Scene Point Blank: What does Bo Diddley Plaza add to the Fest experience?
Jason Rockhill: There were a couple years at another place where you're stuck in a room, at capacity, 30 minutes the after Fest opens and you're just trading people out, one for one [as you work]. But now we have [a venue] where we can almost take everyone at Fest at one time.
Ben Pratt: And we make it really easy to come in and out if they just want to sit down. It's a beautiful park. Even if you're not there to see the band, you can just walk in and sit down.
Scene Point Blank: I've definitely done that.
Jason Rockhill: It's a really awesome pressure release valve for capacity issues all over the place. There's space for everyone to hang out. There's food there. It's not packed.
You remember before Bo Diddley? I was with Common Grounds a lot of those years. We had The Florida Theater, which was always a nightmare. The people were different every year. It was basically like we had to rebuild that. I literally had to rebuild part of the stage that was collapsing out of beams that I was taking out of the wall. It was just so poorly maintained and ran.
[It was] one in one out, because the bands are all too big to play there, really. Once we got at that point, I was just running around. I had four venues to be in charge of. And if it got crazy, all these places were our friends' venues. So I would have to run in and make sure the stage is prepped. These are friends of ours, so I care about what is happening...
Scene Point Blank: How important are the pre-shows for your work? Is that kind of a dry run for you?
Ben Pratt: We have to build it out the day before anyway -- because we can't build it in one day. It is a dry run. We like it because we've learned by failure. We've made all the mistakes.
We try to push the city to at least have our fences set up the night before. That way, it's just me and Jason and the fence company there. And then the next day, we hit the ground running with all the setup staff. And at one point, I'll break off with a sandbag crew. And then the morning of, no matter how together we are, it's still crazy.
Scene Point Blank: At what point do you start to relax? Or are you always on edge?
Ben Pratt: Once we start the setup, it's go-until-everything's done. Then we sit down and have a beer and ask, "Okay, what do we do tomorrow?" …
"We did good. This is what we need." And we get our ducks in a row for the next day.
Jason Rockhill: We know now that we have enough time to do it, and we've only really had one pre setup day where we got a lot of rain. We've been really lucky, weatherwise, every year. It's a time of year where it's not so rainy, but we know what we can pull off at this point.
We've convinced the city to give us more time in certain things. We have had years where we can get some stuff done around the edges because we couldn't get the street yet. The timelines work in our favor more now.
A couple years ago someone did an economic study where they realized whatever millions of dollars that The Fest is worth with hotel fees and how good the downtown restaurants do. In some ways it rivals football game weekends for a lot of downtown businesses. We have a positive economic impact on downtown that gives us a little more bargaining power to be like, "Hey, I think you can give us that street four more hours than because it's good for everyone. It's really hard to pull this off.
That plaza is there all year, 365 days. And no one else does any multi-day -- or really anything -- where anyone charges admission. It's all just free community events.
Ben Pratt: And, because it's free, the hotels and restaurants do well. But they're not bringing in as many people as we do.
Scene Point Blank: Last year my flight wasn't until Monday night… I'm normally not downtown at that point, but you almost couldn't tell The Fest had happened when you walked past. The teardown went that fast.
Jason Rockhill: We're usually done with time to get several drinks before bars close at 2am...
It's like, "That place doesn't look like anything happened in there at all." Other than some stacks of stuff that needs to be picked up by vendors because those people don't work late on Sundays.
Ben Pratt: Several times, we have torn down everything and had a table set with the beers out of the green room and some of the last bands that played there were like, "Now you're just drinking in a park."
They turned around and realized that there's nothing there anymore and they are standing in the middle of the park.
Jason Rockhill: Knowing what you can pull off over a four-day span that no one else is willing to do -- and maybe we're stupid for still doing it -- but you feel like you pulled a fast one on the squares. We did it and we keep doing it and we're going to keep doing it until they stop us. It's a community effort and it's a lot of steps.
Scene Point Blank: How many bands do you get to see outside of Bo Diddley during Fest? Do you get out or do you just live within those walls that you built?
