Reflections on My Past Life in the Transformational Festival Bubble

Is it just me or have millennials been through a lot of bubbles? When I was less cynical and willing to work for barely enough as long as it didn’t mean having a soul-sucking corporate job, I was intertwined in a beautiful blissful bubble that did end up being pretty transformative, but in unexpected ways.

They called them “transformational festivals,” a sub-genre of music festivals that proliferated in places like Northern California and Colorado in the 2000s & 2010s. For a brief moment, it seemed like we could change the world with the energy that it took to produce these events. But I’m not sure that they were ever quite the revolutionary impetus my younger optimistic self hoped they would be.

In the end, the unique mix of cultural crossovers that enabled the rise of the festival scene eventually lost their sparkle and the high wore off. The decline was hidden behind a facade of light shows and glitter for quite a while, but eventually forces greater than our once pure intentions - like capitalism, escapism, narcissism, addiction and what I call “the woo-anon pipeline” ripped open the seams of the dream.

There are still festivals – there will be as long as there are humans – but the peak is over. The heart of the culture, for me, along with my festival marketing and production career, are mostly a thing of the past. With a few rare exceptions like local events that allow me to sleep in my own bed instead of a tent, of course. I’m still down to work those events!

In the span of a decade, I went from attendee to volunteer street teamer to social media assistant to eventually running marketing for events almost year-round. For the amount of time and energy I always brought to my work, I definitely didn’t get paid very well. Most of the events I worked for were small, independently owned festivals with rag-tag teams of badasses who wore many hats. The budgets weren’t big but the creative capabilities were.

The magic we were able to create together changed and shaped me. It was one of the hardest but most fun jobs I’ve ever had. We had to solve problems creatively and quickly, make sure every detail of an entire multi-day experience went off without a hitch, and most importantly, sell enough tickets and bring in enough sponsorships to pay for the whole shebang!

That last part was definitely the most difficult, but for a brief moment when the weed money was flowing, the dream was not only possible, it was thriving. Not only did I learn a lot about marketing, operations, event production and myself during this time, but I met some of the most amazing, talented, creative and truly one of a kind people, many of whom are still in my life today, and sadly some of whom have left this realm but left their mark.

Transformational Festivals had a dark side that some were reluctant to acknowledge, it turns out the music industry in general is pretty hard. And then there was that whole “woo-anon pipeline” that we lost so many to during Covid. That was a nail in the coffin.

But if we’re measuring by beautiful friendships and incredible lessons, I won the festival scene and while it may have been a bubble that was bound to burst, that bubble created SO many positive ripples in my life and the lives of many others. I loved building dreams, collaborating on camps, making friends and of course, wearing clown noses and cat ears while doing it!

💭 There are far too many memories and moments to fully capture, but here are a collection of memories with lessons attached from my festival era. This era isn’t completely over yet, sounds like DJ Tecni is trying to drag us along to Northern Nights next month. But I definitely can’t festival like I did in my 20s. No more sleeping in a tent at Burning Man left in these bones!

🔋 Recharging: After years of working events I learned a lot about myself, like that while it’s fun to extrovert occasionally, doing it constantly drains me. I definitely prefer to be behind the scenes, and one of my favorite places to be at a festival is in camp with my homies. If you’re the type who gets overstimulated, bring some noise canceling headphones and a cozy den to retreat into next time you festival. And DRINK WATER.

👩‍🏫 Mentorship: The festivals I worked for were mostly small scrappy teams where we were all figuring things out as we went along. But I did get a chance to work with seasoned pros, especially as we rotated Marketing Directors a few times at Enchanted Forest. Shout out to people like Jonah Haas, Ami Henrich and Steve Emmerich who I had the honor of working closely with and learning event marketing wizardry from. Jonah was a steadfast captain of the Lucidity Marketing ship over many years. It was Steve’s brilliant idea to rewrite the Enchanted Forest FAQs to be hilarious so that people would actually read them, one of my favorite assignments. And Ami was in the trenches with me when tensions were high and budgets were lean, in the final days of Enchanted.

