Lightshine Theater

Hey guys this is Steve Whitaker, and this is quite the honor that you would? play my song. You guys do an outstanding job as well, God Bless You!. - Steve Whitaker, Barren Cross

The Top 20 songs from June have been posted to the web site. (One surprise - even though they are not in the rotation, and I only played them during the live show when I interviewed the drummer, Lightshine Theatre landed at number five with Military Man. - www.classicchristianrock.net

...Best Cover. As I wrote earlier in the week, I LOVE cover songs, and it seemed like there were a lot more than usual this year, including two entire cover sets (from Ping and Lightshine Theater). I think the coolest cover I saw all week, though, was Lightshine Theater’s cover of King’s X’s “Over My Head.” It’s a great song, and the band did a nice rendition of it, adding in a three-way guitar shred-off in the middle. I hope Lightshine Theater comes back next year – they’re a nice link to the old days of Cornerstone (REZ, Steve Taylor, Barren Cross, and stuff like that).

...Favorite Set. There were a ton of great performances this year, so I’ll count down to the one I liked the best (a very hard choice).

3. Lightshine Theater. Not many folks saw their set on the Sanctuary Stage, and it was mostly a bunch of old guys, but we really got a treat from this band. It was a fun show all around, from the REZ songs, to the other covers they did, to seeing Glenn Kaiser enjoying their set, to watching some guys from other bands mimicking the dance steps from the awesomely cheesy “Love Comes Down” video backstage.

Best New (To Me) Band. This one’s really hard to call, because I saw three very different bands that I’d never seen before, and all of them impressed me. Lightshine Theater was nostalgic and a lot of fun, but I can’t go with a cover band as my best new (to me) band... - Cornerstone Festival

I caught a bit of Phil Joel (he was a member of the Newsboys, so I’m not sure his versions of “Entertaining Angels” and other Newsboys songs count as covers, but they’re close enough) and The Almost (who covered Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’”) on the Main Stage. Then I remembered that I was late for a set that I was really curious about, Resurrection Band tribute band Lightshine Theater.

I’ve never seen a tribute band (and it’s especially odd to see one playing Cornerstone), and I love REZ, so I was intrigued by this set. As it turned out, it was probably my favorite thing that I’ve seen all week. The band is made up of 5 “old guys,” including three guitarists that can really shred, and a singer that does a credible impersonation of Glenn Kaiser. They ran through a number of REZ songs, including “Waves,” “Colours,” “Military Man,” “City Streets,” and “Alienated,” but they also mixed in a few other fun things like a Barren Cross song (“King of Kings,” as I recall), a Steve Taylor song (“I Want To Be A Clone”), a killer version of “Over My Head” from King’s X, and a very nice song (“Vision of Perfection”) from a band called Legacy that two of the guys in the band were in back in the 80s. The biggest highlight, though, was when the band closed with REZ’s “Love Comes Down,” and various stage hands and members of Leper (who were playing on the stage next) started mimicking the dance moves from the famously cheesy video for that song. This set was made of win all around. - Cornerstone Festival