Playing Your First Music Festival: A Mini-Guide to Performing at Open-Air, Green-Field, Music Festivals

By Andy Reynolds

Make Your First Festival Show Rock!
Are you playing your first green-field music festival or outdoor show soon? Not sure how it all works on the other side of the ‘Artists Only’ sign? Don’t worry; help is at hand.
My name is Andy Reynolds, a concert tour manager & live sound engineer, and I have written this mini-guide (50 pages), to give you my tips on making the most of your first festival slot. I have toured with bands and singers for over 25 years, and work on loads of open-air, ‘green-field’ type festivals, such as Glastonbury, Roskilde, Coachella, and Bonnaroo, each summer. I know how bands can have a good show at a festival - and how they can mess up their chances by not being prepared for that all -important music festival slot.
It is very important to your musical career that your music festival appearances happen with no hitches, dramas or technical problems. Audiences go to music festivals to see and hear great bands. If they happen to catch you, playing a great set and full of confidence, they are more likely to become fans of you and your music. You should remember there is so much competition at each festival, and every band has that one chance to ignite the crowd. No band can afford to be ill-prepared or leave things to chance, But you need not worry about any of that - you will hit the stage looking like a pro after reading this book!
After reading, ‘Playing Your First Music Festival’, you will know about:
The differences between a venue show and your performance at a festival
Preparing your live set for ultimate impact
How to use your guest tickets to attract industry taste-makers
The don’ts and dos of selling merchandise at festivals
Make sure you get booked for next year’s festivals
...and much more.
This is a short guide which will give you the low down on how a modern, open-air festival works, what you need to do to prepare for your slot, and how to make the most of it while you are at the festival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andy Reynolds
• Release date: Jan 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463695050

Andy Reynolds

Andy Reynolds has worked as an international concert tour manager and audio engineer for over 20 years. He has toured continuously during this time, working on an average of 200 shows per year. Andy has worked for such bands as George Fitzgerald, Maribou State, The Pierces, Maverick Sabre, All-American Rejects, House of Pain, Machine Head, Nightmares On Wax, Pavement, Roots Manuva, Super Furry Animals, Skunk Anansie, Squarepusher, and The White Stripes. He has worked with bands on tours by such acts as U2, Whitney Houston, Manic Street Preachers, and Foo Fighters. His touring experience encompasses stadiums, arenas, theatres, pubs, bars, clubs, outdoor festivals, rooftops, subway stations, cruise ships, mountainsides, and very, very muddy fields. Andy is also the author of ‘The Tour Book – How to get Your Music on the Road’, the musicians definitive guide to gigging and touring, and 'Playing Your First Music Festival', a gudie to performing at green-field, open-air, music festivals. Andy lectures to students of music management and live audio engineering at the University of West London/London College of Music, Buckinghamshire New University, Cato Academy, and Access To Music.

Book preview

Introduction

I first want to say, 'Congratulations' to you on achieving a big milestone in your musical career - your first festival show. Whether you've won a battle of the bands type competition, or have been gigging furiously to where festival promoters have noticed you, taking the stage for the first time at a festival can be an amazing, fulfilling, memory -making, career-boosting highlight - if you don't mess it up.

I spend my summers visiting festivals around the world, working with the bands, singers, turntablists and musicians booked to perform at those various festivals.(To clarify, I'm talking about 'green-field', or open-air, multi-stage festivals in this book, and the special circumstances that operate when trying to mix music with mud, or dust). Some festivals are huge, (Glastonbury, Coachellea, Roskilde, for instance), some are smaller, or just getting started (Pickathon, Backwoods, or Y-Not). It doesn't matter if the festival is big or small though, I often see bands mess it up when they come to perform, because they are not prepared for the unique way an open-air festival operates. And, because every festival I've ever worked at has a similar way of doing things, I can tell you what you need to do to lessen your chances of messing it up. In fact, if you follow even some of this advice, you will have a fantastic show.

Part 1 - Advancing The Show

Performing at a festival involves a lot more than turning up on the day. The weeks and months of planning by the organiser/promoter require that each band sends them information vital to that planning process. In this part I will introduce you to what festivals need from you as part of that process -called the 'advance'.

The 'Advance'

Even the smallest of festivals operate to strict timings - the conditions of the organiser being able to hold the festival in the first place relies on the fact that all 'noise' (glorious music to you and me) will finish at a certain time each day. That means the organisers have to get all the bands they have invited to play, on stage, on time, and that the festival finishes when it should.

Festival organisers therefore draw a schedule or 'running order' up for each stage, and for each day of the festival. They allocate acts an amount of time on stage ('set time') and the start and finish times of their set. The promoters also plan time to get one band off, and the next one on stage. We call this time period the 'change over' time, a term you will read about a lot in this book. You can see an example stage running order in figure 101.

The festival organisers will have sent you the running order, along with other information the festival wants you to know about, and that needs to know about from you. We call this process of getting and giving information the 'advance' - the promoter 'advances' the show with the band, or vice versa. It is VITALLY important you engage with the advance process for each festival, well ahead of time and, if nothing else, read and understand the running order.

Figure 101: A typical festival stage running order. This is from a stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, in California

The Changeover At A Music Festival.

We are going ahead of ourselves here (you've not even got in the practice room yet, let alone arrived at the festival to perform), but basically, you having a successful gig on the day revolves around being ready for that change over time.

As I mentioned, changeover is the time allocated to get one band offstage, and the next one on, ready to perform. Bands do not get a proper sound check for festival performances (unless they are headlining), the first time you set foot on the stage is during the changeover, straight before you are about to perform. Changeover time at most open air, green field festivals is a leisurely 20 minutes, sometimes being as little as 10 minutes (see figure 201). Yip, that's right, 10 minutes. 10 minutes to get all the previous band's people, crew and equipment