ACL FEST 2007

Destination: festival

One area of the music industry is thriving - the outdoor, multi-day music festival

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, September 13, 2007

Although the music industry is reeling from ever-plummeting record sales, one segment of the business is thriving. Just ask Charles Attal, founder of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, which starts today.

Over the past six years, Attal's C3 Presents has moved from a strong regional presence to a nationally known booking agency, thanks largely to the wildly successful ACL Festival, which sold out for five of its six years.

In its 2006 year-end issue, Billboard magazine named ACL, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, and Lollapalooza — which Attal also books — as the country's premier destination festivals. And that's probably only the start.

"It's a land grab right now," said Attal, who co-owns Stubbs Bar-B-Que, one of the city's most popular live music venues. "Promoters are looking to develop festivals in every possible market."

Attal is no exception; C3 debuts the two-day country music festival Big State Oct. 14 and 14 in College Station.

CD sales continue to fall. The music industry can't stop talking about the ongoing decline in album sales. Industry trade site Hits Daily Double noted Tuesday that top 50 albums for the previous week posted the lowest total of physical sales since 1991, when SoundScan started tracking sales. CD sales in general are down 15 percent from last year.

Gross revenue and audience numbers for live music, on the other hand, set records in 2006, according to Billboard magazine. Promoters reported $2.8 billion in concert revenue, up 35 percent from 2005.

Festivals make up an ever-larger slice of that pie. Bonnaroo grossed $17 million in '07, making it the top grossing festival in the world, according to Billboard. Lollapalooza grossed $9.8 million, a sharp gain over last year's $7.9 million. Coachella grossed $10.3 million in '06, while Austin City Limits grossed $8 million last year.

Festivals became big news in the early '90s, when the traveling Lollapalooza fest gathered fans of alternative rock from Seattle to Miami. The end of the touring Lollapalooza and the disastrous Woodstock '99 festival took festivals off the map for a bit, but they've come back stronger than ever as location-specific "destination festivals." They are a win-win-win for audiences, promoters and bands. Audiences, for starters, see a whole mess of bands for pennies per act.

"For about $200, you get 80 acts ranging from pop to jam to comedy to jazz," said Rick Farman, a principal in Superfly, the production company that put on Bonnaroo. "We have 24 hours a day to entertain people."

Today's festivals have learned a lot from mistakes. Careful attention is paid to environmental and safety issues and crowd size. Plenty of bands play the American festival circuit (such as it is), but demographic tailoring is a key to regional destination festivals.

Festivals won't replace tours

That said, Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar, doesn't see destination festivals supplanting the traditional American summer tour.

"Touring is one of the few areas of the music business in which the artist has a great deal of control," he said. "Even the biggest acts don't have a lot of impact on release dates or retail price. In the concert world, an artist determines all of that. To be on a festival bill, the big artists have to sacrifice some of the control, from opener acts to time slot."

So what do artists get out of festivals? Something clichéd, apparently.

"It really does allow you to play for people who were willing to buy a festival ticket, but might not be super familiar with your music," said Craig Finn, the frontman for the Hold Steady. A well-known presence on the indie rock circuit, the band squeezed in a bunch of American festivals this summer, including Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, before heading over to Europe for a whole mess of them. "You have something to prove when you play festivals, so you give a 45- to 60-minute set of all your best stuff," Finn said.

But his viewpoint isn't too far afield from any other fan.

"The other advantage for me is seeing all this cool music," Finn said. "I might not pay to see Amy Winehouse by herself, but if she's playing where you are, you walk over."

(Winehouse, whose career exploded in the U.S. during festival season, recently canceled her ACL Fest date, reportedly to recover from "exhaustion.")

Festivals aim at different demographics

To tour the U.S. festival circuit is to see a combination of demographically targeted bookings and that year's "usual suspects."

Bonnaroo is probably the summer concert season's crown jewel. In June, 80,000 people gathered on 750 acres in the remote Manchester, Tenn., for camping and music, including the Police, Widespread Panic and Austin's Spoon. Tens of thousands who camped at the fest hung around for late night/early morning sets from an all-star jam band, including Led Zeppelin's Jon Paul Jones and Ben Harper or a 3 a.m. screening of the legendary Bob Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back."

Farman thinks this ties into another key to his festival's success — its remote location.

"It's an all encompassing experience that allows you to fully get away for a weekend and just immerse yourself in an environment," Farman said. "You're really able to unplug. The majority of our patrons are not going home at night and flipping on CNN."

This stands in sharp contrast to Coachella's drive-in, drive-out design. There were numerous complaints about the slow drive from Indio, Calif.'s main roads to the Coachella parking lots. (Coachella promoters declined repeated requests for an interview.)

Coachella, perhaps the most self-consciously hip festival thanks to its proximity to Los Angeles, offered such acts as Bjork, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine for a $249 three-day pass.