📸 Media: WOW the impressive talented media teams I have worked with, mostly through Lucidity Festival, where I met my partner Wolfbear in the Media Hub many years ago (and convinced him that I needed the Lucidity GoPro to attach to a giant hula hoop). Having galleries of photos and hard drives of video captured by a talented media team is GOLD for an event marketer and it makes creating content so much easier. I learned a lot about organizing media assets! Event photographers and videographers are a unique breed, but festival media is even more special. Expect shenanigans, plan epic shot lists, give your media people the access they need and take good care of them. And you too could end up going on Hippie Watching safaris on a Sunday afternoon at a festival - for work.

🏕️ Glamping: I grew up backpacking and roughing it, and festival camping is NOT that. Once I went to Burning Man once, I was forever an over packer and constantly saving my campmate’s asses at festivals since I was always over prepared for any misadventure. I kept a packing list spreadsheet and made some epic camp playlists (and meals) over the years. The people you camp with can make or break your festival experience, and having a good balance of fresh-eyed newbie wonder and seasoned / jaded experts is key. Choose wisely.

🎃 Pumpkin (RIP): Pumpkin was not just a house DJ, he was a phenomenon who became a movement and a huge chunk of the Lucidity community’s heart. His sets were legendary. Nick Alvarado aka Pumpkin died in a car accident in 2016, shortly before his scheduled Friday magic hour set at Lucidity. So that time slot became a Pumpkin tribute for years after in his honor, and many a magic moment was had remembering his music.

📣 Hype Squad: One of my earliest volunteer roles at festivals was as a street teamer, and a few years later I was helping manage street teams. Creating a structured system of promoter incentives that is motivating yet simple, building a way to track ROI, hold teams accountable and reward hard work, making promotion easy and assets accessible and evolving that system over the years was one of the many puzzles I helped solve.

💻 AdWINning: Lucidity’s Admin team was run by badass spreadsheet wizards, expert organizers and cat herders and I learned the power of a spreadsheet, tracking everything, and keeping solid records of your work, contacts, assets and especially the tickets you promised - PUT IT IN THE LEDGER! Other big AdWINs I learned are the power of Slack, the magic of Google Drive, and the necessity of taking detailed meeting minutes and having an organized agenda document (keeping notes is something I always excelled at as de facto team secretary in every club I was ever in).

💪 Operations: My job at most of the events I worked at was Marketing Operations - the day to day of how we sell enough tickets and gather enough sponsors to somehow make all the magic possible. Running multi-channel campaigns, direct engagement with fans, promoters, artists and collaborators, managing many platforms and relationships at once and occasionally taking on additional roles like Blog Editor, Street Team Coordinator or Workshop Curator, I literally did ALL OF THE THINGS and I think that was the title on my laminated badge a few times.

🥳 Play / Work? The lines got a bit blurred between play and work when the work was festivals, but since my job was usually marketing and promotion, by the time the party started, it was playtime. If I actually tracked every hour in the months leading up to, during and after a festival weekend, I probably made under minimum wage. But was all of that time working? I got to see amazing performances, hang with friends and make new ones, capture and help enable epic experiences, and bring people together in JOY. It was a lot of work, and to this day at every event I attend, I’ll get bored and start filming because I can’t enjoy events without having a “job.”

🤹‍♀️ Multi-Channel = Juggling: To sell out a festival, you need to reach people from all angles - printed flyers and local street teaming, paid ads, PR and earned media, partnerships, enabling a digital hype squad, promoting on artists’ channels, influencer marketing, email communications, social media content and community building… and balancing the energy and budget for all of it is exhausting. The content creation is effortless with a media team like Lucidity’s, but sometimes maximizing the ad budget took bringing in experts or learning new tools. It was always a challenge, and I learned to pick up new platforms quickly and recycle quality creative into as many formats as possible.

