Live Music Business

PlayingYour FirstFestival

A guide to the do's anddont's of open-air,green-field festival

performance

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Legal stuff

About The Author

Introduction

Part 1 - Advancing the show(the information the musicfestivals need from you)

Part 2 - Rehearsing and otherpreparation

Part 3 - At the festival

Become an Artist Advantagemember

Table ofContents

Playing Your First Music Festival

2016 Andy Reynolds

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Do what you like with it, just don't sell it without giving me some of themoney you get for it.

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I am Andy Reynolds, and I have been involved in the music industry for 25 yearsas artist, manager, audio engineer, concert tour manager, lecturer, and author.

Concert Tour Management and Live Audio Engineering

As concert tour manager and live audio engineer (FOH and monitors) I haveworked for numerous international touring acts, including Maribou State, MaverickSabre, The Pierces, Tim Arnold (The Soho Hobo), All American Rejects, House ofPain, Machine Head, Nightmares On Wax, Pavement, Roots Manuva, Super FurryAnimals, Skunk Anansie, and Squarepusher, to name but a few. My touringexperience encompasses stadiums, arenas, theatres, pubs, bars, clubs, outdoorfestivals, rooftops, subway stations, cruise ships, mountain sides and very, verymuddy fields.

Author

I have two books published, ‘The Tour Book – How To Get Your Music On TheRoad’, which is required reading on many music management institutionsincluding Berklee College of Music, and ‘Roadie, Inc. How To Gain & Keep ACareer In The Live Music Business’.

I have also written for several magazines and have been interviewed about thelive music business for print and radio articles.

Lecturer, teacher

I teach concert tour management and live sound engineering for University ofWest London/London College of Music, Access to Music, The Institute ofContemporary Music Performance, Buckinghamshire New University (BA HonsAudio & Music Production), and also run sessions and workshops about the livemusic business for other organizations including the Audio Engineering Society.(You can see some videos of me speaking here.) I am a confident andenthusiastic teacher, partly because of my passion for my subject and partlythrough valuable knowledge gained from passing a PGC in Learning and

About The Author

Teaching in Higher Education.

Public speaking and appearances

I am available for speaking or interviews about the live music business and I loveto help with either delivering a session or helping to write content for modules andworkshops. If you feel my experience would be useful to you then please contactme.

Social media

In case you didn't know, I am also on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram,so please take two seconds to join me in those places, and make sure you get allyour news about the live music business:

www.facebook.com/LiveMusicBusiness

www.twitter.com/livemusicbiz

www.youtube.com/user/livemusicbusiness

www.instagram.com/livemusicbusiness

I firstly want to say, ‘Congratulations’ to you on achieving a pretty big milestone inyour musical career - your first festival show. Whether you've won a battle of thebands type competition, or have been gigging furiously to the point that festivalpromoters have finally noticed you, taking the stage for the first time at a festivalcan be an amazing, fulfilling, memory -making, career-boosting highlight - if youdon't mess it up.

My summers are spent visiting festivals around the world, working with the bands,singers, turntablists and musicians who are booked to perform at those variousfestivals.(To clarify, I’m talking about ‘green-field’, or open-air, multi-stage festivalsin this article, as well as the special circumstances that operate when trying to mixmusic with mud, or dust). Some festivals are huge, (Glastonbury, Coachellea,Roskilde, for instance), some are smaller, or just getting started (Pickathon, Slossor Y-Not). It doesn’t matter if the festival is big or small though, I often see bandsmess it up when they come to perform, usually because they are not prepared forthe unique way an open-air festival operates. And, because nearly every festivalI’ve ever worked at has a similar way of doing things, I can tell you exactly whatyou need to do to lessen your chances of messing it up. In fact, if you follow evensome of this advice, you will have a really good show.

Andy Reynolds

IntroductionAre you playing your first green-field music festival or outdoorshow this summer? Not quite sure how it all works on theother side of the ‘Artists Only’ sign? Don’t worry; help is athand.

Performing at a festival involves a lot more than simply turning up on the day. Theweeks and months of planning by the organiser/promoter require that each bandsends them information vital to that planning process. In this part you will beintroduced to what is needed from you as part of that process -called the‘advance’.

Advance

Even the smallest of festivals operate to strict timings - the conditions of theorganiser being able to hold the festival in the first place usually relies on the factthat all ‘noise’ (glorious music to you and me) will finish at a certain time each day.That means the organisers have to get all the bands they have invited to play, onstage, on time, and that the festival finishes when it should.

A schedule or ‘running order’ is therefore drawn up for each stage, and for eachday of the festival. Acts are allocated an amount of time on stage (’set time’) andthe start and finish times of their set. Periods of time that are used to get one bandoff, and the next one on stage are also planned in. This time period is called the‘change over’ time, a term you will read about a lot in this article. An examplestage running order can be seen below.