Jason Rockhill: I will run away to see any J. Robbins related band. For the last two years I've been training people to take over some of my door responsibilities and this year will be my test to see if I feel comfortable leaving. I'm hoping that I'll be wandering off, but every year [it's]: "I'll be back in 40 minutes!"
Ben Pratt: There tend to be one or two bands that you just can't miss. But we pretty much like the same music. If I know when he's leaving, there's no way I'm going.
Jason Rockhill: I still hate myself for not going to see Scream two years ago. I just couldn't get away. You miss stuff, but you get to see a lot of stuff.
Scene Point Blank: How many times have you come close to a disaster, where you're afraid you're going to have to pull the plug on something?
Jason Rockhill: I don't think we've come even remotely close to full-on disaster, right?
One year the sprinklers came on over the sound booth and Iron Chic's merch. But it was just an annoying thing and some very awkward haggling over costs that didn't involve me at all.
Ben Pratt: The bailiff or whoever watches the front of the courthouse next door -- obviously he is not of the pay grade to be a part of any meetings...We literally have a time where we are allowed to start soundcheck. Courts know it. We've rented that time and that's when we can start making noise.
I was around the back and this guy comes up to the sound booth with his hand on his gun, screaming at them. And then I run up and now we're yelling at each other and I'm telling him to get his hand off his gun and to call his boss. But again, we were never in danger, but it kind of an optic, standing with his hand on his gun.
Jason Rockhill: We haven't had this holy shit, we dodged a bullet kind of catastrophic failure. We haven't had a lightning storm. We haven't had to make a public address announcement about please take shelter or whatever kinds of stuff happens in the world...We've been pretty fortunate that there hasn't been that oh my god…I thought we were done thing.
But you have to be prepared for it. You have to have thought about what, "Would I do," because that's just the nature of the world and insurance and all that stuff.
Ben Pratt: Every one of those things is crossing our mind the whole weekend. We're thinking, "What could possibly happen?"
[But doing that,] you're just making yourself crazy. It's not going to help.
Jason Rockhill: I feel part of the reason we don't have a problem with people bringing stuff into the venue is because we're checking bags. Point of entry is your first and most important line of defense because you're stopping belligerent people, stuff in bags, whatever, from even walking in the door to make a problem for people inside. You just have to have rules, pay attention to them, apply them evenly across everybody -- and some people can't handle that.
We prepare for the worst but we expect everyone to be housebroken and behave themselves.
Scene Point Blank: There's a Futurama line: if you do something right, nobody knows you've done anything at all. That's sort of the gist I get about running Bo Diddley operations and buildout.
Jason Rockhill: I want us to be invisible. I don't want to correct anyone's behavior. I don't want to take a bag away from anyone. I want you to be an adult and be able to behave in public. I don't be enforcing anything on you. I just want you to do your thing. Go see a band and then leave here and see another band at another place and then come back here for a little bit and eat. It's not about control, it's that there has to be some rules for public safety and, as long as you're within those boundaries and you're reasonably respectful to the person next to you, you're good.
Ben Pratt: There are certain times when we're dealing stuff and I tell Tony something that just happened and he's like, "What!?"
"We took care of it. It's done."
We've seen it all, so we can pretty much keep our composure.
Jason Rockhill: Now. [Laughs.]
I want to believe I've chilled out.
[Laughing.]
Ben Pratt: We take ownership of that we do. We're critical. We finally bought a proper handicap ramp and we are amped on that. We see people that need one and they'll just figure it out themselves -- but it was cool for the people that come every year in wheelchairs to see that we saw the problem and fixed it.
Scene Point Blank: What is your favorite thing to overhear in the crowd?
Jason Rockhill: There's a little bit of satisfaction when the whole place empties out not hearing complaints.
We've set up the way people come in and out to be very seamless.
Ben Pratt: It is awesome when we're hearing bands -- friends or otherwise -- talk about how different it is and how special it is to be there. That's coming from on stage and walking around. That feels cool to us.
Also, at the end when people are walking out and they just saw the band they loved and they're just thanking anyone they see for putting it on. To know that all the stress just led to a lot of people having a carefree time and not feeling like they're at a big festival but still get treated right. We let them focus on the band and zone in on that. It's a feeling. You see a lot of people you don't know buying into the whole feeling we've been able to cultivate.
