“Playing Your First Music Festival” http://amzn.to/2bnSLkd is my mini-guide to performing at outdoor and on-site music festivals. Here are some excerpts from the first part of the book, “Advancing The Show”.

Performing at a festival involves much more than just showing up on the day. The weeks and months of planning by the organizer/promoter require each group to send them information vital to this planning process. In this part, you will be introduced to what is expected of you in this process called “advancement”.

Advance
Artists are assigned a certain amount of time on stage (“set time”) as well as start and end times for their set. Periods of time that are used to bring one band out and for the next one to take the stage are also planned. This period of time is called the time of “change,” a term you will read a lot about in this book. You will have received the order of passage, as well as other information that the festival wants you to know and which needs to be known on your part. This process of obtaining and transmitting information is called advance: the promoter "advances" the show with the band, or vice versa.

Going to a music festival
As I mentioned, changeover is the time allotted for one band to leave the stage and the next one to be ready to perform.
Changeover time at most outdoor and greenfield festivals is a leisurely 20 minutes, sometimes as short as 10 minutes. Yeah, that's right, 10 minutes. 10 minutes to remove all previous band members, crew and equipment, all your equipment, on-stage band and crew members, and monitor speakers, microphones, stage boxes and cables reset, plugged in and tested.

Entrance list and stage plan
A contributing factor to a successful changeover, and therefore a good festival gig, is ensuring that the festival sound team has an accurate, up-to-date entry list and stage plan of your go. There is a detailed explanation of input lists and how to create one on my YouTube channel.

Stage plan
Your stage plan will be just as important. Again, my video is a detailed explanation of the purpose of stage plans and how to build one, and again, your stage plan for festivals should be 100% accurate and up to date.

Rolling Risers
Rolling lifts are small platforms on wheels that are used to speed up changes of direction. The idea is to have your band's equipment pre-built on rolling risers, off stage, before changeover. Everything can be put together, mic'd up, powered up, plugged into the PA system and completely ready to just go on stage when the change begins.

Spend money on a professional.
There's so much competition at every festival, and every band has that unique chance to excite the crowd, even if they're a well-known and successful band. No group can afford to be unprepared or leave things to chance. This is why I suggest you spend a little money and hire someone who has a lot of experience working with bands at outdoor multi-band festivals with quick changeovers and the other considerations that you have discovered so far. Unfortunately, festivals are not the ideal place for amateurs or teams without opportunity. Obviously, everything I do with my books, websites and online courses is aimed at bringing the next generation of artists and teams to a professional level of success, and I always encourage giving "new blood" a chance ". However, if you want to make a good impression at your first festival, you need to spend money and pay someone who really, really knows what they're doing.

Put one person in charge
Your first thought when reading this is probably: "that's great, our manager can do all that." You're right, and in my experience it's probably a bad idea to ask your manager to run the festival. It's a workload that will take them away from other things they should be doing on your behalf, and so it's probably best done by your sound engineer, or by someone else in your group, or by a good friend, or by yourself. .

Don't assume anything
You may have read all of this so far and thought, “well, that doesn’t apply to me – I have a contract addendum coming out.” This tells the promoter exactly what I need for each show I do. And for “normal” gigs – clubs, bars and theaters – you would be right. But festivals and festival organizers are operating in less than optimal conditions and are unable to meet the usual technical, stage and hospitality demands that one would expect in a purpose-built concert hall. Outdoor festivals are built from scratch, specifically for the event, and then dismantled. And although organizers try to ensure the comfort and safety of their guests (artists, crew and audience), there are limits to what is possible (and affordable). And so, when it comes to the demands placed on your driver, well, forget it.

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