Alcohol consumption was limited to a biergarten — this would not exactly fly at ACL, as Austin's music fanbase enjoys standing in a field drinking at least as much as it enjoys the actual music.

"I can understand why a promoter would want the drinking limited to a certain area," Attal said. "But that's not a feature we plan on implementing."

ACL and Lollapalooza — which Attal and C3 rescued a few years ago — follow the city-based "urban festival model." The downtown location is as important as the festival itself. Many patrons headed straight for cabs and hit the Chicago nightlife when the Lollapalooza shows were over.

Much like the day parties during South By Southwest Music Conference, the shows after ACL have become a huge draw. Spoon, Queens of the Stone Age and the now-canceled White Stripes after-shows were sold out. The Saturday night Bob Dylan show at Stubb's sold out in about 10 minutes; tickets were being sold on Craig's List for between $100 and $200 each.

Tailored to the zeitgeist

Part of the festivals' success is a balance between known quantities and developing talent. A mess of acts playing ACL — including Arcade Fire and Wilco — could be found at nearly every high-profile summer fest.

This has different effects on different festivals. Bonnaroo has dialed down its reputation as a haven for jam bands by seeding the fest with plenty of alt-rock. Spoon was surprised by the wildly enthusiastic reaction to its set at Bonnaroo, known for its large hippie fanbase.

"That was just amazing," Spoon songwriter Britt Daniel said. "We had no idea what to expect, and the crowd was just fantastic."

But there's also a crucial element of discovery at these fests.

"I think the average person is listening to more kinds of music than ever before," Farman said. "People these days are more open to taking a chance on something that their friends like. The attitude is, 'I'm going for these 10 bands, but this is also a chance for me to see these other 20.' " Festivals are like a living, breathing version of iTunes, live music as a la carte buffet — see as much as you want of whomever you want for one price.

The trick is to tailor the B and C-list talent to the market to which the festival caters.

"I think that's a key reason ACL sells out every year," Attal said. "We know Austin really well."

The ACL fest emphasizes local Austin talent (Sarah Hickman, Guy Forsyth) and rootsy singer-songwriters (Jennifer Nicely, Adam Hood). It's exactly the sort of thing to attract Austin's lucrative 30- to 50-year olds who still enjoy going to shows.

Attal also emphasizes that as hard as promoters try to keep abreast of various zeitgeists, getting who you want when you want comes down to the bands' work schedules.

"Our biggest complaint from fans is that we don't have so-and-so on the bill," Attal said. "Most of the time, those are bands I'd love to have and tried to get. But if an act isn't playing any shows this year, we can't get them. It's that simple."

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926

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Festival by Festival

Name: Austin City Limits Music Festival

Location: Austin, TX

Age: Six

2007 Dates: Sept. 14 to 16

Model: urban destination

Cost: $50 - $145 for all three days

Attendance: 65,000/day

2007 headliners: Bob Dylan, Bjork, Arcade Fire

Vibe: Austin's self-image embodied — ultra-casual clothing with straw cowboy hats, lots of bikinis, frat guys, sorority gals and plenty of 30- to 50-year olds who still go to shows.

Likely to hear: "Dude, this is nothing. In 2005, it hit 108!"

___

Name: Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival

Location: Manchester, Tenn.

Age: Six

2007 dates: June 14 to 17

Model: remote destination

Cost: $184 to $214 for all four days

Attendance: 80,000/day

2007 headliners: tThe Police, Tool, Widespread Panic

Vibe: A total entertainment environment populated by the species Homo sapiens hippie — miles of dreadlocks, fields of beards, sandals for days. Most folks camp there for the fest, so "covered in dust" is a perfectly acceptable look. But there are plenty of jeans and T-shirt types as well.

Likely to hear: "Did you bring your bong?"

___

Name: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival

Location: Indio, Calif.

2007 dates: April 27 to 29

Age: Eight (1999, 2001-present)

Model: semi-urban destination (Indio is about 90 miles from Los Angeles)

Cost: $249 for all three days

Attendance: 55,000/day

2007 headliners: Bjork, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine

Vibe: Everyone here is better looking than you. Expect shiny California hipsters and the young-at-heart seeing bands and being seen. Perhaps the world's best-groomed festival crowd.

Likely to hear: "All these lots look the same in the dark. Where did we park?"

___

Name: Lollapalooza

Location: Chicago, Ill.

2007 dates: Aug. 3 to 5

Age: 11 (1991 to 1997 and 2003 as a touring festival, then 2005 to present in its current form)

Model: urban destination.

Cost: $165 to $195 for all three days

Attendance: 70,000/day

2007 Headliners: Daft Punk, Interpol, Muse, Pearl Jam

Vibe: Indie kids and aging indie kids and people who want to be either. Heck yeah they hit the town after the show. It's Chicago, people!

Likely to hear: "Wow, Eddie Vedder looks old."