Zepfest 2011

[Hotplant]

Zepfest 2011 is cancelled.

I would like to share my thoughts about Zepfest 2011 but suffice to say if one can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.

Plenty of thoughts thrown out over at RO.

[SteveAJones]

Plenty of thoughts thrown out over at RO.

Yeah, sometimes I take my gloves off in the unofficial forums. I blasted the organizers on FBO as well.

[Reggie29]

Interesting piece about an up and coming Zep film.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2011/05/16/the-disintegration-of-zep-fest/

[SuperDave]

Thanks for the article link Reggie. This festival may have been doomed from the beginning. Too bad.

[SteveAJones]

ZEP FEST 2011 CANCELLATION

17 May 2011

In light of the collapse of the Zep Fest 2011, I would like to take this opportunity to address the cancellation of the event and my standing within it all.

To say I was shocked when the Zep Fest web site stated the event was cancelled late on Sunday night is an absolute understatement.

It was devastating news.

To backtrack: I was offered the opportunity to appear as a guest speaker at the event back in November last year. Thus began a long running dialogue between myself with the Zep Fest Organiser Mark Boudreau. His ambitious plans for a large gathering of Zep fans together with an array of bands looked an exciting prospect. It also offered a commercial opportunity for me to spread the TBL word, offer TBL products and generally promote what I do. Having had major experience in running such events (the 1992 and 1994 UK weekend Conventions and many more one day affairs), I was also more than happy to support the event and offer my services this would eventually lead to my involvement being branded somewhat presumptuously as 'Premier Guest Speaker and host''.

I also offered the TBL website as a forum for updates on the Zep Fest 2011 though I have to say little in the way of press releases came out to indicate the progress of the event.

It's easy to look back in hindsight and say the thing was flawed from the off. Many people have now come forward saying they had a bad feeling about it all.

Being a trusting sort and eager to meet with like minded fans and spread the TBL word, I stuck with it. I felt I could genuinely bring something to the event enliven it with the UK contingent and enlighten the assembled with my thoughts and memories of chronicling the world of Led Zeppelin over five decades.

Of course there was a commercial angle and the opportunity to sell some stock that is what I do my part of the bargain is to produce quality TBL products that will enhance the attachment we all have for this great, great band that continues to provide so much pleasure in so many ways.

Call me naive but my intentions were genuine. I tend to see the good in people and despite some very vague promises, as the weeks rolled on, I hoped for the best. I found Mark B. an affable guy loaded with good intentions but his ability to offer his assurances that everything would happen as he said it would , soon began to be in question. By his own admission he was getting bogged down in it all.

In recent weeks it was evident there were major problems in the organising of the event notably with the lack of firm travel commitments being made to the artists and guests appearing (of which I was one). Things began to escalate last week with the withdrawal of Led Zepagain ,some of the guest speakers and last weekend Dread Zeppelin.

Throughout this period I continued to try and take an upbeat optimistic view- as can be noted on my diary/blog entry of last Friday.

Not least because the TBL crew here namely Gary Foy, Cliff Hilliard, Tom Locke, Phil Harris, Michaela Firth and Mark Harrison had made a commitment to attend the event to support the TBL cause and booked flights in the process. I also made commitment to shipping a large allocation of TBL stock to New York in preparation, including a quantity of my new book Led Zeppelin Feather In The Wind -Over Europe 1980. I also spent many hours planning my involvement, talking to Mark B. on the phone and arranging my schedule so as to be available during the event. All this impacted greatly on an already packed workload with the production of the book and TBL29 magazine and various other things going on.

My last conversation with Mark B. was last Tuesday when he assured me flight details for myself would follow. Up to Sunday nothing had happened. Late on Sunday the news began filtering through confirmed by the cancellation signs on the Zep Fest site.

That I had to find out of the cancellation in this cold hard way was a bitter pill to swallow. Given the rapport I had built with Mark B. - I felt I deserved an explanation. At the very least an email prior to the announcement putting me in the loop. That did not happen.

So yes it was a total shock.

