Phumes

As a veteran of several festivals, I must say on first inspection Rothbury certainly looked intriguing. For starters, the lineup was nothing to sneeze at. A veritable plethora of the Jam scene heavy hitters were on the agenda, and if for only that reason it made it a no brainer to attend.
What wasn't clear though was how well they'd pull it off. Other festivals in the past have had pretty shaky first years. I've heard horror stories of gate crashers squatting in camping areas, leaving paying patrons SOL, food shortages, drastic underestimation of porta john requirements, and a fleet of other stuff that would leave one wondering what potential nightmares one might encounter.
As a result, we came loaded for bear, to the extent of bringing even more drinking water than we had for Bonnaroo, which is usually as much of an endurance trial as it is a festival due to the time of year and the heat. So with more crap than we could imagine piled in the car, we made the blissfully short drive from Detroit into the Rothbury area.

The traffic wasn't nearly as bad as we'd have expected. Upon getting in the near vicinity, we discovered there were two exits off the interstate we could take, and as the first one was labeled RV's and VIP, we guessed "standard" camping was the second exit. This proved to be an excellent call.

We weren't on the property but about 10 minutes when we encountered our first snag. I needed to pick up my press credentials, and the email I'd been sent indicated I needed to do so on site. The front gate staffers (and several others, as it turns out) were incorrectly informed that we needed to go to the local high school to pick up the press stuff, but I doggedly stuck to my guns, guessing that the email from Madison had to be the correct one, and as it turns out, it was.

The snafu was that during the day previous to opening, they DID have those press folks who arrived early go to said high school, but only for early arrivals. That word didn't ripple down to the various gate staff, and thus the confusion that resulted. Regardless, the staff were all extremely pleasant, and obviously very pumped to be a part of the whole.

Once on site, we entered the line to the camping area. This was a bit of a concern. Other festies have had a history of ungodly long delays getting to the camping areas, so we didn't know what to expect. As it turns out, it wasn't too bad. It took maybe 40 minutes to reach the camp area, which was adjacent to the property across a road.

The camp areas had clearly marked layouts for each "site" making it easy for the staff to load people in. They were a bit small, resulting in tent stakes and guylines extending into the adjacent spaces but with a bit of clever tent positioning, everybody managed to squeeze into the allocated spaces.

The weather was just splendid, especially considering having just done Bonnaroo a few weeks prior. At Roo, by the time we got the campsite set up, we were dripping with sweat, and already hurting units. This wasn't the case at Rothbury at all. It was a markedly pleasant experience and everybody was in an extremely good mood as a result. I ran over to pick up my press credentials at the tent, and the staff there were friendly and extremely helpful as well. I explained the bit about the front gate folks not knowing where I should have gone, and the press tent staffer said she'd look into it. Not that it much mattered by this point but something to consider for next year.

Back at the campsite, we'd spotted the first potential problem. There were a total of 5 porta johns for what looked to be about 1000 people that were rapidly filling our designated camping area. This did not bode well.

Somebody seriously underestimated the capacity of these things, and it wasn't going to take too long before the dreaded "thy cup runneth over" effect would be a very serious possibility to contend with. At the entrance gate to the festival proper, we notified the staffers about the pending crappy situation, and they said they'd contact someone.

We weren't exactly holding out great hopes for a solution, as typically with these kinds of events they contract for a given number of these things, and when they're placed, that's it for the duration. As it turns out, we woke up the next morning to a large truck's rumbling and were tickled pink to find a crew who dropped another 15 units. This was the first of several brilliant responses to issues that cropped up.

The next challenge we encountered was the short path through the woods to get to the road that led to the entrance gate closest to our camping area. It had apparently rained for the first time in a while a night or two prior, and a little stream had formed that crossed the path through the woods, and it had flooded a section out. Some well meaning folks had pulled brush out of the adjacent areas in an attempt to provide something to use to forge the rapidly growing quagmire (anybody else ever notice that festival mud is an entirely different beast from normal mud? Something about thousands of people repeatedly walking over the same area of muck turns it into something you just don't encounter anywhere else, but I digress).

At any rate, this was going to prove an out and out hazard for late night returnee's to the campsite. We notified the staff about this as well, and much to our surprise an additional generator driven light set was brought in to make the area clearly visible at night. While we got a bit mucky coming back the first night, at least no one got hurt tripping over the thorn brush. Even better, by the next morning, a crew had come in and built a thoroughly serviceable plywood bridge over the entire mess. Score two for two on behalf of the Rothbury folks. While they may have had a few first year items to work out, they worked them out quickly and very effectively.