You will have been sent the running order, along with other information the festivalwants you to know about, and that needs to know about from you. This process ofgetting and giving information is called the advance - the promoter ‘advances’ theshow with the band, or vice versa. It is VITALLY important you engage with theadvance process for each festival, well ahead of time and, if nothing else, readand understand the running order.

Part 1 - Advancing the show(the information the musicfestivals need from you)

A typical festival stage running order. This is from a stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, inCalifornia.

The changeover at a music festivalThe changeover at a music festival

We are going slightly ahead of ourselves here (you've not even got in the practiceroom yet, let alone arrived at the festival to perform), but basically, you having asuccessful gig on the day revolves around being totally ready for that change overtime.

As I mentioned, changeover is the time allocated to get one band off stage, andthe next one on, ready to perform. Bands do not get a proper sound check forfestival performances (unless they are headlining), the first time you set foot onthe stage is during the changeover, straight before you are about to perform.Changeover time at most open air, green field festivals is a leisurely 20 minutes,sometimes being as little as 10 minutes. Yip, that’s right, 10 minutes. 10 minutesto get all of the previous bands people, crew and equipment off the stage, all ofyour gear, band and crew members on stage, and the monitor speakers,microphones, stage boxes and cables reset, plugged in, and tested. If the band isnot ready to start performing at the end of the changeover (something is notworking, someone leaves something in the dressing room and has to go back forit, or the microphones are plugged into the wrong channels for instance) then thetime it takes to rectify the situation and for them to start performing is taken out oftheir set time. So a 40-minute set could become a 30-minute set if the changeovergoes badly, for instance.

Things can and do go wrong during changeover, and bands do end up going onstage late. You can minimise the chance of things going wrong though - justunderstanding the complexity of changeovers will help you enormously.

The set length and changeover time will be given to the band and crew as part of the advance process.

Input list & stage planInput list & stage plan

A contributing factor to a successful changeover, and therefore a great festival gig,is to make sure the festival sound crew have an accurate and up-to-date input listand stage plan from you.

The promoter will ask you for your input list and stage plan, plus any other stagerequirements or additions (such as wireless in-ear monitor systems, backdrops,digital consoles, and pyrotechnics)that you will need or bring to the festival, as partof the advance process, and you must send them the information they ask for.They will also ask you for your rolling riser requirements (if applicable), and I willget onto that in a moment. First of all though, input list and stage plan.

Input listThere is a detailed explanation of input lists and how to create one on myYouTube channel. If you have any doubt about creating one yourself for yourfestival appearances, then don't. Find an experienced live sound engineer (if youdon't already work with one), and ask them to create it for you. The informationyou send to the festival sound crew has to be 100% accurate, and formatted in aspecific, industry-standard way - see the figure below.

An example input list & stage plan. A version number and expiry date are useful to avoid the wrong input list beingused by a festival sound crew.

Stage planEqually important will be your stage plan. Again, my video is a detailedexplanation of the purpose of stage plans and how to construct one, and again,your stage plan for festivals has to be 100% accurate and up to date. (Good,industry standard practice is to label your input list and stage plan with expirydates and version numbers - see the figure above.) The stage sound crew will relyon your stage plan being correct to position your monitor wedges, power drops,and rolling riders accurately. Which brings me onto …

Rolling risersRolling risers

Rolling risers are small platforms, on wheels, which are used to help speed upchangeovers. The idea is that your band’s equipment is pre-built on rolling risers,off stage, before the changeover. So your drum kit will go on one riser, yourkeyboard rig will go on another, and so on. (Guitar amps and stacks can be built

on smaller platforms, called ‘skids’.) Everything can be assembled, mic’d up,supplied with power, plugged into the PA system, and be made completely readyto simply push onto stage at the start of the changeover. Obviously, this makesgetting gear on and off stage a LOT quicker than having to bring on all the parts ofa drum kit, for instance, and stick it in the right place actually on the stage.

An empty rolling riser.

You will be asked about your rolling rider requirements as part of the advanceprocess, so make sure you exactly specify what risers you need, and where theyshould end up on stage during change over. (That’s why your stage plan needs tobe accurate and up to date).

Rolling risers are big (commonly either 8’ x 8’ or 8’ x6’) and so take up a lot ofroom back stage. A typical band will need at least one riser (for the drum kitusually), and bands that have lost of ‘tech’ (keyboard/electronics stations, extrapercussion set ups, etc.) can need 4 or 5 rolling risers each. Consider a typicalfestival bill will have 6-8 bands on each stage, and you can appreciate that spacewill be an issue if all the risers are available to every band before they go on.There could be something like 20 or 30 8’ x8’ platform back stage - occupying anextraordinary amount of space. Rolling risers are therefore usually limited innumber, usually 3 or 4 sets, which are used in a sequence. A typical ridersequence would be:

Band A on stage on one set of risersBand B, who are coming on next, gets their gear built on another set of risersThe band that has just finished performing (band C) and is off stage, packingdown their gear from a third set of risers.The risers for band C are then given to band D, who are on stage after band B.

