading around the back of the stage, white bass slung over him, then went running cheerfully out into the throng, and kept on performing while maneuvering.
He didn’t let the heat stop him, either. A great moment.
The rest of the set was chock-full of songs from the band’s excellent, newest album, “Expect the Impossible.”
The best was “Jesus Loves You,” which singer/guitar guy Agee said was inspired by a friend who just doesn’t get this whole Christian thing … and when all else fails, the title is all that matters, the frontman said.
He then sang,
“Tell me what do you believe in
Does your life have rhyme or reason
Something in your heart that makes you care
I hope that you don’t mind me asking
But I have got a burning passion
I need to know forever you’ll be there
I can’t make it clearer
Put it any other way
If you can’t see the simple truth I do
Then there’s nothing in this world that’s left to say
But Jesus loves you.”
Us music critics get paid to write stuff like, “Stellar Kart’s sound is Dick Dale, ‘the king of the surf guitar,’ meets the Supertones meets All Star United.”
But it’s something more, something very much their own, and the kind of exciting new Christian music that Creation organizers had in mind as a showcase for new bands when they developed the fringe-stage idea.