One of the first things that one realized upon getting into the site proper was that we were very much in the woods. This was awesome. People took little time to take advantage of the glorious surroundings. The walk between the two main stages (The Odeum and Sherwood Court) and the third large stage (The Ranch Arena) had been dubbed "Sherwood Forest", and it quickly became a popular hangout. Depending on which end you were at, you could hear any of the stages, and hammocks sprung up everywhere.

This lent itself to a very laid back environment and was very cool to walk through between sets. Furthermore, the staff had done a really killer job of decorating the area, with various hanging art, materials attached to the trees, and both fixed and motion controlled lighting, which was unbelievably cool at night. It was one of these things they didn't have to do but went the extra mile for, and it was greatly appreciated by the attendees. Furthermore, at various places around the grounds, they'd erected these large acorn looking things, and people used them as hang out areas as well, a sort of a modern day teepee. It was a really nice touch. The net effect was you felt like you weren't just at a festival, but another world altogether.

One area that could have stood for improvement (particularly for a first year fest) was the directional signage. At events like Roo, where it's been held on the same grounds for years, and first time folks can simply ask where something is and anyone who's been there before could tell them where that was, here we were ALL newbies. Nobody knew where anything was.

For the first couple days everybody was constantly looking at the map, but since we were literally in the woods, it was hard to get oriented. The stages weren't clearly labeled with the huge signs the Roo folks use (at least they had MUCH better names. This Tent and That Tent make for a good Abbot and Costello routine, but aren't exactly easily discernible to the average mortal).

While there was signage, it was mostly in the form of street sign type poles, that fairly blended into the surrounding trees. Unless you knew they were there, it was easy to miss them, and even more problematic, was they weren't self illuminated, and at night they practically vanished into the dark. That made it a bit of a challenge. During the first day I ran into a lot of people who had lost their bearings and had made multiple treks back and forth through Sherwood forest only to turn around and go back. The fenced in "shortcut" paths were great, but again, the lack of signage generated additional walking, as you'd get halfway down one of the shortcuts only to finally see a small sign on the fence indicating which way was which, and realize that you'd gone the wrong way. It became something of a community joke to see people hit that point, look at the sign and turn around. One other thing we noticed was the ground itself. Unilke Roo and Langerado, where the grounds have been so trampled by the masses over the years, if you ventured off the paths at all, the ground was really spongy. While physically less ground to cover than Roo, it was more work to do so, and in the end several people commented that they were kind of surprised they felt more worn out at the end of the day than they had at Roo. However, in the big scheme of things, it was a small price to pay, especially since the weather was so incredibly accommodating.

In this genre, all the festivals make noise about being green. It's become something of the "must have" buzzword, yet all too often it's just a word. While it's very common place to see recycling barrels next to the trash cans, they aren't always clearly marked, and at the end of the day, if you're lucky some aluminum gets recycled.
The Rothbury crew were really serious about it. The first thing I noticed was all the various sculptures on the grounds. I was told later that these were all comprised of trash they'd found on the facility grounds. Of particular note was the really slick area where a number of "metal trash to instrument" improvised percussion thingies had been welded together from large chunks of scrap metal found on the grounds, which became the source of an more or less event long impromptu rhythm circle. While I didn't find all of them, there were apparently quite a number of very inspired sculptures to be found. I talked to some folks who had taken this on as a bit of an Easter egg hunt to find them all. While very neat, that was really just a side effect of the whole green effort.

First off, the trash/recycling stations. The Rothbury folks had gone to great lengths to color code the cans, and above each one was a sign that clearly indicated what went where (at some other festivals, as both cans look identical, it ends up being a guess, with the net result in that BOTH end up being trash). Additionally, they took it to another level. They had a separate can for compost, to further reduce the amount of stuff ending up in the landfill. However, that was just the start.

In an absolutely brilliant move, each station was staffed by one of the veritable plethora of pink shirted "One person who cares" volunteers. They were all quite knowledgeable about their role, surprisingly well informed, but even more importantly saw their role as educators. If someone came up and tossed a spent pack of cigarettes in the landfill bin, they'd pull it out, and demonstrate to the trasher that the plastic wrap and aluminum insert were recyclable, and the paper wrapper could be composted, with the net result of a literally nothing ending up in the landfill.
I talked to many of the volunteers over the course of the event, and across the board they all remarked that by Saturday, people were starting to "get it". They'd come up to the station and break down their stuff into the recycle and compost cans, and surprisingly little stuff was to be found in the landfill bucket.

