The Different Worlds of Madison House Music Festivals
Representatives from a concert production company called ‘Madison House Presents’ met with Salida residents on November 3 to talk about a large music festival proposed for August 2015… and to answer our questions. The proposed festival site is Vandaveer Ranch south of Highway 50.
“Ideally, we want to host a festival to accommodate 30–35,000 people, and we want to be able to camp all of them at Vandaveer Ranch, and some of the surrounding properties that we’ve identified, that are critical to the operation. So in terms of statistics, 35,000 people is our goal.”
The three presenters were Josh Albrecht, Mike Luba, and Don Sullivan. Who are these guys?
Josh Albrecht is from Dixon, IL, and, while serving as director of Main Street Dixon, was primarily responsible for the wildly successful August 2012 Gentlemen of the Road festival headlining the internationally-acclaimed rootsy group Mumford and Sons. A quick Google search reveals that Dixon holds Albrecht in high esteem. Since then, Albrecht has moved on to become the new director of marketing and public affairs for Rockford Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. Apparently he also works with Madison House Presents to promote their festivals.
Albrecht was personable and came across as honest, caring, and enthusiastic about sharing his town’s fantastic festival experience with Salida residents. His enthusiasm was contagious.
Mike Luba and Don Sullivan are partners in Madison House. Both have been in the concert business for decades and are major players in that arena. Suffice it to say they are consummate professionals. I trust their capability to throw a party for 35,000 festival-goers. A third partner, Jeremy Stein, was not at the presentation.
In February 2014, Madison House Presents was acquired by AEG Live, based in Los Angeles. AEG Live, according to their website, “is dedicated to all aspects of live contemporary music performance: touring, one-offs, broadcasts, sponsorship, festivals, special events with seventeen regional offices and thirty-seven state-of the-art venues. … Goldenvoice, the company’s Southern California-based regional division, produces the critically acclaimed Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.”
Here’s an informative article about the acquisition, and the talent at Madision House.
Okay… America’s festival big boys have come to Salida’s door step, with this message: “You have a special, magic, beautiful town, and it would be an honor if you would let us take it a couple of steps down the road.”
It seems to me this offer is not only exciting, but also borderline benevolent. How lucky can Salida be? Luba said he’s been asked, “Are you guys lunatics? Why would you go through all this work for one time?” His reply: “It is because it’s a very special, unique, thing, and it’s not meant to be replicated. There will be a lot the community will learn, and you’ll see how it works, and you’ll have the blueprint as to how to do it if you decide to do it on your own. … It’s not the big money maker for us.”
Luba said the festival ticket price would probably be close to $149. 35,000 x $149 = $5.2 million. He said they could make more with other festivals in other venues.
The festival examples given by Luba and Sullivan (Dixon IL, Troy OH, Guthrie OK) are surely good fits for Salida, even though those towns are larger. Here’s a six-minute YouTube video (that I personally enjoyed) of the band Dawes, featuring Marcus Mumford, from the Dixon festival:
Still, I wonder what sort of music line-up could possibly attract 35,000 festival goers to Salida? Mumford and Sons?
When asked about the music genre, Luba said, “We try to provide a relatively eclectic broad pallet of music but something that’s sympathetic and in synch with what the environment is and all that.”
A friend of mine with two decades of music festival production experience questioned the goal of 35,000 attendees. That number elicited this comment:
“I wonder if they’re going to do the EDM thing, or keep it more rootsy-acoustic? EDM would definitely not be a good fit and would bring in a ton of bad drugs.”
EDM?
I had to Google ‘EDM’. EDM is “electronic dance music”. From theguardian.com:
“What were once called ‘raves’ are now termed ‘festivals’; EDM is what we used to know by the name of techno. Even the drugs have been rebranded: ‘molly,’ the big new chemical craze, is just ecstasy in powder form (and reputedly purer and stronger) as opposed to pills. The main difference between then and now is the sheer scale of the phenomenon.”
Madison House produces the Electric Forest, an EDM festival in Rothbury, Michigan. Here’s their promo video for the 2013 Electric Forest festival, which, I read, had 32,000 attendees.
And if that didn’t satiate your appetite for EDM, here’s the Electric Forest 2014 Hype Up:
Here’s a 2011 interview with Electric Forest promoter Jeremy Stein, one of the partners in Madison House Presents.
It appears the Electric Forest Festivals have produced deadly consequences for a few participants.
Links provided to me by a Daily Post reader revealed the following:
One dead, 31 arrested, 36 felony drug charges, 12 misdemeanor charges at the 2014 Electric Forest Festival. Autopsy results revealed that 20-year-old Brian Brockette died of acute methylnedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) toxicity,” also known as “Ecstasy” or “Molly.”(Click here.)
One dead, 16 arrested, 43 felony drug charges, 15 misdemeanor charges at the 2013 Electric Forest Festival. Autopsy results revealed that 21-year-old Joseph Norris died of an accidental heroin overdose.(Click here.)
One dead, 8 arrested, 45 felony drug charges, 12 misdemeanor charges at the 2012 Electric Forest Festival. Autopsy results revealed that 37-year-old Michael Benway Jr. died of heart failure after an apparent drug overdose of OxyContin and amphetamines.(Click here.)
The presenters to the Salida public – Josh Albrecht, Mike Luba, and Don Sullivan – gave no indication that their proposed Salida music festival would be an EDM festival. In fact, quite the contrary. However, the question about the music genre was not really answered, which leaves the genre open.
And then we have their eye-popping goal of 35,000 attendees. In a July 2014 article about the Newport Folk Festival (10,000 per day), the festival’s producer, Jay Sweet, talks about folk versus EDM festivals. He said that the commercial appeal of the new roots music is often overstated. “Take Mumford out of it and there’s no band that comes even close to the kind of audience an EDM (electronic dance music) band or hip-hop act has.”
I’m excited about Madison House’s proposal to Salida. But I’d like to know a few more details as to how they propose to take Salida “a couple of steps down the road.”
On November 12, I sent an email to Madison House partner Jeremy Stein:
Mr. Stein,
I saw and enjoyed the November 3 public presentation in Salida CO given by Mike Luba, Don Sullivan, and Josh Albrecht.
I have a question. Is the Salida Festival to be an EDM music festival, such as Electric Forest?
Thank you, Cynda Green
I’m still waiting for a response. I hope it will be what I want to hear.
