Our trip from Birmingham, AL to Statesville, NC was about 6.5 hrs… not too bad compared to the hours we had been putting on the road up until this point.  Again, Atlanta caused us some trouble.  We were totally oblivious as we approached the exit we were supposed to get off on.  As we were about to pass it, Naph, who was driving, made the trek across 3 lanes of highway over to the exit and came to a screeching halt about 3-4 ft. from the exit sign.  We made sure everybody and everything was ok, then kept going.  We left our mark (literally, burn marks) in Atlanta so they would remember us.

After our little episode in Atlanta, we made it to Statesville just fine.  That night we played at The Upper Room.  Downstairs they have a room where all the artists that play, sign the wall.  We were going through the signatures on all the walls and to our surprise came across a familiar name to us… Shawn Young.  Shawn Young was our professor at Greenville College.  It was because of this man that we ever got involved with Cornerstone Festival, and ultimately are doing this now.  Apparently his band had played at the Upper Room a while ago, and it was awesome to see him on the wall.

That night we stayed at the Varvaris’ household.  Home of our good, good friend, Philip Varvaris.  He opened for us that night in Statesville, and hung out with us the rest of the weekend as we proceeded to Asheville, NC for the Harvest Gathering Festival.  This festival is put on by the Clarke Family… who coincidentally run the Jesus Village Stage at Cornerstone Festival.  It was Glenn Clarke that Shawn Young talked to about having us play.  The Clarke’s were generous enough to let a no name band play on their stage that first night at Cornerstone 2006.  By the end of our set that night, Glenn Clarke got a hold of Tom Cameron (Director of Grrr Records) and told him to come check this new band out.  That’s when we started talking to Grrr Records.

The Clarke’s had been asking us to come play the Harvest Gathering Festival for a few years now, and we finally were able to do it this year.  We were so excited about playing, but got rained out the first night.  Because of this some of us were able to check out downtown Asheville, grab some sushi, talk and debate about how to reshape the music business, and play poker for a spot on the only bed available for the night. Good times.  The next day we caught “Michael Jackson’s – This Is It” at a unique movie theatre that’s a restaurant/bar/theatre all in one.  Pretty cool and a great documentary of Mr. Jackson’s final performance.  That night we closed out the Harvest Gathering Festival.  It was really cold, but we had a good time.  We look forward to next year!

We spent the night in Greenville, SC with some of Jason’s friends.  The house was incredible, and we wished we had had more time to explore it a bit more; but we had Universal Studios to get to the next day.