🤑 Festie Economies: One of the reasons the festival bubble popped is that in some areas, it was propped up by the underground weed market, from a golden era when travelers could trim for a season on an Emerald Triangle farm and make enough to fund the rest of the year’s travels and festival hopping. For a brief moment, farmers could live well and give back to their communities, and festivals were part of their distribution. The sloppy transition to a legal market in California was not kind to the small farmers, prior to that they were a big part of what helped fund festivals. Another part is the circle of festival vendors and artisans who proliferated. We lost a legend recently in Carl, founder of Third Eye Pinecones, whose festival booths were a festival within a festival, bumping with beats and buzzing with buffers as he sold pinecone jewelry that became a festie fashion must-have.

🖤 Grief and Loss: Pumpkin, Carl, and one of my personal festival icons (and one of the reasons I was hired by Lucidity), Reuben, are all tragic losses among many more in the festival community. When good people die young, or when you lose a dear colleague or community pillar, it’s a tragedy that sticks with you. Connecting with the people we miss is one of the things that glues a community together, and in a way grieving our losses openly helped bring us together. I’d rather have any of these guys back over the trauma bonding though.

⚖️ Balance and Harm Reduction: One of the shadow sides of the festival scene is escapism and addiction. The counterculture has long had a relationship with mind-altering substances, so one thing I learned from being a part of it was that I didn’t need to try everything, and I could tell a lot about the vibe of a party by what’s being passed around on the dance floor. Unfortunately in electronic music, I saw way more K and coke than I would have liked and we lost a few too many to overdoses. I may have developed a slightly judgy attitude towards some drugs, and a strong support of harm reduction resources at events. Orgs like DanceSafe and Zendo Project are doing it right. People are going to have fun at festivals, but we might as well do all we can to help them do it safely (without being buzzkills about it).

🕳️ The Woo-Anon Pipeline: That one time I posted something critical of JP Sears and blew up the Lucidity Facebook page… This shook me to realize, but a lot of the “woo woo” hippie community who preach love and light, eat vegan and practice yoga are charlatans, grifters, spiritual bypassers and deeply insecure conspiracy theorists. Ok, so I didn’t realize it from festivals, I realized it from dating a narcissist in my 20s who followed the pattern (from David Avocado Wolfe to Alex Jones - I wish I was kidding). So I definitely should have seen it coming more clearly when Covid brought out the anti-science backlash from wellness influencers and a good chunk of the festival scene. I learned that way too many of my festival community (or at least the vocal ones online) were more like my ex than like the good-hearted people I worked and played with at these events. The internet started to feel a lot more toxic during that era. Especially Facebook! Q-anon got pretty weird and I even lost some extended family to that and MAGA nonsense, I’ve dubbed what I witnessed “The Woo-anon Pipeline” and I lost too many to that rabbit hole.

💕 Love Finds a Way: When COVID shutdowns struck weeks before Lucidity in 2020, we were devastated. But the amazing community made it happen anyway, online in a weekend long live streamed marathon. The DJs still played, the performers still danced, and our team pulled it all together (ok, mostly Wolfbear, he crushed that digital production) to host Virtually Lucid in place of the live event. It was still a complicated technical production, but susceptible to wifi failures instead of sound system overloads. I really needed that to get me through Covid.

🎶 Live Music is Life: Another reminder from the Covid era - live music is a privilege I never ever want to have to give up again. I have always loved concerts, big speakers, and the vibe of a dance floor moving in unison. From intimate venues to massive outdoor stadiums, there is so much that goes into every live music experience, and my favorite part about working in festivals might have been the opportunity to experience live music from new perspectives. Like the middle of the sound booth during Tipper’s set at Enchanted Forest 2017, backstage while Ahee proposed to Ash Tree during his set at Lucidity, the green room or the lenses of the media team and the attendees. Music is one of the great unifying forces of humanity, and even though the industry has its dark spots (ahem, capitalism ruins everything), music itself is such a net positive. Being a part of making epic live music productions happen was such a joy. I miss it.

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