The sequence used for three sets of rolling risers at a festival

That way, backstage space can be kept to a bare minimum, as only two sets ofrisers are actually needed at any one time. (The third set is in use on stage).

Band equipment set up on a rolling riser, ready to go on stage at changeover time.

What this means in practice is that you will not have access to your risers untilthey become available in the sequence. You, therefore, have to be ready to startbuilding your equipment as soon a those risers become available. So, on arrivalbackstage at the festival, your first question to the stage manager should be, ‘whattime can we get our risers’? Hopefully, the stage manager will have worked out thesequence and timing of the riser allocation, and will be able to tell you. A commonway to indicate the time is to say, ‘You are getting ‘Blah Blah Bands’ risers’, whichmeans when ‘Blah Blah Band’ come off stage, they will get their gear off riserswhich then become yours. If the stage manager says something like this, you canthen check ‘Blah Blah Bands’ stage times, see what time they are due to come off,and then be ready at that time with your gear, ready to be built.

Another picture of band gear on risers behind the festival stage.

Spend some money on a professional.Spend some money on a professional.

I don't mean to worry you with all this talk of accurate stage plans, up to date inputlists and rolling riser allocations, but is very, very important to your musical careerthat your festival appearances happen with no hitches, dramas or technicalproblems. People go to open air, green field festivals to see and hear great bands.If they happen to catch you, and you are totally on fire, playing a great set and fullof confidence, those people are likely to become fans. There is so muchcompetition at each festival, and every band has that once chance to ignite thecrowd, even if they are a well-known and successful act. None of the bands canafford to be ill-prepared or leave things to chance.

Which is why I suggest you spend some money, and employ someone who has alot of experience of working with bands at multi-band, open-air festivals with quickchangeovers and the other considerations you have discovered so far.Unfortunately, festivals are not the place for amateurs or crew with no expedience.Obviously, everything I do with my books, web sites and online courses is aboutgetting the next generation of artists and crew to a professional level of success,and I always encourage that ‘new blood’ be given a chance. However, if you wantto make a good impression at your first festival, you need to spend some money

and pay someone who really, really knows what they are doing.

Ideally, you need an experienced tour manager, a monitor engineer who knowsyour particular stage sound requirements, and an FOH engineer who has mixedon lots of open air festival systems, with no sound check. You probably cannotafford to employ three people though and so, as the sound is probably the mostimportant part of organising your festival performance, I suggest you find anexperienced audio engineer and spend some money employing them. And, youdon't need to employ one exclusively- paying for their transport, hotels etc. Yousimply need to find out which engineers are already working at the festival forother bands, on the day you are performing, and see if they are willing to help youmix the sound on the day and, more importantly, help you with the advanceprocess (input lists, stage plans, riser requirements), and interface with the festivalsound crew on the day.

As they are already there, and being paid by another band, you should be able tonegotiate a fee that is a bonus for them, and is not as an expensive outlay for you.This is a common practice, with audio engineers, lighting designers and backlinetechs working for 2 or more bands during a festival. (Road crew call this practice‘double bubble’, as they are getting paid twice). Finding engineers is fairly simple,not necessarily easy, process. You could post in one of the many touring crewFacebook groups or job sites, for instance. Or, chances are you know anotherband on the bill (you may have opened up for them back in the day, for instance)and might know their engineer. Or your manager might know the manager of oneof the other bands. Whatever the scenario, there are ways to reach out and get agood, experienced engineer, who will alleviate some of the stress of the advanceprocess, and do a really good job on the day.

Put one person in chargePut one person in charge

There is a lot to think about in the run up to your first festival appearance, andmost of it does not include anything to do with you as a musician or your music.You need to concentrate on that aspect as well (more on this later) and so thethings like the advancing process, checking input lists, and booking transport, canbe overlooked, done too late, or simply forgotten altogether. Missing some part ofthe advance process can have a pretty bad effect on your show on the day, so it isimportant that everything gets organised, and checked, properly. Unfortunately,there is only really one way to make sure this happens - and that is to put oneperson in charge.

