The constant of a music festival is noise: the rushing push of a crowd, the howl of guitars, the thump in your breast from a whomping backline, the keynotes hit by voices.
Backstage it's much the same: the crackle of radio chatter, the curses and heat that rise from roadies humping gear, voices hoarse from shouting, the urgent rumble of something that has to happen now, now, now. It's never truly scripted, never without a goal, it just is.
Late one night, a number of years into the carnival ride that is ACL Fest, I realized the power of that amazing, beautiful cacophony.
I had just “highgraded” a golf cart. By this I mean I cut the zip ties connecting it to the small trailer attached, used my universal key to start it up, and drove the DJ who played the Sunday night closing party and his gear, after loading it in, to his car in far Lot B. After I dropped him off I stopped for a bit at the highest point on the festival grounds.
It must have been 4 a.m. Monday morning, long after the last guest and even most of the hardworking staff and after the amazing volunteers and trash collectors had all gone. Looking east down the slope of Zilker Park’s Great Lawn to the main stage, the field was as pristine as the halogens could make it after three long days and nights.
I felt like the only person awake in Austin. There was simply silence in a space so recently filled with every thronging sound. I realized how fleeting it is, this thing we create year after year; we build a needs-based machine unique to its time. As soon as we perfect it we dismantle it, in some ways dismember it, and we are left with something else, something new.
The Heart & Grinding Gears of the Festival Monster
I have worked as an ACL Ambassador for, well, this will be my ninth year, I guess. An Ambassador plays a communications, support, transportation, trouble-shooting, jack-of-all trades sort of role. We assist our Stage Manager as artist liaison, manage dressing room rotation, placate managers, greet artists, store luggage, make sure everyone on your crew gets fed if they cannot make it to catering, fix what needs to be fixed, and head off a lot of snafus off at the pass. We are eyes, ears and wheels on site.
I have played seamstress on the fly, used duct tape in interesting ways, discussed classical music with Social D, provided tissues, muscle, humor, flexibility and infinite patience over the years. Most of us return year after year, some also work Lollapalooza in Chicago, some of us are lifers in the world of production, for some it's about stepping outside of normal life. It is an awesome group of folks ably led by a few fearless leaders. As soon as it ends, throughout the year in between, I can't wait for October.
I come to the gig pretty naturally, myself. I am not a lifer, though I sometimes think I should be, and my pedigree is pretty good. I've lived in Austin for most of 27 years. Like a good Austinite, I leave and then come back after some adventure or another. I am the child of a professional musician, songwriter, rogue, picker, Poet Laureate of the State of Texas, Steven Fromholz. I had the honor to work at Antone's blues club for seven years back when Albert Collins, John Lee Hooker, and Hubert Sumlin played there, and worked for South by Southwest for six years. Add on any number of benefits, special events, one offs, a few tours, and I know where the bug comes from. I really do love production.
One of the best things for me is the stealth by which we work. Some of the greatest saves are the ones that go unnoticed until rehashed in fits and starts throughout the weekend. Everyone is on our own trip. The moment that means the world to you, the Hail Mary save, slides by all but imperceptibly in the face of controlled chaos.
Case in point: probably the last year we placed the headliner dressing rooms in the Artist Village, I was point girl for the 18 or so Ambassadors. I held (literally) the keys to the castles. We are talking a bank bag's worth of keys, individually marked, multiple to each door, two doors to a trailer, for probably 10 trailers. It was a lot of keys.
Dressing rooms are locked when an artist is performing, or eating, what have you; they're artists.
Cee-Lo (a total sweetie) is playing ACL for the second time and has a flight later on in the evening. I am about my business.
It's dusk and the light is bad. I get a radio call that Mr. Lo is heading back to the Village much earlier than expected. He's pulling up in a golf cart, actually. So I am sprinting through the dimming light, dodging drunks and the clueless, when some guy zigs I zag, I go ass over elbows in a perfectly executed roll, come up with an unzipped bank bag – remember the bank bag? – masses of keys still in my grip, make it to the trailer door and it is open when Cee-Lo strolls up. No sweat. And no one saw it. No one.