The proof in the pudding for me was when I encountered really old hardcore wookie on Saturday, who was dissecting a pack of smokes. Now this guy had to be in his 60's, was sporting an original '68 Dead shirt, had on Birkenstocks so traveled they were held together with duct tape. His comment floored me. "In my life, I've eaten enough acid to annihilate a a small town. My noodle is shot, and most of the time I can't even tell you what day it is. If you consider that, if I can figure this out and do it, what the fuck is corporate America's excuse not to?" Good question indeed. That thought resonated with me so thoroughly, that when I got back to my day gig, I went to the CEO and kind of lit him up about our piss poor lack of recycling. As a result, we went to recycled paper based coffee cups, multiple recycling cans at work, and our facilites guy tells me we've gone from tossing 3000 styrofoam cups a month to zero.

By itself, this was an impressive step, and it raised the bar for the other festivals. I got an even bigger surprise and education as to the lengths Rothbury had gone to when I was at the Media tent. I had an interview schedule with the guys from State Radio on Saturday, and they were running a bit late. As a result, I sat in on the press event that the Rothbury folks were doing on the Green initiatives they'd taken on. This was a real eye opener. I learned several things:

They had these slick little cardboard pocketable ashtrays. You stuffed your butts in them, and when they got filled, you could take it over to a trash can and unload it. Damn cool solution to a common festival problem. I grabbed a bunch of them and everytime I saw somebody tossing a butt, I'd hand them one. I still have one I keep in my car.

The clear garden variety keg cups? Not plastic. Made from corn husk parts ordinarily destined for the landfill. They bio degrade in 30 days on contact with fluids. The only cost about 10% more than the plastic jobs, take zero oil to make and don't sit in a landfil for thousands of years. If people bought more of them they'd cost less than the plastic jobs. Go figure.

And all that junk left on the fields at the end of the night? Other festies load all that stuff up into dumpsters while the rest of us sleep. Left behind clothes, coolers, umbrellas, shoes, you name it, and tons of it end up in dumpsters every night at other festies. Not here. They round all that stuff up, send it off to get cleaned, then on to a warehouse. What for you might ask? The next hurricane Katrena type event. One of the staffers told an amusing tale of giving some attendee a ride back to her camp because she'd lost her flip flops, and upon hearing what they were going to do with them, she went back to her camp to see what else she could "donate" to the cause. As a lot of folks leave tons of camp type gear behind when leaving, I'd bet there were loads of useable coolers, canopies and other stuff ready to be put to good use when Ike rolled in. Common sense if you think about it, but somebody has to actually do it, and they did. Bravo.

And then the real mind blower for me. Being a one time touring sound guy, I'm all too aware of just how much juice lights draw. And when one looked at all those portable light rigs in the camp areas, you couldn't help but ponder just how much diesel was being burned. So check this out. They weren't burning diesel, but Bio Diesel, and not the kind you'd think. What most people consider "Bio Diesel" is actually produced from corn, and unfortunately, while a neat idea, we end up expending more energy and resources producing the stuff than it puts out when burned, which is (subsidies aside) neither cost effective or even "Green". So I was pretty stunned when they announced the stuff they were using here was all produced from a composting process on stuff that would normally land in (you guessed it) a landfill. Beyond awesome. Well before it had become a buzzword of the election campaign, these folks were putting "real green" into practical use. Massive kudos indeed. Crying shame we can't get this stuff in Dallas, or I'd be all over it.

And as Steve Jobs is fond of saying, oh yeah. One last thing:

Water. Unlike the majority of other festivals I've been to, water refilling stations were all over the place, and they were free. Other festivals may have water available in the camping grounds but the second you get on the property proper, no such. There's a reason they do this, as buying water at $3 a bottle is a significant portion of the margins the promoters will make on the show. Because of that I found it odd that they had some many locations you could refill at. I asked somebody in the Rothbury organization about that, and was really impressed with the answer I got. "A lot people who come to these things are pretty poor college kids. Many have often spent their last dime just getting here. If they haven't got much money, the last thing they'll spend it on is water. When you're outdoors in the sun all day, the human body needs a certain amount of hydration to be able to fight off heat stroke and the like. It's not realistic to expect them to walk all the way back to the campgrounds just to get water, and in some cases that exertion alone would make a potential heat stroke situation worse. As a business, sure, we want to do well off the event, but not at the cost of kids getting hurt in the process. We didn't want any kids keeling over on our watch."