I am concert tour manager, and I get employed to do this kind of work for bands all

year round. However, my workload (and the importance of that work) increasesdramatically during festival season. The sheer volume and importance ofinformation needed by festival organisers can be overwhelming, and in myexperience can lead to essential activities and processes not be taken care of,unless someone is totally focused on that as their role. It is my role as tourmanager for the bands I work for and unless you have a tour manager, you needto find someone in your band or someone else you trust, to be put in charge andtake on the job of ‘festival production manager.’ It should then be their job, andtheir job alone, to deal with the advance process, creating (or have created)professional input lists, stage plans, catering riders, and everything else that thefestival organiser is going to require from you.

Your first thought on reading this is probably, ‘that’s fine - our manager can do allthis’. You are right, and, in my experience, it’s probably a bad idea to ask yourmanager to take care of the festival advancing. It is a load of work, which will takethem away for other stuff they should be doing on your behalf, and so is probablybetter off being done by your sound engineer, or someone else in your band, or agood friend, or you.

Don't assume anythingDon't assume anything

You may be reading all of this so far and thinking, ‘well, this does not apply to me -I have a contract rider that goes out. That tells the promoter exactly what I needfor each show I do’. And, for ‘normal’ gigs - clubs, bars, and theatres - you wouldbe right. But festivals and festival organisers are operating in less than optimalconditions and are not able to provide the usual technical, stage and hospitalityrequests you would expect in a purpose built music venue. Open-air festivals arebuilt from the ground up, especially for the event, and then taken down again. Andmuch as organisers try to make their guests (artists, crew and audience)comfortable and safe, there are limits to what is possible (and affordable). And so,when it comes to the demands on your rider - well basically, forget it. You canrequest/demand whatever you like, and your contract rider will be returned to you,along with the signed contract, with most of the clauses you include crossed outand the words ‘festival conditions apply’, or 'standard festival rider', writtenunderneath them. So, don't assume anything. The golden rule for festivals is: ifyou need it to perform at your festival show, then take it with you and don't rely onthe promoter to supply it for you.

You've filled in the form from the festival promoter asking about input lists, rollingrisers and stage plans. Now it is time to think about how you are going toapproach the show itself. The first step is to practice.

Practice

Obviously, you are going to rehearse your music for your festival performance.You should also be thinking about practising some other things as well.For instance, are you going to use intro or walk on music? (My advice is: don't –using walk on music is too complicated to synchronise, and too indulgent for adaylight festival slot). Do you have to change your guitar for one with a differenttuning for some songs? If so, then practice that change beforehand, and time ithow long it takes. Running orders and stage times are strictly enforced at festivals- you cannot overrun your allotted time on stage because you spent 3 minutes(half a song’s worth of time), fiddling around changing guitars.Another important activity to consider practising is how you walk out onto thestage. No, I don't mean perfecting your Jagger-swagger, I mean the order youwalk out. I have seen bands completely lose any impact they may have had bymessing this up, so it is something to consider. An example would be that youropening song starts with solo drums. Is it, therefore, worth practising so that thedrummer goes on first, alone, starts the beat, and your band mates walk on aftershe has started, to take up position and start playing on whatever bar they aresupposed to? The alternative is everyone filing on, putting guitars and basses on,looking around AND then the drummer starting. This sequence will look messy,amateurish and leave a big pause before any music. Which might mean somemembers of the audience end up walking away, without hearing a note. Whichbrings me onto…

The Audience Is Not There to See You (Or Anyone Else)

Open-air music festivals used to have a theme or identify with a genre. Reading

Part 2 - Rehearsing and otherpreparation

Festival, (the inspiration behind the original traveling Lollapalooza festival) used tobe predominately a rock festival, featuring big US-based rock bands. Pukkelpop,in Belgium, always hosted alternative and progressive rock bands, catering for aforward-thinking, younger crowd. (’Pukkel’ means pimple, or ‘zit’, indicating thetarget audience - pimply youth.) It used to be that if you were booked for a festival,it's because you fitted the genre the festival offered.Festival line-ups have changed and instead reflect our digitally influenced musicdiscovery. According to the head of AEG, a festival promoter, “Festivals reflecthow fans are consuming music in a digital world,” says Jay Marciano; “It’ssampling”(1). Which means the average summer festival is complete mash-up ofgenres and styles. The audience has no particular musical affinity - they don't carewhat genre you are - they just want to dip in and out of the music on offer, with thehope of being entertained. This audience sampling applies to every band on thebill, except perhaps the headliners. You have to be ‘good’ to catch the casual‘samplers’ ear. (Obviously, you are because you have been asked to perform at afestival in the first place). Once there, you should be aware the audience is notthere to see you, and you have the same chance to make new fans as every otherband on the bill.

