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Playing Festivals (Witney 2016) and others


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So, a band that I dep for played the Witney Music Festival yesterday.
We were booked for an hour slot prior to the headliner in September last year.
As time went by, we were bounced down a slot and a month or so ago were informed that we now only had 40 minutes instead of an hour.
Given that it's a 200 mile plus round trip for us on the day, what enthusiasm there was had started to wane.

So, we all get there in very good time despite driving through intermittent rain showers all the way and it's overcast on arrival, but mainly dry.
Access, parking, gear storage, toilets, VIP area etc were all faultless.

Surprise surprise, the show is running late. We are supposed to go on at 1940hrs and we're now on at 2000hrs, but "Don't worry, you'll still have your 40 mins'. Yeah right.

So we start at 2000hrs and almost immediately we're told from the side that we need to drop one song. OK, so out goes one of the two new ones and we carry on.

20 minutes later, halfway through a song with another two to go, we're told we have five minutes left. So, we finish that song and start the next one thinking we'll stop, the crowd will ask for more and we will oblige as the bands before us had. No problem. Wrong. We start the penultimate song and the stage management kill the PA and tell us to get off. Our lead makes it quite clear what has occurred and the crowd boo the stage management. By this time the band have the right hump and there's no going back, so off we go.

To put this in some kind of context, the band before us were a really good outfit called [url="http://www.crowdcompanyfunk.com/photos-videos/"]Crowd Company[/url], but ironically the crowd did a bit of a disappearing act when they came on which was a real shame. I thought they were great. Nice Sadowsky by the way if you're on here my friend. Being an 80's covers band, it's fairly easy to whip the crowd up again in preparation for the last two acts of the night, which I think we succeeded in. The last thing you want is a negative moment for the crowd but the stage management delivered that spectacularly.

Once we were off stage we had 101 people tripping over themselves apologising to us to the extent that the organisers acknowledged the stage management had f***ed up big style.

How difficult is it to stick to a schedule? I've been in the middle of it time and time again and it very rarely happens how it should.

Anyone else had similar problems?

Anyhow, here was the view from my office mid-set yesterday, before it went all Pete Tong.

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[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1465737866' post='3070605']
Yep - we had one a few weeks ago. A big do, and... no stage manager. Complete chaos, and it turned into a war of attrition between everyone involved. No fun.
[/quote]
There was stage management there. Loads of them in fact. They just weren't doing a very good job.
Behind the scenes - brilliant. Up at pointy end - rubbish. Different people I think though.

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Played a 24-hour fundraiser in London a couple of weeks ago, we were support to the main act and scheduled to play for an hour at 23:00... but the management told us 'things were running a bit late' and we eventually got on stage at 01:00. By this time the audience were, ah... 'well-primed', so we got an excellent reception, albeit booze-fuelled. Though generally I prefer to be on my merry way a [i]little [/i]earlier... I think 2 hours late is pushing it somewhat.

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A few years ago I played at 'Brentwood Music and Beer Festival' which sounds fairly grand but wasn't. They organiser (drummer from headlining band 'The Heaters') decided they would have two stages with bands playing both at the same time. However as soon as it started you could hear both bands from pretty much anywhere so they had to alternate stages and cut everyone's playing time in half. We hung around most of the day to play 20 mins late in the evening.

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After playing a couple of local festivals last year and getting good reviews, we got booked for 3 this year (2 by same mob) these were tentatively confirmed just before Xmas, but only a few weeks ago our man was frantically chasing around as we had heard nothing since, only to be finally told, 'oh we were massively over subscribed, some bands just had to go'
So, when EXACTLY were you gonna tell us??

Arseholes to a man/woman, sometimes I just despair..........

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Pretty much every time I've ever played on multi band nights it's been a shambles. Thankfully I'm now mainly playing in function bands so, although that comes with its own set of issues, it's rare that we have such a frustrating day / night.

