cool article (has hopeful traffic info too)

Summer music festivals beckon road trippers

You pay for the ticket and gas, too, at destination tours coast to coast.

By Tom Moon
Inquirer Music Critic


This year, music fans with bottomless bank accounts and a taste for camping can do what the Summer of Love kids only dreamed about: travel from one musical gathering of the tribes to another, enjoying months of communal vibes and veggie burgers in outdoor settings that promoters describe as "tranquil" and "rustic."

Once exotic curiosities, "destination" festivals - loosely themed, but massively organized, multi-day events that offer dozens of top-name acts - have in the past several years proliferated on the summer concert calendar.

The music-marketing phenomenon is the inverse of traditional mega-tours, like Warped or Ozzfest, that take their tunes to the fan: Destination tours expect ticketholders to pay for the gas. And 100,000 did May 1 and 2, for the chance to see over 70 acts - including Radiohead, the Cure and the much-hyped Pixies reunion - at the season-opening Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in the California desert.

The circuit continues through at least mid-August, when Phish, the jam band credited with proving the artistic and commercial viability of such ventures, is expected to throw another of its marathon bashes in Vermont on Aug. 14 and 15.

In between, it's possible to go on a nearly nonstop blue-highways ramble whose major stops include Dallas' Crossroads Guitar Festival on June 4-6, featuring Eric Clapton, and the Bonnaroo Festival, where more than 40 acts will converge June 11-13 on 600 acres in rural Manchester, Tenn.

"People really seem to get a charge out of coming together in places that aren't typical concert venues," says Rick Farman of New Orleans' Superfly Productions, which produces Bonnaroo, 60 miles southeast of Nashville.

"We keep hearing that people like having a focal point: They're willing to spend money for one big bang rather than going to a bunch of little things. It's seen as a good investment of time and money, and it's about the sheer desire to be at something that's an event."

Asking music fans to travel isn't new. The Philadelphia Folk Festival has drawn thousands to its idyllic scenery and idealistic sounds for 43 years, and this summer marks the 35th anniversary of the original Woodstock festival.

But the destination festivals of 2004 offer more than performances on multiple stages and lines for Porta-Pottys: They're miniature cities complete with movie tents and other diversions (last year's second annual Bonnaroo offered 150 classic arcade games), crafts villages, all kinds of ethnic food, seminars, drum circles, and prayer hours.

For fans, the attraction is obvious: the chance to enjoy nonstop entertainment in the great outdoors with kindred souls. For artists - especially, rising stars such as singer-songwriter Damien Rice, who will play Bonnaroo - the festivals are an opportunity to cultivate new listeners.

Phish manager John Paluska says that his band, which hosted its first multi-day event in 1996 on a decomissioned Air Force base in Maine, was interested in shaping an experience. On the menu: Phish, and only Phish.

"It started as a 'what-if.' Wouldn't it be nice if we could set the tone for a few days, from the food we offer to when we play to fireworks to rides," he recalls. The band members "wanted to play in an environment free of corporate advertising, which is really hard now. It was us discovering what could happen when you say, 'It's our party, and we're going to do it our way.' "

Some festivals, such as the Phish soirees in remote locations, practically force attendees to camp. The draw is a "community experience" that continues after the stages go dark, says Farman.

Other events offer an entirely different ambience. The Crossroads Guitar Festival, at the Texas State Fairgrounds in Dallas, has no camping component, but promises clinics with famous guitarists and exhibitions by guitar manufacturers throughout the three-day event. Tickets run $15 to $60, depending on the day's program.

"What Eric wanted was a total celebration of the lead guitar," explains Peter Jackson, who is coordinating the festival and its auction, both to benefit the Crossroads addiction-treatment facility Clapton set up in Antigua.

"He invited people he thought made a difference to lead guitar," among them Los Lobos' David Hidalgo, Joe Walsh, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Vaughan, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Carlos Santana. "At the same time, he wanted people to be able to learn about guitars, try them out and maybe buy one."

There are more destination festivals this summer than ever before, and ticket sales indicate that many will be successful. For the first time in its five years, the alternative-leaning Coachella sold out. And Farman expects that Bonnaroo - which costs $164.50, camping and parking included - will sell out with fans from all 50 states, just as it did in 2003.

Concert industry insiders caution that such events remain exceedingly risky financially.

"These things are extremely difficult to produce," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the concert-industry trade publication Pollstar. "The positive thing, from a promoter standpoint, is that success usually isn't a function of having one [particular] band on the bill. They're selling an overall experience."

But the organizational challenges are huge, says Bongiovanni: "People won't return if it's not a good time, and that can hurt the artists long-term."

"It's staggering, the level of detail," says Farman, whose staff has worked on this year's Bonnaroo since the last one ended. "You're basically building a city. We have a hospital, roads, security forces, electrical systems, water systems, sanitation."

When his team took stock of the second Bonnaroo, attended last year by 82,000 people, it realized there was room for improvement.

Traffic, in particular, was a problem, "so we hired a consultant who works for cities, and he was up in a helicopter looking at the flow. We're doing it completely differently this time."

Part of the reason the camping festivals work is their demographic: They're aimed at footloose students and post-college connoisseurs of jam bands, Frisbee-toting mellow spirits who are simply out for a good time. ("No hassles or bad attitudes," promises one festival's Web site.)

Paluska, Phish's manager, believes that crowd temperament is a huge factor: "If people want to get unruly, there's really no way you can have a security force in place to handle them. Our idea was to create an environment that's respectful, safe, and pleasing. We work to set that tone, so it's clear when people first arrive that we've really gone all-out to prepare for them. When you do that, you can get 60,000 like-minded individuals together and it can be fantastic."

Yet Bonnaroo is moving away from its original jam-band focus. Besides Dave Matthews, the Dead, and Trey Anastasio, this summer's lineup offers rock pioneers (Bob Dylan, Patti Smith), far-from-rock radicals (David Byrne, a Bill Laswell supergroup), legends like Willie Nelson, and bands such as Wilco that defy easy catagorization. The Hackey Sack diehards will get their fill of jam music, Farman says, but because that group is so open-minded, they'll give a fair listen to artists who might expand their horizons.

"You could put almost any act that plays Coachella on Bonnaroo, and a good portion of the crowd would dig it," Farman says.

"We know we have to be careful about letting it be too mainstream, but what happens is, people show up and the atmosphere is such that they want to get turned on to new stuff... . We can throw a hell of a lot in front of these people, and if it goes someplace that's interesting, they'll get it."
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Contact music critic Tom Moon at 215-854-4965 or tmoon@phillynews.com