Wednesday, February 2
Creating A New Festival
Moderator: Ashley Capps, A.C. Entertainment
Kevin Lyman, 4fini, Inc.
Marcie Allen Cardwell, MAC Presents
Rob Hagey, Rob Hagey Productions / Streetscene
Paul Tollett, Goldenvoice
Mellie Price, Front Gate Tickets

Bonnaroo Music Festival co-creator Ashley Capps came right out and said it: “I think we’re all collectively joined here to encourage you not to create a new festival.”

Jokes aside, this panel was full of discussion focusing on permits, site location, politics with local officials, insurance issues, ticket prices and, most importantly, music.

Speaking of music, Vans Warped Tour creator Kevin Lyman said that’s where the underlying passion better be in wanting to create a festival because, according to him, if you’re thinking dollar signs, it’s time to find a new get-rich-quick scheme.

“My heart and soul is in punk rock,” he said. “Warped Tour started on the premise that we wanted to bring a great show.

“If you’re sitting in this room thinking you’re going to get rich off festivals, I think you’re in the wrong place. In the last three years, I’ve sat through 67 presentations of people that were going to start festivals, and very few of them ever succeed.”

Traditionally, festivals don’t make money the first few years, Capps said. Coachella mastermind Paul Tollett can testify to that.

“We thought: Put a festival on, make a lot of money, and that will save the company (Goldenvoice). It got us deeper in debt,” he said.

With that, Tollett added, “We didn’t do it only for the money. We did it because that was the genre of music we fully believed in. If it would’ve been another genre then we wouldn’t have done it.”

So once you decide to put on a festival, what’s the next step? How do you choose a site location? Capps had some advice for the packed room.

“You want to say, ‘Yeah, this is the place to do it,” he said. “The other thing that goes with choosing a site is the process of working with the local community to make the site work. You can have the best site in the world and if you don’t have the cooperation of the local authorities, you’re in a world of hurt.”

The destination you choose will also determine what type of talent you book for the fest, Tollett said.
“If you have Phish or Rage Against the Machine, you can make it a destination two or three hours outside a big city,” he said. “If you’ve got a little more mainstream acts, you need it in town.”
Lyman, whose Warped Tour is a traveling act, said he chooses sites that kids will easily have access to.

Getting and keeping permits has also been an issue with putting on a festival, which prompted Rob Hagey of Rob Hagey Productions / Streetscene to say, “We’re all politicians.” Capps agreed wholeheartedly.

“It’s all about putting the time into getting to know your local officials and to know them and understand the things they’re concerned about,” Capps explained. “And get their buy-in to the entire process. If you get that, you’ll be able to work through most problems. If you don’t have that, you’re stuck.”

MAC Presents’ Marcie Allen Cardwell said that with the event she founded, Atlanta’s On the Bricks, permits aren’t given until 30 days before the show. And even if you have a permit, Tollett added, there is still the possibility of getting shut down, “and that’s frustrating.”

And then there’s the ticketing situation. It seems as though the Web has had a big impact on high ticket sales for festivals. Tollett said he could sell almost all of Coachella’s tickets on the Internet, while Capps mentioned 100 percent of the tickets in Bonnaroo’s first year were sold on the Web.
Lyman’s strategy is all about community mailing lists.

“We have 470,000 kids that have been active in the last two years that we contact on a monthly basis to let them know about pre-sales,” he said. “With the Taste of Chaos tour, we have a community of 40,000 kids that are blogging and sending information to each other, and we were able to sell $20,000 in tickets before anyone spent a dollar on advertising.”

Of course, service charges are always an issue and “consumers are obviously irritated,” Front Gate Tickets’ Mellie Price said.

“The service charge structure and its leeway is something every festival has to contend with,” she said. “It’s a philosophical choice at the end of the day.”

During the Q&A session, an audience member asked how to go about buying talent for smaller festivals. Answer: Pull out the checkbook and overpay.

“Just keep adding the zeros,” Cardwell laughed.

Using Coachella’s first year as an example, Tollett put it this way:
“You want a band to play a specific date in the desert as opposed to the usual date,” he explained. “You’re not going to get a good price; it’s hard for them to change the whole thing around. ... They deserve more on a bigger festival.”

Another audience question, “What are some of the insurance concerns with putting on large outdoor festivals?” also prompted an interesting discussion.

“Insurance is definitely a pressing concern,” Lyman said.

Tollett suggested that if a person gets hurt at a festival, try to warm up to that individual and get them anything they need.

“You’d be surprised how a sprain can turn into someone really pissed if you put up the wall of ‘Talk to my attorney,’” Tollett said. “Go overboard and do everything you can.”

Cardwell agreed, while Lyman shared a humorous story.

“Last year was some of the scariest moments of my life,” Lyman said. “The human cannonball went through the net and the poles brushed a couple of people. The dad was wearing a Bad Religion shirt and the kid had a Yellowcard shirt. Within 10 minutes, Yellowcard was playing an acoustic show for him in the bus, and dad was drinking beers with Bad Religion.”