Plan Your Set List…And Be Ready To Adapt

Planning a festival set list involves a bit of a juggling act, in that you have to wowan audience, and keep them interested, with a whole load of songs they havenever heard before, in a less than ideal setting. (Many stages at open-air festivalshave strict sound limits, which means your music may not sound as punchy anddynamic to the crowd as you would perhaps like). At the same time, you want lightand shade in your set, but not have it drop so much that the audience wanders offbecause they are distracted by something else.As an unknown act, you need to ‘wow’ your audience within the first couple ofsongs you play. It is always better to play out your best songs early in your set,and you should construct your set list to showcase at least a couple of those killertunes within the first four songs.So far, so as what I have written elsewhere. Festivals are more unpredictable thana conventional indoor gig though, with weather changes, drunken people climbingtent poles, power failures, and other random events, all affecting the audiencesfocus on you and your music. So, although you must plan a set (for timingpurposes, if nothing else) you should be aware of the distractions that can occur,the audience's perception of you when these distractions take place, and how youshould adapt to those circumstances. For instance, I have never forgotten seeingRadiohead on stage at a UK music festival in the 90’s. This show was at the point

in their career when the majority of their material was their angst-ridden, gloomytype. So, there they were, on the main stage, in the mid-afternoon, on aparticularly wet and grey weekend. They were deep in the groove of someparticularly doom-ridden number when…the sun came out. It had stopped raining,and the sun had broken through the clouds, bathing the field in warmth andspreading good cheer throughout the damp crowd. And did the band on stageacknowledge the fact of the sun coming out and the audiences change in mood?No, they did not. Radiohead carried on playing and finished off their set of break-up trauma material without a comment on the lack of rain. Now, I'm not suggestingthey should have busted out a version of, ‘In The Summertime’, but I felt the focusof the audience shifted away from the band on stage, and more to themselves, atthe point the sun came and the rain stopped. I also felt that Radiohead might havetried to create some affinity with the audience, at least to acknowledge that it wasnice the audience was not getting p****d on now.

Tent or open airA factor that will determine your set list, and the material that goes in it, is whetheryou will be playing on an open-air stage or inside a tent. It is easier to recreate aclub, small theatre environment in a tent, and so you may choose more intimate,or slower songs if your stage is actually a tent.

Cover versionsYou may be familiar with my view on performing cover versions - why wasteprecious public exposure time on someone else’s material? However, a quickGoogle around performing hints and tips for musicians at festivals shows I am inthe minority. I still say though that you want an audience to get to know you, andyour music, and not some version of someone else's’ song.Unless it's been rainingall day, and then the sun comes out. In which case, you better have hadrehearsed a version of ‘In The Summertime'...

Guest Tickets

One of the more annoying aspects of being booked to perform at a summerfestival is the automatic request from your friends/family/parents/neighbours fortickets to the show. I wrote about this before, and the same advice applies equallyfor festivals - a better use of the guest passes the festival offers you (if any) wouldbe to give them to that hip journalist from Pitchfork or Drowned In Sound, so shecan get in for free and have access to your nice clean, backstage toilets, and bethen be grateful enough to write a good review of the show and your new album.That may not be what your friends/family/parents/neighbours want to hear, but it isyour music career, not theirs. And I say ‘if any’ when talking about the tickets you

may get from the organisers as it is not a given right that you will receive many, orany, guest tickets. If a festival ticket costs £150.00 for the weekend or £80 for aday, then the promoter is not going to be keen on giving away 10 or 12 for eachand every band on the bill, are they? So, if you do get some festival guest tickets,use them wisely.

A proper toilet, as found backstage at a music festival.

Extra crewA common method to get extra people into a festival without guest list tickets is toadd them instead to the ‘cast & crew’ list submitted to the festival organisers. Thepromoter will want to a list of the stage performers and the crew as part of theadvance process (see part 1), to issue the correct number of passes, as well asensuring that the overall attendance on the day does not exceed the capacity asstated in any licence application.The temptation for bands (and their management) is to add extra crew, such as‘hair & make-up’, or other, fictitious, backline techs to the cast and crew list, sothat some extra friend and family can get in, for free. I've done it before, and it'snot big and clever, and something that should be relied on, or suggested to yourfriends and family. You are creating more costs for the promoters by inflating thecast and crew numbers for your party (printing of extra passes, providing extracatering facilities, etc.), money that needs to be recouped from the ticket price.Which is why the tickets are so expensive. Which is why you are trying to sneakpeople in. More importantly, the fictitious crew have access to all the samedressing room, catering areas and performance areas as your legitimate bandmembers and crew. A frightening thought if your mate Dave, who you havesmuggled in as ‘bass tech’, decides to get falling-down drunk (by drinking the beerallocated for you) and makes a fool of himself, falls into something and breaks it,or tries to invade the stage during the headliners show (all of which I have seen

happen with band ‘guests’). Seriously, it's not worth the hassle. You have enoughto worry about, just performing and organising everything that goes with a festivalgig, without hoping your mates don't run amok, drunk on free beer.

