At FloydFest, 'Advance & adjust'
After some logistical glitches last year FloydFest organizers listened to their critics and made some changes. It looks like their customer service has paid off.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
FLOYDFEST’S July 29, 2012, sell-out wasn’t a surprise to organizers. They had scheduled quite a Sunday of music — Alison Krauss & Union Station, Bruce Hornsby, Ricky Skaggs — and they thought they were ready to handle their biggest-yet final-day crowd.
But they realized early that day that there would be trouble. They had sold a lot of single-day tickets for Sunday, and they thought their “Alpha” parking lot could handle the cars rolling off the Blue Ridge Parkway for a day at the festival.
Organizers and volunteers directed the overflow to the “Delta” lot, the traditional off-site camping lot for RVs and cars.
From there, it was “system overload,” festival co-founder Kris Hodges said in a phone call last week. It took way too long for single-day patrons to get to the festival site, and by the time the music was over, the line leading out was long and slow.
Organizers got a collective earful from a lot of customers, Hodges said. And they responded by bringing in a civil engineer to develop models on crowds and wait time in a revamped parking grid. FloydFest has also doubled the number of shuttles, he said.
“Our customer service is very important to us,” he said. “And that’s one thing we’ve been able to do each year, no matter the problem, we responded positively to whatever our customers demand.
“What that’s done is raised the bar not just on the quality of the event but the quality of the customer. I think demanding customers are your most quality-oriented customer. They’re your most loyal customer. If you can please them, you can keep them for life.”
Despite the short fuses from many in last year’s crowd, FloydFest 12 — scheduled to run from Thursday to July 28 — was announced July 15 as a sell-out.
“It obviously didn’t leave that bad a taste in our customers’ mouths,” Hodges said.
Alpha/Delta/Charlie
This was what Hodges, his partner Erika Johnson and their colleagues had always wanted. Big crowds of people out to hear music and enjoy the gorgeous sites of the event off the Blue Ridge Parkway.
But they remember advice from a friend and music festival veteran from Richmond, Mark “Captain Toast” Topazio.
“He’s been on every facet, every side of the festival business,” Hodges said of Topazio. “We learned from him long ago that in this business you have to learn to advance and adjust, or you’re not going to make it.”
So within a few weeks of the end of last year’s fest, they began planning for FloydFest 12, with plenty of adjustments.
The first parking adjustment is the most important. The main off-site multi-day parking lot, Alpha, is now much larger because it has been moved to Braswell Road — farther away from the site than its previous spot, off Black Ridge Road — making the extra shuttles increasingly important. It is right across from Delta lot, the spot to park and camp — though Delta is accessible via Helms Road.
The Charlie lot has been set up to receive on-site parking check-ins and single-day parking. It is on Rock Church Road.
This year, organizers feel the “huge” Alpha lot and the other changes will keep things flowing smoothly, Hodges said. The neighboring Delta lot includes a 24/7 food vendor, a camp store, showers, portable toilets, medical tent, Q&A center, a community fire pit and a performance area.
Hodges said that the performance area is by the shuttle landing, so musicians can entertain patrons waiting on their ride from the parking lot to the festival. The shuttles will transport camping and other outdoor gear as well, he said.
And with an estimated 12,500 to 15,500 people expected on site each day — listening to music, checking out art and crafts, meeting performers or engaging hiking, biking or kayaking — organizers are hoping that what they’ve done to beef up the logistics will be enough to make FloydFest 12 close a lot smoother.
Loaded Thursday
Last year, Sunday was the festival’s biggest music day, commercially speaking, with Krauss’ act high on the success of “Paper Airplane.” Hornsby and Skaggs — who performed together when not doing their own sets that day — Sam Bush and others brought rootsy music that has always appealed to FloydFest’s core constituency.
This year, Thursday is the commercially strongest day, with The Lumineers headlining the main stage at about 9:30 p.m.
The Lumineers have become one of pop music’s biggest surprises, with a strong, self-titled debut album and a resilient hit single, “Hey Ho.” Popular gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello will warm up that stage just days after its new album, “Pura Vida Conspiracy,” is released.
Spirit Family Reunion and Langhorn Slim & The Law will open the main stage action. Railroad Earth is scheduled for two sets that day, and EDM star Gigamesh will perform just after midnight on Friday.
“I decided to put a strong program on the front end there,” Hodges said. “Last year, we put it on the back end, with Hornsby, Skaggs, Alison Krauss. This year I decided to put it on the front end to encourage people to come in and experience the entire four days.
“And it worked. We sold a record amount of four-day passes this year. We’re really excited about it, and I want to start FloydFest off with a bang, you know, get everyone excited and just raise the level of excitement the first night so we can continue that through the four days.”
Organizers have also worked hard since the festival’s inception in 2002 to take advantage of the event’s landscape off the Blue Ridge Parkway.
A mountain bike and hiking trail stretches over about half the property’s perimeter. A disc golf course, a new backpacking trail, a guided mountain bike tour, shuttles to the nearby Little River for kayaking, a 5K foot race and fly fishing are part of the experience these days.
“There’s literally no music festival in the country that has the level of extra activity that FloydFest provides,” Hodges said. “The outdoor element is very important, near and dear to us. One of the tags I’ve been using is outdoor plus music equals FloydFest.”
Check out special coverage of FloydFest on Tad Dicken's blog at blogs.roanoke.com/cutnscratch.
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