Insights into Booking a Music Festival

Hey everybody.

Welcome back to the What Podcast.

I'm Barry Courter.

That's Lord Taco.

You'll notice Brad is not with us, which for Russ and I, or Lord Taco and I, that's always

a good thing.

So we'll manage.

We'll manage to.

I think he's back on his hunger strike, isn't he?

Exactly.

Yeah, we haven't had that announcement yet, have we?

Yeah.

His demands are still out there.

That's right.

Speaking of, yeah, his demands are lineup related, and that's what this episode, this newest

high five clip is all about.

These are short clips that we have gone back into the vast archive from our almost five

year run now.

And Lord Taco, this is one of my favorites and it seems completely timely and relevant

to the next, what's happening in the next couple of weeks, right?

Oh, me too.

It's one of my favorites and I still can't believe we got to go down to Knoxville and

do this.

The timing was a little off as we come to find out because this was talking about the

2020 lineup, which of course got scrapped.

Yeah.

The one everyone agrees was the greatest lineup ever.

Yeah.

Objectively the best one ever that everyone loves and everyone was excited about.

And it just, it'll never line up to be that good again, or maybe it will.

We'll see.

So to give everybody some perspective, we reached out, I reached out, I guess, to Ted

Heinegg, the new president at that time.

I think he'd become president or maybe he wasn't, but he was about to become interim

or-

I think he was about to be named.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually Caps was, we knew he was going to retire and Ted Heinegg was going to take over

and we wanted to talk to him and he said, you don't want to talk to me.

How about we talk, you come up and you talk to the two guys who actually booked the festival.

And I was like, no, that sounds horrible.

Why would we want to do that?

And-

Yeah.

What a mistake.

Yeah.

And we said, oh my, yeah, absolutely.

And then we thought about it for a day or two and said, well, we're so close.

What if we drive up there?

And he said, come on.

So we, you, me and Brad drove to Knoxville one morning and sat in their boardroom with

Ted and Steven and Brian and for what, three hours, two and a half hours?

It was all afternoon.

They were so generous with their time answering our questions and-

Yeah.

Nothing off the table, right?

We tried to get some information out of them and being the hard driving journalists that

we are, we wanted to know why Dolly hadn't been booked.

And that's it there.

Which speaking of, it turns out she would love to play Bonnaroo.

I know.

The article that come out in the Tennessee.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not at all surprised.

She didn't commit to it and good for them for asking and running it.

So we'll see.

We'll see what happens, but this is a short clip that we, I think Brad asked Brian.

There's a bunch.

Let me say this.

All of the idea behind these clips is to give you a little bit of interest, hopefully a

hook to go back and maybe listen to the full episodes.

This one ended up being two episodes.

And like I said, it's really inside baseball on-

Yes.

How they, not just this festival, but any event, what's, how long it takes them when

they start, how important the relationships are, how important being on top of things

are, how important being able to try to predict who's good now and who will be in two years.

Exactly.

Yeah, and I think Brad Parker from C3, he said it on our last episode with, when we

had them on, he said, people thinks it's easy, like you want to get the Rolling Stones, you

just go book the Rolling Stones.

Yeah.

And it is not that easy.

And yeah, it's surprising how far in advance they have to time all this to get it in the

works.

And so yeah, it's a little prediction.

It's a little going with your gut and a lot of luck.

Yeah, you don't just go to a website and see a big roster and say, I'll take one of those

and two of those and six of those.

Yeah, it's not Amazon.

There's a lot of timing involved and negotiating and like I said, just trying to plan ahead.

And you'll hear in this clip in particular, and I think Brad Steiner asked the question,

have you ever booked a band that suddenly blew up?

What does that do?

And I thought that interesting was really fascinating.

Again, you think that sounds easy and obvious, right?

It's not.

It's a big puzzle.

So obviously there's other news.

Black Friday happened.

Pre-sale tickets went on sale.

Appeared to go very well from what I could see.

Yeah, seems to be.

I've seen a lot of people bought tickets immediately and it looks like the Area 931, which is our

firmware camp, sold out instantly.

I know.

We really messed up.

We should have been complaining.

We should have been bitching and moaning for the last 10 years.

Less had learned.

I hope you enjoy it back there with all the ticks and the fleas and the...

Oh, it's awful.

Just terrible.

Terrible.

It's the likes of the porta potties.

But I guess all that news has happened and we will get into that, but we want to wait

till it's a full episode and we've reached out to some more people and gotten legitimate

information, not just us speculating on it.

And so we're going to wait on that.

But without further ado, here's another high five clip with Stephen and Brian.

We booked the best acts available and first female headliner, sure.

First attempt at a female headliner, definitely not.

And so I think that it's...

Obviously booking a festival is like we kind of alluded to at the beginning.

It's a process.

It's literally...

It's putting together a big puzzle and there are lots of reasons that acts do or do not

end up on the bill.

And this is the first time that that happened.

So when it comes to where artists are put on the lineup, do you guys specifically know

where they're going to fit, what slot they're going to be on the poster slash the schedule?

When you say, yeah, Lizzo could definitely be a headliner, but so could Miley.

Was there a conversation of, well, let's flip those?

Or did you know all the time, the whole time that this certain artist was going to fit

this certain slot?

Yes.

Yes, we know.

We know.

And that's how we booked the festival.

And that's an interesting question.

And we slot artists as we book the event.

And we do it that way because we are very sensitive to conflict in the schedule.

And we do everything we can to limit those as much as possible.

Whenever you have a festival that has multiple stages that are running congruently or up

against one another, especially the size of Bonnaroo where you have five, six, seven,

eight stages going at once, there's going to be conflicts.