Transport

The Pollstar 'Major Euro Music Festival Calendar - ILMC Bonus Edition' lists 213festivals in mainland UK alone between May and September of this year (2016).That is a lot of festivals, just in the UK, with a lot of bands performing at thosefestivals who are going to need transport for the people and gear, there and back.So, if you need to hire something to travel in, book it early. It's probably too late ifyou are performing at a festival this year, and make sure you put any hiredtransport on hold as soon you get a provisional offer for next year.So, what are you transport options? You may own your van, or car, in which caseyou need to make sure it is reliable and has the relevant tax and some breakdowncover in place before you set off for the festival. Festivals can be prettyinhospitable environments, without proper roads, and so any vehicle needs to becapable of driving over rough ground for short distances. Custom low-ridersprobably won't cut it, although a tank might.You are going to have to rent something if you don't own transport, and the safestand most capable transport available in the UK and mainland Europe is the splittervan. These dedicated music touring vehicles will transport up to 9 people(including the driver), plus all your equipment, which goes in a dedicatedcompartment. No more sitting on top of the amps in a cargo van - which is illegaland unsafe. In the States, you can be inventive with a 15-seat passenger van(taking the seats out after driving away from the rental lot) or add a trailer to yourrental.Whatever transport your budget dictates, make sure you book it early.

Splitter vans can seat up to nine people, and have a separate space for musical equipment.

(1) Neil Shah. (2015). Music Festivals: Peace, Love and a Business Battle. Wall Street Journal . [Online]. Availableat: http://www.wsj.com/articles/music-festivals-peace-... [Accessed: 6 September 2016].

You have taken care of all the show advancing, practised and prepared your setand everything else that goes into a performance.Now its time to pack up yourgear, load out of the rehearsal room and head off to the festival itself.

Get There On Time

One of the many things that will eventually start to irritate you after you haveplayed at festivals for a couple of years is the need for you performing personnel,and their equipment to be on site at least 3 hours before your change over time.(See part one for a reminder about change over time).Obviously, when you play a bar, club or theatre show, you have to arrive early todo a sound check. But given the fact you have no chance to perform a soundcheck at an open-air festival, it seems odd that you should have to get to the gigso early. It sometimes is slightly unnecessary, especially if the promoter has notspent money on extra sets of risers, and you only can get yours 45 minutes beforeyour change over. Ho hum.I do condone the 3-hour ‘rule’ though - festivalorganisers have adopted it after years of bands arriving late (or not at all) andmissing their slots. So it is right and professional to plan to be there three hoursbefore your change over.Arriving 3 hours in advance is still inconvenient, though. You will have to aim to beon site extremely early if you happen to be first on a particular stage. The majorityof open-air summer festivals like to offer a full day of live music programming,which means the first bands are on stage around midday. If you are booked to bethe first band and are on stage at midday, arriving 3 hours before change-over willmean you having to be on site at 09.00am! And the festival site may be somehours from your hometown, with traffic to the festival being very heavy, especiallyif it is the first day of a multi-day event. You are going to have to plan a pretty earlystart that day, which may be difficult for the most sleep-loving members of yourband to comprehend.

Part 3 - At the festival

Excerpts from artist infromation packs, advising of the time the band and their backline should be on site.

Tell The Audience Who You Are

You read about the fact that The Audience Is Not There to See You (Or AnyoneElse) in part 2, and its good to remember that when you are performing. Theaudience who may wander by your stage/into your tent as you perform needs toknow who you are. So tell them. Announce your name, clearly, over the mic atleast three times in the set - once after the first couple of songs, once in the middleof the set and once before introducing the last song. You should always do this atevery show you perform, and announcing your band name is especially importantat festivals. Bands drop out or are late and get replaced or swapped about and set

times are altered on the various stages. The printed festival guides that are givenout (or sold on entry) will, therefore, be incorrect, and even the mighty ClashfinderGeneral can’t keep up with every last minute change. So don't leave it to chance -announce your name.You don't want the previously casual fan to discover you andyet not know who you are.

Clashfinder General - essential for up-to-date line up and running order information at summer festivals

Backdrop

A backdrop is another good way of announcing who you are - any photo or wonkysmartphone footage of your performance will show the backdrop and have yourname highlighted for all to see. Getting a good, road-worthy backdrop made isexpensive and, if you do plan to use one at your summer festival appearance,must be included in your conversations with the promoter as part of the advancingprocess. It's very unlikely you will just be able to turn up at a festival and beallowed to hang your backdrop. Some festivals limit the use of backdrops to theheadline acts only, and every venue, festivals included, will want to know yourbackdrop conform to local and national regulations regarding fire safety.A good backdrop needs to be big enough to look good on a festival stage (whichcan be anything from a flat-bed truck to a 70’ wide ‘orbit stage’) and yet still beuseful to you when you play at club and theatre shows. A decent size for a festivalstage would be 12’ x 20’, and that would be way too big for most clubs or theatres.Any backdrop you have made should have ties and hoops that enable it to beattached to fly-bars, and should made with fire retardant materials. You shouldalso make sure the manufacturer supplies you with a certificate, stating the flame -

resistant nature of the backdrop.