Having been involved in running conventions of this nature, I can sympathize greatly on the difficulties involved and indeed have had some bitter experiences myself. I therefore share with Mark B. the disappointment that the event had to be cancelled as I have no doubt he put many man hours into it and wanted it to work. The cold hard reality is that his strategy proved unworkable and unethical. I would presume the ticket sales did not cover the costs of running the event. In effect I think he would agree, his plans were vastly over ambitious and there were too many broken promises.

And now comes the inevitable fall out.

Naturally for the purchasers of tickets and those that had made prior travel arrangements who I feel very sorry for.

Closer to home, the TBL crew who placed faith in the event and committed to supporting my input, no doubt influenced by my enthusiasm for it and the belief we could make commercial inroads for TBL and have something of a ball in doing so. I feel greatly embarrassed that their faith proved in vein.

And for myself. Now having to rearrange for my stock to be returned and well out of pocket financially. That is of huge concern because this is what I do for a living and anyone being self employed will know of the financial concerns when things go wrong.

And things have gone wrong to the detriment of myself and my family indeed quite a few logistics about attending Zep Fest comprised my family life here, such as not being able to see my daughter Sam as often as I would have liked during this hectic period.

At the time of writing no explanation has come via Mark B. I have offered him the forum of the TBL web site to explain the reasons behind the cancellation and await further developments.

Some of the TBL crew willl still travel over to salvage something from it all. Me? I won't be going anywhere. I'll have to dust myself down and move on from what has turned into a very unsavoury episode.

Trust, integrity and morale standing are values I hold very dear and the handling of the Zep Fest Event often brought those ethics into question perhaps at times by association at the expense of the good name of the TBL brand.

For my part I wanted it to succeed. I did what I could for that to happen. It was out of my hands that it didn't.

Life's too short for huge recriminations and what is done is done. We all have to move on. Zep Fest 2011 did not happen the opportunity to spread the TBL world overseas at the event rescinded.

However I have some fantastic products on offer this late spring/early summer. The new book Led Zeppelin Feather In the Wind -Over Europe 1980 and the accompanying limited edition t-shirt plus the new Tight But Loose magazine issue 29.

In the next couple of days we will launch the full details on the TBL site of how to obtain these items, all produced to enhance your experience and enjoyment of the world of Led Zeppelin.

That's my part of the bargain which I will do my best to uphold.

Your part is to invest in them. Your continued support of all things TBL is appreciated in advance.

Dave Lewis

May 17th, 2011

http://www.tightbutl...=1#comment-5296

[boogie woogie]

I thought the ticket prices were too expensive.

I came here to this site to get some type of insight as to what happened. Thanks to Dave Lewis for his insight. Dave sorry to hear about your inconveniences.

[SteveAJones]

Remuneration Breakdown: Why Zep Fest Was Canceled

Posted by Jonathan L. Fischer and Ally Schweitzer on May. 18, 2011 at 5:57 pm

An unusal announcement popped up this week on The Yardbirds' website: "We have heard NUMEROUS rumors THAT ZepFest, WHICH IS SCHEDULED TO BE HELD at National Harbor, the weekend of May 27, 28, and 29, HAS BEEN CANCELED. HOWEVER, DESPITE OUR REPEATED REQUESTS, THE PROMOTERS HAVE FAILED TO CONFIRM OR DENY THE RUMORS."

For months, the Yardbirds have been booked to play Zep Fest, this month's tribute to Led Zeppelin, the legendary titans of 1970s hard rock. They received a deposit from the event's organizers. "The band is ready and willing and able to play," Mike Oberman, who manages the modern-day iteration of the British blues-rock band that launched the careers of guitar gods Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, declared earlier in the week. The Yardbirds were simply waiting for their airfare.

But no one will be flying the band to the D.C. area on Memorial Day weekend. Originally scheduled to take place at National Harbor and the complex's Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, Zep Fest is now off. Not that anyone's told Oberman or his clients. "WE AWAIT WORD FROM THE ZEPFEST PROMOTERS," reads the note on the band's site. "ONLY THEY CAN CONFIRM OR DENY WHETHER the rumours OF ZEPFEST'S DEMISE are TRUE OR untrue."

