In the early 2000s, music lovers essentially only had one option when it came to enjoying large outdoor music festivals — the sweaty over-crowded jungle that is Bonnaroo.
“I went to the first Bonnaroo with over 80,000 people, and I ran into two people I knew over four days,” said Curtis Manley, a festival organizer of 15 years and CEO of Big Event Presents Inc. “For the next year after that, I ran into probably 200 of my friends who said, ‘Oh did you go to Bonnaroo?’ ‘Yeah I stayed the whole week.’ ”
Music festivals have exploded in popularity since the early days of Bonnaroo, with specific events for every genre from folk to jamtronica.
But though some people might argue there is now an over-saturation of music festivals, fest organizers such as Manley said not only have the number of festivals grown but so have their size and scope since the early days of small festivals.
And especially in Ohio, things are changing rapidly and constantly.
History
The most well-known music festival of all time is Woodstock in 1969, with its crowd of 400,000 young progressive protesters knocking down fences and storming the gates to get in.
Modern festivals such as Bonnaroo usually stick to an attendance closer to 90,000 and Lollapalooza set a personal record of 300,000 in attendance last year. The budgets for such festivals have skyrocketed since the modest days of Woodstock.
“There weren’t that many big festivals, and now every year there is another … massive 20, 30, 40, 50 thousand person event that has 2, 3, 4 hundred dollar tickets,” Manley said. “You’re lucky if you spent $1,000 (total), it’s a deal if you only spent $1,000. It’s really dried up the small music festival scene.”
Manley said there are many less nationally known festivals that grow too big too fast and can’t keep in place the kind of infrastructure that sustains a long-lasting music festival.
“I’m looking at (these) festivals, and it’s going to cost $3 - $4 million to put on,” Manley said. “For those millionaires out there that see Bonnaroo … and say ‘how about I do one of those in my town, I want to be that guy,’ and typically those guys are there for a year or two, blow millions of dollars, and then they’re gone.
“The problem they don’t realize is that while they’re losing all that money, they are also losing a bunch of money for a bunch of other festivals, too. And nobody wins.”
Thornville, Ohio, and the historic Legend Valley music venue has been host to many festivals big and small over the years including Werk Out Music Festival, All Good Music Festival, Dark Star Jubilee, a number of memorable Grateful Dead shows and, at one point, Lollapalooza.
The venue has a long list of A-list musicians who have played at the venue since its inception in 1970, including Willie Nelson, Leon Russell, The Wright Brothers, Journey, Scorpions, Quiet Riot and Jimmy Buffett.
But for a period after these big names performed, the venue saw a lull in the late ’90s that wasn’t broken until management fell to Steve Trickle. His passion to bring one of the Ohio’s first music festivals, Hookahville hosted by jam band ekoostik hookah, to the venue, kicked off a new, modern tradition of music.
Although it has a less-dated history, Nelsonville Music Festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year. The now-four-night concert — which features acts from all across the country — has come a long way from its infancy as a one-day, six-band, outdoor event out on the modest bricks of Public Square.
“Nelsonville Music Festival, first and foremost, especially in its inception, was designed to be something that was bigger than we could do inside of Stuart’s,” said Brian Koscho, marketing director for Stuart’s Opera House. “Simply something where you could have a few more bands, bring it outside into the public and into the community, and have it to where you could have 1,000 people instead of the 400 that can fit into Stuart’s.”
Once it had the infrastructure to supply food carts, sanitation and recycling efforts, the festival naturally moved to a larger venue only four years after it started and brought a then-little-known group called the Avett Brothers to its current location at Robins Crossing on the campus of Hocking College. This year, the band returns for a celebratory anniversary show.
But with the event falling in late May, many Ohio University students will miss out on the opportunity to attend this and other central Ohio festivals — a problem Jonathan Holmberg, chairman of the Athens Clean and Safe Halloween Committee, said was never a problem when the university sponsored such events on campus.
“Every weekend in the spring, there would be a different green — East, West, South — and then you’d have Spring Fest, which was just everybody in a field with one full day of music and beer,” Holmberg said. “But it was programmed by the university because they could sell beer and not tap into general funds.”
However, when the drinking age was raised, the university couldn’t subsidize the costs through drink sales anymore, and it abandoned the event, leaving the system of student-run street fests today, Holmberg said.
Out with the old
This year’s festival season is fraught with controversy, especially from two well-established music festivals — All Good and Rootwire.
After 17 years, All Good Music Festival’s organizers have decided to go on a one-year hiatus with “solid plans” to return in 2015.
“We want all of our fans to know that we are extremely grateful for all of their support, dedication and the cherished experiences we’ve had on the mountaintop and elsewhere, and to rest easy knowing that the All Good Festival that we’ve all built together and loved for so long will return in the summer of 2015,” the fest organizers said in a public statement.
The full statement was vague about whether All Good would return to Ohio but seemed to suggest the event would leave the Buckeye state come 2015, said Dave Weissman, media director for All Good and Rootwire.
And though it appears Rootwire will stick around in some capacity this year, it will be missing its founding band Papadosio.
“Everything that goes into producing, promoting and practicing the art of festival production requires year round support and while we have such an amazing team, we feel it is time to step back a little bit in order to move forward and refocus on our primary project — Papadosio,” said the band in a joint statement agreed upon by them and EQEndeavors LLC. “While Rootwire is the ultimate canvas for our particular strain of live, experiential art, we have grown as artists and individuals. We hope to bring the magic of Rootwire with us everywhere we go and in order to do this, we now require more time and dedication than ever to hone in our craft.”
Last year’s festival felt a great pressure from police at the event and on the roads. The Logan Daily News reported that 6,344 grams of marijuana (more than 13 pounds), 68 Fruity Pebble and Cocoa Puff marijuana snacks, 63 marijuana brownies, two grams of marijuana butter, 76 grams of hash, 162 grams of hash oil, five grams of heroin, one gram of crack cocaine, three grams of mushrooms, five grams of molly, 12 Oxycodone pills, 36 doses of LSD, 70 grams of liquid LSD and 25 pounds of nitrous oxide were seized last year. Police also reported seizing $2,202 in cash.
This increased presence of local officials didn’t sit well with fest-goers or organizers and resulted in a change in venue out of its Kaeppner’s Woods location in Logan to an unannounced location and the departure of Papadosio.
In with the new
An unexpected addition to the fest season is The Gathering Of The Juggalos, led and headlined by rap/hip-hop group Insane Clown Posse.
For 15 years, it’s moved from state to state with backlash from the local communities due to how rowdy the party gets. But the group has now settled here in Ohio in hopes to find a more permanent home.
Hoopla In The Hills will also enjoy a new location this year closer to OU after slowly growing the festival through grassroots efforts, Manley said. The music festival will be the first of the upcoming season, starting Mar. 27 at The Venue on Union Street, the same grounds as the 12th edition of #Fest, which has also grown substantially over its 10 years, from its roots in a barn to hosting Kendrick Lamar last year.
“When we first started, it was more of a hobby. But over the past decade, we’ve developed it into a premier music festival experience,” said #Fest founder Dominic Petrozzi. “It’s really been a grassroots project start to finish; it’s an Ohio-grown and Ohio-bred festival.”
wh092010@ohiou.edu
@wilbur_hoffman
