Stage fright

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/08/2002 (8697 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IN Field Of Dreams, Kevin Costner builds a baseball diamond in a cornfield and still manages to keep his troubled farm.

A similar happy ending is up in the air for the real-Manitoba version of this scenario, in which construction magnate Lawrence Hadiken builds a concert amphitheatre and festival campground on a forested hillside near Grand Beach.

Almost three months after the first of three aborted launches, the Grand Beach Entertainment Centre remains a gleam in Hadiken’s eye. His ambitious plans for a series of festivals have been delayed by a host of setbacks, ranging from relatively ordinary cash-flow problems to bizarre allegations of a government and police conspiracy.

The thing is, the Grand Beach Entertainment Centre is not unique, at least when it comes to the festival aspect. Launching a mass-audience, outdoor summer concert is one of the riskiest ventures in the entertainment business — and the ruin of many a well-intentioned, idealistic entrepreneur.

“The main thing you have to ask yourself when you’re considering something like this is why? Why do it and why would the public want to participate?” asks Kevin Donnelly, the Winnipeg Enterprises honcho who learned painful lessons about summer concerts when he produced the Sunfest rock ‘n’ roll show in Gimli during the early ’90s.

“A beautiful site and a dream of being a millionaire concert promoter are not valid reasons for starting a festival.”

Despite a shoestring budget and a few logistical nightmares, Sunfest was a smashing success for Nite Out Entertainment, a defunct Winnipeg concert promoter run by Sam Katz and Bruce Rathbone. Its seven-year run makes it the second-most successful outdoor summer festival launch in the Winnipeg area in recent memory.

Only the community-run Dauphin’s Countryfest, which just completed its 13th season, can boast more longevity. Every other large-scale attempt to live the festival dream has packed it in more quickly, including three that barely limped through a single year.

“If there was a formula for this, we’d all be rich,” says Tom Crook, the original producer behind Minnedosa’s Classic Rock Weekend and its successor, Little River Rockfest. “Just because you have a nice piece of land and book some decent bands, doesn’t mean you’re going to get people out.

According to Crook and Donnelly, whose track records are better than most, there’s absolutely no way to guarantee the success of a major outdoor summer festival.

But there are a few factors that can tip the odds in favour of any pie-in-the-sky venture, ranging from the tangible (deep pockets, professional marketing) to the ephemeral (good weather, blind luck).

THE BRIGHT IDEA

The heart of a great summer festival is a good idea — a concept that captures the public’s imagination.

Sunfest attracted party-hearty rock fans to a massive outdoor frat party in Gimli. Classic Rock Weekend tapped an underserved market of middle-aged rock fans.

But the World Next Door Festival, a failed venture at The Forks in 1998, had no discernible focus whatsoever, confusing prospective festival-goers with an exciting but scattered program that included hip-hop, bluegrass and hardcore punk.

“There’s something to be said about programming for the masses. The World Next Door was too eclectic,” says Donnelly, shaking his head at a lineup that featured Ricky Skaggs and Tito Puente as headliners. “Together, they couldn’t fill a taxi cab.”

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Any successful festival needs a solid concert site, where there’s enough room for a stage and audience. But it does not require a beautiful setting. Consider Sunfest’s initial success at what Donnelly admits was an ugly Gimli Motorsport Park, or the failure of Bruce Rathbone’s End Of The World Music Festival at a stunning site near Kenora.

Festivals also require the full support of their communities. The Grand Beach Entertainment Centre has NIMBY issues — it was approved by a slim majority of councillors in one rural municipality, while cottagers across the highway in another jurisdiction had little say in the process.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING. ALMOST

As the World Next Door learned, the Labour Day long weekend is a time for people to head out to their cottages, go camping or do anything but attend a festival in the middle of the city. The Victoria Day long weekend is also a good time to stiff.

Factor in competition from pre-existing events during Winnipeg’s jam-packed summer festival season (good luck finding a free weekend in July) and when you run your festival becomes even more important than where.

THE DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS

All it takes to run a summer festival is a great site and oh, a well-trained army of volunteers, enough port-a-potties to handle a crowd of thousands, licensed concession stands, sanitation and environmental services, a liquor licence, professional security, traffic co-ordination, policing and myriad more licensing issues.

First-time festival promoters tend to underestimate the sheer complexity of their task and wind up writing big cheques at the last minute.

“At Sunfest, we had trouble getting an empty barrel for garbage,” recalls Donnelly. “We had no finances to run that thing.”

MONEY CHANGES EVERYTHING

Speaking of finances, you better have some mighty deep pockets if you’re going to launch a summer festival. As you conquer the logistics learning curve and make improvements to your site, don’t expect to see any money back until your fourth or fifth year — if you’re lucky.

“You need deep pockets and people willing to see you through,” says Little River Rockfest’s Tom Crook.

That means a few million dollars — not a couple of grand line of credit. “A chequebook can make all kinds of unexpected problems go away,” adds Donnelly.

But only if the cheques aren’t made of flubber. Back in the ancient days, when I still played in rock bands, one hapless Edmonton-area festival promoter wound up on fraud charges after he bounced a series of cheques to keep a mob of angry musicians happy.

BOOKING THE BANDS

A common mistake committed by novice promoters is putting faith in the following equation: 1 + 1 = 2.

In reality, two bands of a similar stature will draw no better than one. When you’re putting together a festival lineup, be aware your prospective audience draw is only as big as your biggest artist. For instance, Creed plus 10 obscure rock bands will draw just as well as Creed alone.

Ticket prices have to reflect this maxim, because audiences will not pay $80 to see The Headstones or Bif Naked at an outdoor stage when they normally charge $15 or $20 at a club.

Artist fees also have to stay within normal guidelines, because booking agents count on the naivet of novice promoters, who routinely pay two or even three times market value to bring acts to summer festivals.

BUILDING THE BRAND

After 29 years, the Winnipeg Folk Festival could put my Siamese cat and a couple of houseplants on its mainstage and still sell 9,000 tickets a day. That’s what happens when you build a solid reputation over the years and develop trusting bonds with your audience.

New events are advised to start small. “For any new festival, it’s a very slow building process, year by year,” Crook explains. “Looking back, we probably grew too fast.”

If you aim too high and tank in your first year, your failure will be compounded by the additional expense. This proves true even for the most well-run events.

Remember, the World Next Door Festival was run like a fine Swiss machine. But low attendance still saddled the event with a staggering debt.

A PROMISE IS A PROMISE

Rule No. 1: Keep your promises. There’s nothing more damaging to a young festival than cancellations.

Losing a few headliners looked bad on Classic Rock Weekend. Cancelling the entire weekend — not once, but three times — did immense damage to the long-term credibility of the Grand Beach Entertainment Centre.

GET LUCKY

In the end, blind luck has to be on your side. A few lousy rolls of the dice can neutralize all the items on the preceding checklist.

“You can have all of the above and still fail. You can do everything right and still fail,” Donnelly says. “You can book the wrong band, the weather is awful or your event just doesn’t capture the public’s attention.”

Or it could do even worse: Captures the public’s attention, for all the wrong reasons.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca