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Does Size Really Matter? A Festival Report (Relix Revisited)

Down the Long Island Sound and up the Hudson River, Ken Hays wasn’t having much better luck. After the eighth annual Gathering of the Vibes—an eternity in Tent City years—Mother Nature took over. “The Summit on the Hudson [festival] was devastating for us,” Hays admits. “It rained two-and-a-half inches and a flood watch was in effect. We had gusty winds in the 40 mile-an-hour range. It was terrible weather in a beautiful location.

“Then we had two other festivals—Bridgeport Blues Festival at Seaside Park, and also Summit on the Sound—that were scheduled for later in the summer. We had to cancel those two festivals. Ticket sales were poor. We chose the wrong year to try to expand. We made some bad mistakes last summer, and we’re paying the consequences of them now. We’re still trying to move forward and bring music together and bring people together for great times.”

And in Carroll County, Mississippi, Hobstock, the brainchild of Jeffrey Hobgood and slated for mid-July, veritably incinerated under the Southern sun. Like Bonnaroo, Hobgood had assembled some of the jamband scene’s heaviest hitters: Widespread Panic, Medeski Martin and Wood, moe., Gov’t Mule and The Disco Biscuits. Hobstock, however, lacked the sheer eclecticism of Bonnaroo, whose bill also included hip-hop collective The Roots, guitar legend Neil Young, Okie-art-freaks-of-the-moment The Flaming Lips and dozens of others.

In mid-May, Hobstock began to disappear from the band’s posted itineraries. Hobgood told The Daily Mississippian that, by early June, he had only sold between 2,000 and 3,000 tickets. Then he went AWOL. Or something. In early August, Mississippi state Attorney General Mike Moore announced he was filing litigation against Hobgood for failing to provide refunds for tickets he did sell. As of January, litigation was still pending. “Some individuals have received refunds, but only those who were able to obtain charge-backs from their credit card companies,” said Special Assistant Attorney General Bridgette Williams. Hobgood’s attorney did not return a phone call as of press time.

“It’s very easy to look at Bonnaroo and say ‘That’s a good idea, let’s do that,” says Disco Biscuits’ bassist Mark Brownstein, who was scheduled to play Hobstock. ‘But what’s hard is to look at nothing and say ‘Let’s Do Bonnaroo.’ Bonnaroo made $12 or $13 million dollars [in 2002]. A lot of people thought, ‘Wow, that’s easy money, I could do that. Let me get Widespread Panic and The Disco Biscuits and moe. and Gov’t Mule.’”

“You didn’t need to have hindsight to see that last summer was going to knock a lot of promoters out of the game.People were getting greedy and setting themselves up for failures. It was a really tough summer for promoters.” It is still not entirely clear why Hobstock failed, though blaming the booking of the wrong bands during the wrong summer might be a start.

Was Bonnaroo the rock and roll Death Star that set its destructo beams on smaller fests? Maybe so and maybe not. “Last summer, there absolutely was oversaturation,” Ken Hays says. Combined with a sluggish economy, the best (and less-than-best)-laid plans evaporated in the worst way, amidst trails of litigation, cancelled permits and frustrated would-be revelers, trying to find a field in which to experience the Great Unlock.

Tent city is wherever the Heads go. It is a destination, and it can take shape in a pasture in Tennessee, a hotel in Albany, or a street in New Orleans. It is a place that one can escape to with increasing regularity. There are big events seasonally: at Jazz fest in April, Bonnaroo in June, major Halloween gigs in October and the requisite New Year’s blow-outs in December. And that’s not to mention a coterie of other magnet-like attractions: String Cheese Incident’s annual mid-winter ski bum pilgrimages, Phish’s legendary summer outings and the like, plus various bands’ forays to Las Vegas and Europe and other exotic locales.

What it all adds up to is a new sub-industry: jamband tourism. It’s become an outright circuit, replete with its own house band, Particle, who have carved a nook for themselves riding on the ever-widening side-flaps of Tent City, priding themselves in playing after-Phish parties and last-band-standing late-night sets at festivals. If there was a slump in summer festivals, it’s possible that the capital was simply spreading elsewhere.

This is one explanation: the scene has spread far and wide. The irony of this explanation, though, is that—given both geographical breadth and free-market chaos—is is nigh impossible to verify that that interest is only spreading and not merely dissipating. Mounds of evidence can be piled high for either argument.

Pessimists might point to half-empty concert fields or the fact that that shows by even the biggest bands, such as Phish and The Dead haven’t been selling out in the same frenzied rushes they once did. “The bubble had to burst some time,” they’d say, shaking their heads. “Couldn’t expand forever.” They might even argue that, given an overbooked circuit, the quality of of the music itself is declining—too many blues-rock bands masquerading as experimental, too many older musicians bolstering new albums by hiring the freshest guns and hitting the summer circuit as “legends” trying to win over the kids, too many hippie funk bands with lame-o names finally sinking into an indistinguishably grooving mass. But it’s hard to prove the absence of something, talent or revenue. Just ask the record industry.

The optimists—generally the ones benefiting from the situation and pleased as punch too produce pie charts to prove it—can happily point to evidence, though, such as the currently thriving existence of Madison House Travel, a full-service travel agency founded by Lisa Pomerantz and un under String Cheese Incident’s vast organizational umbrella. Pomerantz, who frequently traveled to see music, filled a niche she saw.