There's conflicts that we don't think are conflicts that then the fans tell us are conflicts.

And then we're like, oh, that was going to be a conflict.

But a conflict could be 10 people just happen to like these two bands that are way different.

Or it could be like, oh, we really blew that one.

But yes, we slot artists as we book.

And how much wiggle room do you have when it comes to if you already booked with the

schedule in mind?

How much wiggle room do you have either with the artist or with your own sort of...

Because I can understand if somebody all of a sudden blows up in a way that you didn't

really see it and all of a sudden you're like, oh, we got them on this tent at a time that's

really not very comfortable for us.

Well, those conversations happen.

They're rare, but they do happen.

We've run into that in the past.

I think the first time we ever booked Mumford, I remember, it was kind of this thing that

just kind of happened over.

They exploded so quickly.

We had them on Bonnaroo that year.

And when we confirmed them to when the festival actually happened, it was a rocket ship.

And I remember having to make some adjustments there.

And those are tough conversations because every artist is slotted at this point.

So to have to make adjustments on the fly because of an artist getting a lot bigger,

then you have to go have some tough conversations with some of the other artists.

But we work through it.

And that's now, but the process is fluid while we're booking it because things Ebb and Flow,

artists that we thought we were going to have fall out, artists that we didn't think we

were going to have rear their heads.

And we're like, oh, we really want that.

So we may have something slotted in a particular place in October and then it makes more sense

or it's more exciting or whatever to move it to a different place by November.

We do that.

And it's a constant conversation with the artists and their camps.

And most of the time they're okay with it.

I mean, most of the time.

But we rarely are doing something that's going to have a negative effect on any of the artists.

All right.

So there you go.

Like I said, that's a short clip, but it's an interesting answer.

You know, what do you do when you hire a Mumford and Sons who people have kind of heard of

when you sign the paperwork and you put them on a small stage and then you wake up the

next day almost and wow.

Yeah, suddenly they're a household name.

Yeah, they're a little bigger and it's not just moving them.

You got to move who was that in that other spot and yeah, somebody's got to get bumped.

Somebody's got to move.

So that was fascinating.

There were so many clips that I could have picked.

TACO.

The whole episode was gold.

So definitely go back.

Listen, it's a two parter or you can go on YouTube.

The entire video is on YouTube because this was really when we started doing YouTube.

We actually filmed this one.

I think that's right.

Wow.

That's right.

An experiment and it worked out well.

So you can listen to it on your podcast app or you can go to YouTube and just watch it.

And like I said, like you said, this was 2020 so it's old, but I don't think it's dated

and I think it's timely because that's what we're all going to be doing for the next what,

six eight weeks.

Yeah.

And yep, it's old, but you know, they're still doing it.

Brian and Steve are still doing it and it's the exact same process.

Yeah.

Nothing has changed in that regard.

And I can't, one of the things that I want to talk about when we get back with Brad is,

and we've said this on our show is that we feel like they need to come strong with this

lineup and reading some of the Reddit and our discord posts and stuff like that.

I'm kind of curious as to what you two think that actually means.

You know, I mean, is that, you know, you can't,

you gotta have the who and the stones or do you even have to have the stones?

You know what I mean?

Seriously, how strong is strong?

I know.

Yeah.

You gotta, yeah, I think we all pretty much agree that this is their shot at really coming

back from the last couple of years and if they could hit a home run with the lineup,

everything else sounds like it's in the works to be a great festival.

I mean, I'm glad to hear you use those words could be and shot.

I've seen some folks say that it's a must and I probably said that, you know, back after

the festival ended and I'm not sure it's a must, must.

It needs to be good, but I'm not sure it's make or break.

I think they've done enough, enough with the changes and, and everything else.

Yeah.

And I don't know about you personally.

I don't, for me, I don't really care about the lineup as much.

I do want it to be good, but you know, it's, it's definitely not a make or break.

No, but I think if they're, if they want to, if they want to sell out or even sell a lot,

it's gotta be line up driven is what's gonna, is what's going to get people back.

I totally agree.

It's the difference between that last 20,000 people and along those lines too, I keep thinking,

I don't really want it to be a sellout.

I like, I like a little space.

Yeah.

You know what?

This, this year was perfect.

There was no lines to anything.

It felt very spacious, very easy to get around.

So yeah, I don't know.

With hindsight.

Yeah.

It, uh, being able to move around and, and, uh, you know, getting to places that you couldn't

normally get because quite honestly, security was a little lax was not a bad thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't know that I want, I don't know that I want McCartney level crowds and that

kind of security again.

So that's just being selfish.

So all right.

And thank you guys for checking in.

We'll be back.

Not sure if it'll be next week or the after or after, but it will be very, very soon.

And Russ, the year, man, it's, it's just screaming by.

I can't believe it's almost over here.

So yeah, I think it's going to be January tomorrow.

It feels like, you know, and then the lineup proper will come out.

We're going to get some more recluse in between now and then.

That's right.

That's right.

So, you know, we're going to be looking at a lineup.

I know.

I know.

So that's what I mean.

It's a, it got serious already with the, um, pre-sale.

So it feels like it's on.

So yep.

All right, Russ, thanks guys.

Thank you.

And thanks everybody for listening and please subscribe and hit that bell and do all the

other things you, we ask you to do.

And yes, it really helps.

It does.

And you know, share it if you know somebody that's going to Bonnaroo for the first time

or maybe.

Yeah.

Or is on the fence.

Not sure.

I mean, I like to think our, with all the information that we have either from us or

from people that have been guests that, uh, it can help you make that decision.

So I think so.

All right.

All right.

See you guys later.