Wow. Unreal. The proof of that was in the pudding. I visited the EMT tent at one point, and while there were cots aplenty, the vast majority of them were vacant. There were the usual cases of kids who'd drank a bit too much, but none of the huge numbers of heat related cases I've seen at so many other shows. You can't get much more cool than that.

Right. The whole reason we go to these things. So how'd they do?

The staging and production quality was thoroughly decent. The PA's through the venue were very acceptable. Not stellar, but very acceptable. I saw lots of reasonably current Meyer stuff, and while not the absolute pinnacle of current state of the art (OK, so I'm a Alcons line array snob), the audio quality was clearly several notches above what you'll find in most local venues. One thing that happens when you hit a lot of the big festivals, is you get VERY spoiled in terms of audio quality. Some of the local venues pretty much make me cringe because they just don't have the budgets to do it up right. I was a little concerned about that with this being a first year festie, but that worry melted pretty quickly.

Part of the reason I was there was I'd been working on a story all year long about the differences between local venue gigs and festival gigs as far as it impacted the artists for a music industry trade magazine, and had several interviews to do about that very subject. All the artists I talked to were generally pretty happy with the handling of the event. The staging areas for load in and out were well organized, and there were good pathways between the stages. The back lots around the stages had ample parking for the artists busses, which allowed all the artists for that day to literally pull up and park behind the stage they were going to perform on. This was very cool. I've been told horror stories at other events where the band had to park a mile away from the stage, only to have to literally run back to retrieve a backup amp from the vehicle when the primary failed. That sort of thing can really rattle ones nerves and impact the performance as a result.

There were golf carts aplenty which allowed the artists to get around to the various stages. Phil and Jill were off to catch Taj Mahal when we ran into them. They were lost as well (the back paths the staff and crew used were even less obvious to some extents than the public ones) so after a quick map consultation and a direction orientation they were off. Meanwhile the rest of the band was playing an impromptu game of catch behind the Odeum stage. One of the things most people may not realize is that the artists in generally really like playing festivals, because it's one of the few times they get to hang out with their peers. Touring and studio schedules tend to keep most bands pretty insulated from each other for logistical reasons, and these events give them a chance to catch up with their friends that they may only see once a year or so. It's one of the things I really love about the performances at festivals, because most of the acts tend to really "bring it" as a result of the environment, and Rothbury proved to be no exception. A combination of really nice weather, great organization by the Rothbury folks, and a killer environment led to some of the best sets I've heard all year.

So how did Rothbury fare for a first year festival? In a word, brilliantly. As was so well put in the Woodstock album liner notes all those years ago, while there were some minor flaws, they were like the imperfections you'll always find in a fine leather, that define it and give it character. The few issues they had were dealt with both timely and effectively. On the Green front they not only talked the talk and walked the walk, they had taken the ball and flat out ran with it. They'd said they wanted to raise the bar for other festivals on that front and raise it they did. This should be the standard other festivals aspire to.

The production quality was extremely good, the lineup near sublime. The artists were well handled, and it very obviously showed in their performances. The crews were competent and capable. The organization level of the volunteers (particularly the "One person who Cares" crew) was astounding. It wasn't just a festival, it was a happening. The convergence of the music and the green awareness was heartwarming to behold. It was one of the very few events like this I've attended in recent times where people were talking about more than just the music. There was a palpable, almost tangible feeling of hope in the air, which in times like these are in all to short of supply.

There wasn't a single person I talked to during the event who wouldn't come back next year. I lost count of the number of times I heard things like "best festival I've been to". At the end, it always (at least for me) sucks leaving a festival, because you just don't want them to end. I've been calling festivals Adult Day Care for some time now, because it's true. For a few short glorious days you don't have to worry about anything but playing and having fun. And that's a huge part of the attraction for those of us in a real world with so many challenges and issues to deal with. And the very best Day Cares manage to teach you something in the process while you're playing and having fun. On that front Rothbury succeeded beyond anything I've seen in a very, very long time.

If they do it again (and due to the financial issues with the property itself, that unfortunately may be in question), I'll be there. With bells on.