A festival stage, showing a bands own backdrop in position

Don't Tell The Audience About Your New Songs

Yes, do announce who you are, just in case people unfamiliar with your musicdecide to stay and check you out. Please do not say, ‘This is a new one’, aboutany of the songs in your set. ALL your songs are new to someone who has neverheard of you before. And, for more established bands, the announcement of newmaterial has become the universal audience signal for the audience to think, “timeto go to the bar/go to the restroom/check out another band”. Please don't give yournew fans an excuse to leave, by uttering such inanities from the stage. And whileI’m at it, don't say any of the following:

“We've just learnt this one”. Translation - this rendition is going to be dog-rough,which is an insult to you, dear audience.“We've never played this before”. Translation - we weren’t going to play it at all,but I've decided we are playing it now.“My! It's so hot/so cold/so windy up here”. Who cares? Not the audience. Theyhave their issues to deal with and want to be entertained, not reminded of theirmiserable experience in a wet, muddy field. Or sun-baked racecourse. Orwhatever.“Is it loud enough?”, Or “How does it sound?”. Why don't you add “’cos I don't trustthe sound engineer, and I want to make her feel uncomfortable in front of you all”.

Anything you say has to keep the audience attention on you, and not ‘break thespell’, i.e. remind the audience you and they are actually in a muddy field.

Periscope,Facebook Live & YouTube live streaming

Continuing with the idea that festival goers are there to ‘sample’, or experience a

multitude of bands, acts and music, it makes sense that the experience part ofattending the festival is important to your fans. Yes, they will want to see you onstage, and as they are familiar with you and your music, they may also want toshare in YOUR experience of the whole day. This is especially true if your fanscannot attend the show on the day. Now anybody (and everybody) can ‘film’ theshow on a smartphone and post it on YouTube. And because anyone can do that,the very act of doing so is not that special anymore. You, therefore, need to belooking at ways of capturing and sharing the extraordinary experiences thatsurround your first ever open-air summer festival performance. Filming andsharing via recorded smartphone content is great, and you can go one step furtherby arranging live ‘coverage’ for your fans.Live streaming of events, including concerts, is relatively easy and inexpensivethese days, thanks to services such as Periscope, Facebook Live and nowYouTube live streaming. (Yes, you can set up your YouTube to create a livestream). The obvious activity to stream is your stage performance. You will haveto be careful though - promising a live stream may deter some fans from turningup to see you perform (unlikely, given the ‘sampling nature’ of music audiences),and more likely, may put you in violation of the broadcast rights that are in force aspart of the festivals contract with you.A far better use of live streaming is to ‘air’ your backstage experience - this is thepart of your day that the fans have no access to, even if they are at the festival,and so it makes the experience more intimate and rewarding when shared.Holding a Q&A from your luxurious backstage dressing room for instance, orhaving someone follow you around the artist hospitality area while you chat withother bands and their crew, is a unique experience that very few people can bepart of unless they are a fan and have tuned into your live stream.

You can now stream your open-air festival experience to your fans directly using YouTube.

Selling Merch

A festival merch display. You need to get your shirt displayed, or else no-one will buy it.

‘Merch is the lifeline of any touring band’ is the popular headline repeated adinfinitum on the interwebs. You know how hard it is at the merch stall, though -every sale is a hard -won battle, and the profits and potential to fill your tour

machine with gas are not great. You have to work as hard to make money frommerch (band t-shirts, hoodies, caps, CDs, pins and stickers for example) as youdo from selling your music.Which is why I am always surprised when bands I work with get all hot and excitedabout selling merch at festivals, and giddy with expectation at the potential salesthey will make from a festival crowd. The thinking seems to be that, with anexpected festival audience of 300,000, or 30,000 or even 3000, selling merch tojust 1% of the attendees will be a great thing. (1% of 3000 is 30 sales).The sad fact is YOU WILL NOT SELL ANY MERCH AT A FESTIVAL. And, evenif you do, the time and cost of actually making it available to sell will decimate anyprofit you may have earned. Not convinced? Here is a list of (some of the) reasonsyou won't sell any merch at a festival, based on my experience:

1) Too much choice. Every band selling merch at a festival will have at least onedesign on the festival T-shirt display board, creating decision paralysis on for thepotential customer. In most cases, people will end up buying the official festival t-shirt (that has all the performers names on it), if they buy anything at all.