Another one: It was the first time the Robert Randolph and the Family Band played ACL. He's on the main stage, and we find out five minutes before show time he needs a straight-backed, armless wooden chair from which to play. Now this is early in ACL history, so crowds are smaller and we are able to drive our carts onto the field as needs be. It's 2003, 'cause the String Cheese Incident is playing my stage as well. Now, I've never been much of a jam band kind of girl, but these guys were awesome! Super funny, talented I found, and very game.
I jump into my golf cart and Keith, their bass player, jumps on the side and says, "Let's go! You drive, I spy!" We careen toward the market area on the north side of the field, scanning each merchant’s setup, hunting for the needed chair. In minutes we spot one, con the sweet hawker of hats and scarves out of the chair for a bit, roll hard back to the stage to pass it up to stage left, whereupon it is placed center stage, and Robert Randolph strides out and sits. He owned the crowd. I got the chair signed by Robert, returned it to the slightly bemused vendor, and the show went on. I am pretty sure this is the year I stripped the thorns off a big ass bucket of red roses so Robert could throw them to the adoring ladies without injury, but I could be wrong.
Blood, Sweat & Beer
The world of production, whatever its form, is not necessarily pretty. Blood, sweat, and beers encapsulate a good bit of the ethos, but it does go deeper than that.
The flexibility and professionalism, the stamina and creativity of the folks who build this machine are impressive. Deus ex machina. When we, the Ambassadors, volunteers, vendors, beer gods, booth minders, merch wranglers hit the site, we are pretty fresh. Others have been practically living onsite. The riggers, lightening bugs, sound and Jumbotron dudes... grunts – these are the unsung of the thing. Catering is up and running a good two weeks before the gates are even up, never mind open. They are feeding tired, sore, sweaty crews way before they feed rock stars.
The buildout, the actual nuts and bolts, the bones of the thing, is amazing to watch. I've taken to riding my bike by a week out to watch the skeleton of each stage take shape. Every year there is tweaking, every year lessons learned last year are applied, tweaked again, memories are checked. What worked, what was a cluster*&$# despite best intentions, what can't be done without. Every year there is some new idea, some spin, some cool addition. Good production knows what works in say, Chicago, might not work in Austin.
We’ve Seen Fire and We’ve Seen Rain
Good production deals well with crises. ACL Fest 2007, which I call The Year of the Fires, is a great example. I was in our production trailer when I got a frantic call from one of my Ambassadors flipping out over smoke spotted on the north side of the festival site just stage right of the main stage. It had just gone noon, I think, and Pete Yorn starting his set. I calmed the voice down, directed him to the appropriate radio channel and walked over to look out the trailer window.
Black oily smoke was starting to slowly billow over the tops of the line of blue porta-potties across the festival grounds. "Uh, guys, you better have a look at this," I say to the production honchos in the trailer. "NO, really." Amid speculation on possible smoke from BBQ pits in the food court, flames could be seen licking through the dense smoke a good 20 feet in the air. Not smoke from a BBQ pit.
The nozzle and hose had come free from the propane tank on a grill and was basically whipping around like a deranged viper, spraying flames. I cannot imagine how fast the whole scene went out of control. What I can tell you is how quickly we locked down the site, how amazingly fast the Austin Fire Department responded, and how, when the Austin police officers on site linked arms to slowly push the crowd back from moving closer to gape (as humans do), folks from the crowd stepped in to fill missing links in the human chain. Everyone performed brilliantly.
Pete Yorn played on. Some guy stepped out of a porta-john just twenty feet or so from where the fire had begun feeding on the blue plastic and chemicals a few 'johns down the line. He was completely oblivious as he zipped his fly.
Thankfully, no one was killed. There were some injuries, one person was medevaced to San Antonio. It could have been so much worse. I think we were back on track within an hour.
Fire number two, and this one has a great irony sidebar: A good bunch of the production crew left shortly after ACL that year for Bryan-College Station to put on a festival called Big State, also produced by ACL/Lollapalooza promoters C3 Presents. It was held on the grounds of the Texas Motor Speedway and featured a country/Americana/roots rock line-up. Lyle Lovett, Drive by Truckers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Flatlanders, that sort of thing. There was a BBQ cook-off, camping, and exhibition races on the two mile banked track.
The last time there had been a music festival at the track was in 1974, and Robert Earl Keen was in attendance at a Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic as a very young man. The line-up at that event is probably lost in time (maybe not; check the Internet), but what was remembered was the grass fire started by hot exhaust systems on recently parked cars. Add in a stiff breeze, and some twenty cars, including Mr. Keen’s, were burned down to their chassis. It's memorialized on the cover of his album Picnic.
