Coordinating a festival requires a focus on more than just the music.
There will be more to this weekend's Country Night Lights festival than just getting singer Sam Hunt to Athens.
Local music festivals, such as the new Country Night Lights and the ColorDance Music and Arts Festival, involve months of planning and organization leading up to the event.
“When you start a new festival, I guess the most challenging thing is convincing the artists to want to play the event,” Adam Lynn, a managing partner at Prime Social Group, said. “They take a big gamble with a first-time event.”
Lynn, a founder of Country Night Lights, said because Prime Social Group is more known for hip-hop and electronic dance music shows, it took a lot of convincing for the artists and their managers to give the event a chance.
The festival is set for Saturday at 2 p.m. and will include performances from not only Hunt but singers Easton Corbin, Chase Bryant and Brooke Eden. The event will take place at The Venue on State Route 56.
Other than finding acts, Lynn said the group had to use an entirely different marketing strategy compared to the one used for Number Fest.
“We’re trying to make it way more of a regional event,” Lynn said. “We spent some marketing dollars in West Virginia as well. We definitely are seeing a lot of the ticket buyers are from outside of Athens.”
Compared to Number Fest, the crowd is expected to be more family friendly, due in part to more people from out of town coming to the show rather than mainly college students, Lynn said. To accommodate, he said there is RV camping and parking on site.
To add to the family-friendly environment, Lynn said there will also be a Ferris Wheel accessible for children and adults at the festival.
Ryan Miller, CEO of A-Town Roots Productions, coordinated the ColorDance Music and Arts Festival in the May, a two-day event inspired by Holi, the Hindu festival of color.
{{tncms-asset app="editorial" id="63c7bdec-4c24-11e5-9e36-b7ff25a49997"}}
Miller said the main challenge was securing the infrastructure, which includes lighting, trash cans, port-a-johns, the stages and security.
When starting a music festival, the budget is a main concern, Miller said. A person starting a festival, he said, needs to be realistic about how many people will attend and how much money needs to be put toward the bands, promotion and production.
Having around 30 bands and artists was another task that needed to be managed with the ColorDance, Miller said. All weekend, Miller said there was a constant stream of bands loading and unloading backstage.
Miller said by the third time the event was run, he had an understanding of how to best run the festival and knew who worked best in which locations.
The event went smoothly, Miller said, aside from an altercation between two dogs, one of which was missing a collar.
“That was probably the biggest hang up because we couldn’t find the dog’s owner that was involved in the altercation and it didn’t have any tags on it,” Miller said. “That’s something to emphasize next year — you can’t bring your pooch if it doesn’t have tags on it.”
Sam Long, a 13Fest attendee, said despite liking the music and atmosphere, the organization of the transportation to get to the event made the day a little less enjoyable.
Because the transportation to The Venue was not accessible, everyone began scrambling at the last minute to find a ride, she said.
Long, a sophomore studying journalism, said it was a “tragic experience” racing to get to The Venue and having to walk home at the end of the night.
“Organization is the number one thing for a festival,” she said.
@liz_backo
eb823313@ohio.edu