2) Too much competition from other, non-band merch items for sale. Food,beer, water, sunglasses, ponchos, cell phone charging - all these things costmoney at a music festival, money which will not be spent on your t-shirt.

3) People can't see your shirts. The selling of band t-shirts at music festivals isusually handled by a third-party company, who take all the stock, including theofficial music festival merch, and arrange to sell it, usually for a commission. (It isvery rare that you can sell your merch directly to fans at an open-air festival site).The company will ask for all the stock in advance of the actual festival, and takeexamples of each bands shirt and display them at the various merch boothsaround the site. Which is fine and dandy if you have a merch deal with aspecialised tour company, such as Bravado, who will arrange for your stock to besent to each festival in advance. If you don't have a merch deal then you may stillbe able to send a few shirts in advance, or, if you are unlucky or disorganised, beable to deliver the shirts to the third-party vendor on the day of your show. (This initself is a time-consuming process, as you have to find the merch ‘headquarters’on site, and trudge through the mud with a box of merch to deliver your shirts.). Ineither case, your shirts will be way down the pecking order of all the bandsappearing on all the stage across all the days of the festival, and will, therefore, beunlikely to make it onto the merch display boards. And, if people can't see yourshirt, they are not very likely to buy it, are they?

4) They are too expensive. The third-party merch company usually sets the price

of merch at a green field festival (see above), usually in conjunction with theagreement of the headline acts. It is standard practice then for all shirts, for allbands, to put on sale at that same price. The shirts for your tiny band, performingat your first open-air music festival, will, therefore, be the same price as those forthe 30-year touring veterans who are headlining. Which basically makes them tooexpensive for the casual new fan.

5) Nobody cares. “Hey, it's a music festival, and I’ve got all this ‘sampling’ to do.I’m not going to commit to a specific genre, let alone band, while I’m here.”

6) The festivals cannot be bothered. Honestly, festivals are slowly being put offthe whole hassle of selling merch (see image below). The cost of allocating spaceand infrastructure, the exorbitant commissions charged by the third party vendors,increasing demands from booking agents about merch rights, plus the fact thatbands don't sell anything, has resulted in many festivals abandoning the selling ofband t-shirts altogether.

To be clear - I would not even bother attempting to sell merch at a festival. If youmust try, then announce from stage a place where you can meet fans(always agood idea) and that they can buy shirts and CDs from you there. (Just be carefulabout wandering around a festival site with a potentially large amount of cash fromsales though).Or, just chuck free s**t into the crowd. Spread the love, but go broke doing it.

Secret Garden Party in the UK is one of the many festivals that 'don't do merch'.

Warped Tour

You may be reading this out of curiosity, having performed at a few festivals, andbe thinking to yourself, “Reynolds is talking rubbish - I've been on a Warped Tour”.Well, I’m not talking rubbish, and the Warped tour is different from most open-airmusic festivals.In case you are not familiar, the Vans Warped Tour (to give it its proper name) is atravelling, multi-stage touring festival, aimed at 15-25-year-olds and featuringsmaller, soon-be-huge young acts, as well as some stalwarts of the USinternational touring scent. There is a ‘sound’ associated with Warped Tour acts;guitar-led, adrenalin-soaked ‘alt-rock’ bands are the main attraction.

Warped Tour offers inexpensive tickets, and therefore has a paired-downproduction, compared with other open-air festivals. Some of the seven musicstages are flat-bed trucks, and there are no rolling risers on those stages (no roomup there!), backstage dressing rooms, or any of the other production activities Ihave mentioned. There is also none of this “be on site 3 hours before hand’malarkey either - all of the bands are travelling with the festival. Bands (and theircrews) wake up each morning on their sleeper coaches or RVs and then go toproduction headquarters at 7 am, and are told what time they are performing thatday. So a band could be first on at 11.00am in one city, sweating it out in the fiercemidday sun, and then closing the stage the next night in the next city. (WarpedTour finishes its live music at 20.30 each night).I've never worked on one, and I know of several bands who have. (Please leave acomment if you have and would like to amend or add to what is here.) Theydescribe it as very much organised chaos, with changeovers and line checksbefore going on stage a particularly frantic (and sweaty) activity. The whole, riders,input list and stage plan thing apparently go out of the window with Warped Tour.The fans attitude to merch is different as well. Fans who attend Vans Warped Tourspend a lot of money on merch apparently, and it is well worth bands creatingspecial, Warped Tour exclusive apparel for the occasion.So I’m not talking rubbish - there are always exceptions to what I know.

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