Fast forward to 2007. It was second day of the two-day event, and Robert Earl Keen is set to play later in the afternoon. The three Charlies of C3 are taking turns on the track in racecars (driven by racecar drivers) going very fast. Things are bumping along when I look up the embanked grandstand toward the parking lot and see smoke. Lots of smoke. It seems a grass fire was started by the cooling exhaust systems of recently parked cars. Approximately 19 cars burned down to their chassis. We blamed Robert Earl, of course.
We did learn some lessons from that experience, as we do from all of them, not the least of which is that Bryan-College Station is just not quite ready for prime time. I did, however, get to go 125 mph in a Mercedes pace car.
Another constant, and certainly in Texas, is our big-ass weather. Where we saw fire, so did we rain. September and October are very different weather months. And as is the way in the Lone Star autumn season, one never can be sure what to expect. Backstage, however, we are ready for anything and rise to whatever challenges that get thrown our way.
The Year of Primordial Soup, 2009, was epic. Rain drenched the site and everyone in it, but at least it wasn't cold. This was a good thing. So even though we were slugging through deep muddy Zilk – my coinage for the Great Lawn soil when the weather transforms it – including the small percentage of horse and cow poo that was mixed in there as fertilizer, we were not chilled. I wore my wellies and have rarely been happier to have my golf cart. I know the crowd had a much different experience with the mud, especially one of them.
And then there was the Year of the Great Dust storm, 2005. The parched Zilk was pounded by many many thousands of feet criss-crossing the site and by day two went airborne in a floating veil of dust, taking the form of a choking, pervasive sinus and throat gunk as it was inhaled. Everyone’s face was wrapped in bandanas like a bandit. Looking east all one saw was the main stage through a suffused haze. I don't think anyone sounded like themselves when they spoke for a good week afterward.
I hope by now it all but goes without saying that the show went on with nary a hitch.
It Takes a Village & Supplies Galore
Everyone has their little rituals, little creature comforts, that they bring along to the festival. One of my co-Ambassador buddies brings three pairs of socks every day of the festival. He changes at lunch, then just after dark, and just before he goes home. He says he buys a big bundle of white tube socks each year at Academy, wears each pair just once, tosses the lot of them, and goes back to flip-flops like a good Texan. I myself go to Goodwill and buy my three pairs of shorts for the year. They have to be cargo shorts with sturdy belt loops. Pockets are key. Sharpies, radios, cell phones, lighters, Maglites – these things get heavy.
I also get my box of tricks loaded and freshly packed. This is an old ammo can from my boat guiding days. They are waterproof and damn near indestructible, which is good, given that they did carry ammunition. Mine contains one of just about everything: Sewing kit, first aid kit, Leatherman multi-tool, gaffer's and duct tape (there is a difference). Screwdrivers (both flathead and Phillips), squirt gun, cheap sunglasses, contact solution, needle nose pliers, tissues, condoms, glow sticks, hand sanitizer... you’ve just got to be ready for anything.
And I decorate my golf cart. I am proud to say that I started that ACL Fest backstage trend, though to be fair, Dirk Stalnecker, our fearless leader, had a Homer Simpson on the dash of his cart first. Last year was a Halloween sort of theme, but I've been all over the map. Years in, it's a gas to see my fellow Ambassadors' golf carts take shape. Feather boas, fuzzy dice, leis, pinwheels, running lights, you never know.
It's a great feeling of camaraderie, of community that starts right up where we left it last year. You're onsite and on the run from seven in the morning ‘til after 12 each night. Sore, tired, deaf, blisters, splinters, muddy or dusty, wet or sweaty, you go ‘til it's done.
When the gates open at 11 a.m. this Friday I will be where I try to be every year: stage center on the main stage at the east end of the field. As the multicolored mass of humanity spills across the beautiful green expanse of Zilker Park like a fragmented kaleidoscope, the theme to “Star Wars“ soars. My heart thumps, I get the shivers, and I know it will be the best Fest yet.
I haven't figured out my cart's theme this year. It usually involves a trip to Family Dollar and Party Pig.
We are a week out as I write this, but I am not worried. It always comes together.