Forward to the music festival!

In an uncertain time for the music biz, local promoters take a chance on ambitious new festival

Katjusa Cisar  —  9/18/2008 9:28 pm

Bessie Cherry has nightmares where Neko Case falls, breaks her ankle and has to cancel her appearance on Friday night as part of the first-ever Forward Music Festival.

Immediately after uttering that out loud recently, Cherry shook her head as if to say, "Did I just say that?" and knocked on a nearby wood table for good luck. She and four other organizers have sunk more than a year of planning into the two-day music festival, which takes inspiration for its format from Austin's South by Southwest festival.

The Midwest focus of the lineup comes out of the organizers' desire to showcase regional and local talent, as well as national acts. Headliners include Bob Mould (Husker Du), Killdozer, Dan Deacon, Mason Jennings, the Detroit Cobras and Case (who actually did cancel her April show in Madison with her band the New Pornographers after taking a bad fall during a show in Washington, D.C.).

In all, 72 bands will play on eight stages around town this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 19-20. A $40 general admission wristband (see article on "How to get the most out of your wristband") covers all shows on a first-come, first served basis; $10 "upgrades" for certain shows guarantee access. As of Monday, promoters said more than 1,000 wristbands had been sold.

It's the most ambitious musical event of its kind ever in Madison, which makes it all the more striking that none of the organizers is working on the project full time. They all have day jobs: Cherry, 28, works as an executive assistant at Broadcast Interactive Media; Jesse Russell, 32, is a reporter for Workers Independent News and co-founder and editor of local news/culture Web site Dane101; Jamie Hansen, 26, is a UW graduate student; Wyndham Manning, 22, is on the Dane County Board of Supervisors and works for SRO Artists, an (unrelated) promotion company in Middleton; and Kyle Pfister, 25, "fights Big Tobacco" for the state of Wisconsin.

Festival planning gets squeezed into their off-hours and weekends. Cherry spends her lunch breaks making phone calls and going to Bob's Copy Shop on University Avenue to Xerox flyers. Almost every Saturday this summer, she and her 7-year-old daughter, Phoebe, hit the pavement to put up posters.

But most of the planning gets done virtually. The five organizers use Google e-mail and Web tools to communicate throughout the day.

"Our longest e-mail thread has 113 messages back and forth," said Cherry. "There's 15 of those a day, all different topics."

Pfister said Web 2.0 technology, like Google document sharing, has been an enormous help throughout the process: "They're designed for this type of collaboration. Our concept as a collaborative -- as a bunch of individuals working together in their spare time to do something they love -- is exactly the same format that Google is shooting for in their new collaborative editing tools."

Splitting up the work has still been a challenge, he added. When they first started working on the Forward Music Festival, everyone took on a role in the process -- publicity, sponsorship, booking and so on.

Things haven't stayed so neat and tidy. The process turned into a "globulous animal," said Pfister, and everyone eventually had to step outside their assigned job area to chip in and help each other.

"It's totally unglamorous," he said of the work.

'Glamour, fun and backstage passes'

And glamour is one reason a lot of music fans get into music promotion.

"Every city I've lived in, everybody thinks they can be a concert promoter," said Dave Maynard of Frank Productions, the promotion company behind such popular events as the JJO Band Camp, Freak Fest and hundreds of concerts per year at Madison venues.

"Sometimes people call themselves promoters and they don't understand the risks involved," he said. The ones who don't know better think it's all "glamour, fun and backstage passes."

But the Forward Music Festival organizers "have a different intention," Maynard added. "That's not what it's about for them. That's something that's commendable."

It's a tough time to be in concert promotion, as a professional or as a hobbyist, he said. Equipment and travel costs are higher than ever, and album sales are down. This can be a double-edged sword. Musicians, especially mainstream artists, have to tour more to make up for the money they're not making off record sales. So, there are more of them on the road, and they cost more to bring to town because gas costs more.

Promoters get caught in the middle of this: fighting for fans' dollars and time on one side, and struggling to pay for artists on the other.

In that kind of atmosphere, competition between promoters can drag a music scene down or push it to be better, said Maynard. It all depends on whether promoters work together. If promoters work against each other and "run around scooping up artists," agents sometimes take advantage of bidding wars to hike their artists' prices. Conversely, if promoters work in tandem, it "keeps people on their toes" and gives audiences what they want.

Cherry said the organizers of the Forward Music Festival aren't making money off of it. Some net income will be donated to the charitable arm of the Madison Area Music Awards, and the rest gets invested into next year's festival. They've been able to fund the upfront costs so far with wristband sales.

Even promoters who do it for their livelihood "generally lose more money than they make if they haven't been at it for a long time," she said.

'The worst business plan ever invented'

The collaborative and volunteer spirit behind the Forward Music Festival is similar to the concept behind music and art venues like the Project Lodge (www.theprojectlodge.com) in Madison; Gracie's (www.gracies.org) in Portland, Ore.; the Soap Factory in Minneapolis (www.soapfactory.org); and interactive art Web sites like Learning to Love You More (www.learningtoloveyoumore.com).