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Proper stage management is key to festivals. Each stage needs a sound engineer to do sound and a stage manager to get the bands on and off. Both these guys need to know what they're doing and take their job seriously

Me and our drummer run festival stages when we're not gigging - him on sound, me as manager. We plan ahead so we know whenn the big complex acts are due and we communicate with bands so they know where they have to be and when. We run a tight ship and typically have bands starting/finishing within 5 min of the listed schedule. The worst slipage we've had was the headliner running 45 min late when the PA on another stage borked and we had to shoehorn 3 extra acts into our evening.
So, it is possible to run festival stages to schedule as long as the people running them can be arsed.

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More apologies from the management have been received today. However they managed to get themselves into the situation, it's a little annoying that the band before us and the one after allegedly had to cut one song each and we had to lose three. It's a shame as our lead had the audience in the palm of his hand getting them to engage and sing along. What's done is done I guess, but it's always a pleasure playing to that sort of crowd, so who knows, we might be back :-)

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"You're on at 12 so report to the stage by 11"
We turn up at 11, nobody around. We ask the bar staff who direct us through a flap at the back of the tent where the sound man could be found. We wake up the sound man who stumbles out and starts assembling a PA.
12.15 the "stage manager" puts in an appearance, tells us to get a move on , then goes outside to sunbathe with her friends.
At 12.45 we start. Thankfully we did get to play the full set .
I can only assume that the timing issues only became a problem later in the day. I didn't stick around as after walking around for an hour and being directed from one side of the site to the other I never did find out where I was supposed to camp.

Edited by Dom in Somerset
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I played HRH Blues festival earlier this year, that was superbly run by the chap in charge, despite him not having the two stage hands he was promised.

We played an all day event at a nearby pub, and were meant to be on at about 3 I think. First band were meant to be on at 1, yet when we got there at 1 they were still setting up & sound checking. We had another gig to be at by 5.30 which the organiser knew. By the time they got started, there was no hope of them getting us on in time - especially by soundchecking the same drumkit between bands. We told the organiser we didn't think timing was going to work out, he said he'll make sure it does. It was still a bit of a shambles, so we said it's not going to work, we're off. He said he'd get us on without fail - we gave him our latest time, and he made it by a minute. We haven't been back there yet, despite being asked several times...

We did have our set cut short at a festival that took us 5 hours to get to due to traffic, because they were a bit behind & hit the midnight curfew. It would have been nice if they'd told us, but the compere just jumped up at 11.55 and asked the crowd if they want one more.

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[quote name='KevB' timestamp='1465828139' post='3071325']
As a covers band I think we'd be putting a stop to it right at the '200 mile round trip for 40 minute slot' point.
[/quote]
Probably should have said there was a little more to it than that. As mentioned previously, initially it was an hour slot, before the headline, with a promise of a club gig the night before and we would be put up somewhere overnight for the Saturday gig. This was as a favour to one of the band members who's brother organises the festival. Unfortunately the Friday blew out as I couldn't get the time off work. The majority were keen to do it and who I am to argue. I'm the dep after all.

Edited by hiram.k.hackenbacker
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[quote name='TheRev' timestamp='1465767350' post='3070881']
Proper stage management is key to festivals. Each stage needs a sound engineer to do sound and a stage manager to get the bands on and off. Both these guys need to know what they're doing and take their job seriously[/quote]

Agreed, as you know we host the world's largest music festival in the world, Summerfest here in Milwaukee (Macca opens Summerfest this year) The whole system is top notch.

Separate entrance with streets blocked off off for musicians entrance to the grounds. Plenty of security and parking.

2 vans are asigned to each band. One for the band and one for gear.

Your dropped off at your assigned stage at least an hour before start time. The stage manager gives you all the particulars. Big dressing rooms, food and fun people. You do your 90 minutes and your off and the next act is up.

My only concern is sound for the non headliners seems poor compared to the sound the 10:00pm headliner gets.

Blue

Edited by blue
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[quote name='blue' timestamp='1466134859' post='3073576']




Your dropped off at your assigned stage at least an hour before start time. The stage manager gives you all the particulars. Big dressing rooms, food and fun people. You do your 90 minutes and your off and the next act is up.

My only concern is sound for the non headliners seems poor compared to the sound the 10:00pm headliner gets.

Blue
[/quote]

What exactly do the "fun people" do ?

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