"I think people are always inspired to find ways to make things happen in creative new ways," said Kendra Larson, co-founder of the Project Lodge, 817 E. Johnson St. "The Project Lodge originated from those ideas of community, belief in the experience of art and the goal of creating a unique space."

For Pfister, that spirit of innovation is at the heart of why he wants to keep music and art a hobby, not a job.

Going on a year and a half now, he has been bringing musicians to venues like Cafe Montmartre and the Project Lodge as a side project to his music and art blog, JustSayinIsAll.com. But he never plans to go into promotion full time.

"No way. I hope this is never my full-time job," he said. "My business plan is probably the worst business plan ever invented, because it's my concept to bring bands who aren't popular to town. If it was my full-time job, I'd have to focus on that money side of it. I'd have to ask that sub-question: Is this band going to make the money to pay my bills?"

Still, he's had to learn enough of the business side of promotion to make things work. His first show, indie folk/pop singer Chris Garneau, was a "total mess" -- not because the show wasn't enjoyable, but because he hadn't done enough promotion and publicity.

Audiences should be willing take chances, he said, and one of the promoter's jobs is "to inspire that in a population."

Do-it-yourself promotion isn't widespread enough to be a trend, but Pfister and fellow festival organizer Wyndham Manning agree that it should be.

"I think the perception is that more people are getting into it, when the reality is that more people are getting into DIY music criticism, moving from participants to observers," said Manning. "The Internet is shifting the music community more online and less in person, which is great for learning about and exposing ourselves to new music, but it doesn't compensate for real interaction or the experience of being at a concert."

Manning said that in general, the music industry as it exists now is inherently exploitative -- "if the promoter isn't exploiting the artist, then the artist is exploiting the promoter.

"I'm becoming less convinced that the music business is good for the people who try to make a living off of it or the people who go to the shows," he added. "When promoting music is the only thing you do, you can't help but have your living challenged by anyone who is just trying to support music they love, not necessarily make money off of it."

'Low on the totem pole'

It's hard to shake up that system when you're an unknown. Many within the regional music community are watching this festival, and there's been a buzz in national tastemaker blogs like Pitchfork and Brooklyn Vegan. But the Forward Music Festival organizers' biggest struggle has been putting together an event that doesn't yet have brand recognition, said Cherry. They heard a flat-out "no" from potential sponsors many times before they found a few "yeses."

When Cherry was making phone calls to agents to book bands, she often got a response along the lines of, "Who is this? Where are you calling from? What city? Sure, yeah, I'll have so-and-so get back to you whenever. See ya later."

"You'll find that you're really low on the totem pole. You get passed from assistant to assistant," said Cherry.

The secret to getting through, she added, is to make connections and treat assistants like real humans, not blocks in the way of talking to an agent. And the same is true of musicians: making sure they're taken care of and not stuck in "a crappy hotel at the edge of town that they have to drive to."

Cherry learned that while working as a cocktail waitress and assistant at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington, Mass., where she attended Bard College at Simon's Rock.

The owners turned the place from a teahouse into a music venue during her time there. "They had a vision of it being an enclave for musicians," she said. With its strategic location between New York City and Boston, it soon caught on and attracted artists like Norah Jones, Michelle Shocked, Michael Powers and Grupo Fantasma.

The owners "didn't really understand business at all" when they first got started, but used that to their advantage and have since become very successful, she said. "They were really serious about taking care of artists, and that's a hot commodity."

And that's what she wants the Forward Music Festival to be about, too, which is one reason the organizers have chosen not to sell hats, T-shirts, fanny packs and other gear with the festival logo.

"We want it to be about the bands and the Midwest," said Cherry.

They're planning to make it a yearly venture, and even though Manning said he already considers it a success, they can't sit back now.

"The best thing that we can do is continue to challenge each other, never let this get easy, never feel comfortable with our audience or our scene or whatever," he said.

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Forward Music Fest information

General admission wristbands ($40) are available for sale through PayPal at www.forwardmusicfest.com. You can pick them up (or buy them at the door, if still available) at The Frequency and the High Noon Saloon from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18, and 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 19 and 20, at the rotunda in Overture Center, 201 State St. There are no tickets for individual shows.

Pick up your badges and wristbands early -- organizers say lines could get very long on Friday and Saturday.

Here's where you can find the eight Forward Music Festival stages:

Orpheum Theatre and Orpheum Stage Door, 216 State St., www.orpheumtheatre.net

Majestic Theatre, 115 King St, www.majesticmadison.com

High Noon Saloon, 701 E. Washington Ave., www.high-noon.com

Cafe Montmartre, 127 E. Mifflin St., www.themomo.com

The Frequency, 121 W. Mifflin St., www.madisonfrequency.com

Project Lodge, 817 E. Johnson St., www.theprojectlodge.com

Corral Room, 116 N. Hamilton St., www.myspace.com/thecorralroom

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Going to the Forward Music Festival?

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Katjusa Cisar  —  9/18/2008 9:28 pm