The Yardbirds aren't alone. As of Tuesday, the Gaylord hotel was still in the dark. So was MissionTix, one of the firms handling ticket sales for the festival. So was Jeff Krulik, the local documentarianand well-established chronicler of heavy-metal fandomwho was slated to show a rough cut of a new film at Zep Fest. Krulik says he hasn't heard from organizers in at least six weeks.

Mark Boudreau, Zep Fest's main promoter, says fans will have their tickets refunded. As for the talent, he says he's still spreading the bad news.

The performers have a right to be surprised. The festival had been in the works since last year. Despite a few red flags, it looked like it was still a go until this week. That's when letters written in terse legalese reached performersat least some of them. Everyone else found out via the notice on Zep Fest's website. Though tickets will be refunded, fans who bought airplane tickets to travel to the show are out of luck. MissionTix, likewise, says it may take a loss on refunds. Boudreau says he and the festival's financiers will lose much of their investment (though he won't say how much that is).

As with any business, new rock festivals have a high rate of failure. Witness the recently aborted DC Music Fest at Yards Park. But just like Led Zeppelina band whose shamanistic performances once fueled rumors of SatanismZep Fest's cancellation remains mysterious. In Boudreau's telling, the collapse wasn't just due to the box-office problems that typically doom over-ambitious promoters. (Tickets were originally set around $300 for a three-day pass, and eventually slashed in half). As for the real culprit, Boudreau doesn't offer much elaboration. "We're in the midst of the shutdown of the engine with notifications and such, so it's not something I can really get into in grave, grave detail," he says.

Zep Fest, of course, was based on a familiar concept: a nostalgia-fueled rock festival for baby boomers with cash to spend and memories to rekindle. Like many such eventssuch as Abbey Road on the River, a Beatles-themed festival that took place last September at National HarborBoudreau's would've featured tribute acts playing covers and dressing the part. But that wasn't all: The contemporary incarnations of '60s bands The Yardbirds (which no longer has any members named Page, Clapton, or Beck) and Vanilla Fudge (an influence on Zeppelin) were set to headline. David "Honeyboy" Edwards, a legend of the Delta blues, was booked. So were bands who were influenced by Zeppelin, like Zebra, the '80s hard rock band once known for singles like "Tell Me What You Want" and "Who's Behind the Door?" Speakers, like Richard Cole, once Led Zeppelin's road manager, and Dave Lewis, a Led Zeppelin historian, were on the slate. It was a rock festival, true, but it was also a history lesson.

Though he's cagey about certain other details, Boudreau cites a very specific number when asked how many fans he'd hoped to attract: 15,200 per day. But he admits there wasn't a huge frenzy to attend the festival, no matter how many factors contributed to its demise. That might be the biggest lesson of Zep Fest: that short of an actual Led Zeppelin reunionwhich happened in 2007 at a one-off gig, to great fanfarepeople no longer care very much about "the biggest band in the world."

What happens when a music festival collapses? While marquee bands like The Yardbirds and Vanilla Fudge had contracts and guaranteed deposits, members of some smaller groups say they didn't have anything on paper, just verbal agreements. "They just didn't live up to their part of the bargain," says James Elliott, who manages the L.A.-based tribute band Led Zepagain. "They didn't want to pay us." Elliott says he agreedverballyto an "all-in" deal in which the band agreed to pay travel costs, provided they were paid in advance. The money was supposed to come six months ago, Elliott says; a week and a half ago, when it still hadn't arrived, Elliott says he finally decided to pull out.

Boudreau declined to elaborate on conversations with Elliott or other bands. Asked if he had bitten off more than he could chew by booking around 50 acts, Boudreau says: "Given the circumstances, some of the acts that are less well-known, maybe they bit off more than they could chew," he says. "Maybe they expected a big payday."

Boudreau says a number of factors led the organizers to cancel the show. Returning to the automotive metaphor, he says: "If you have an engine and it has eight cylinders and only five are firing on time and three are only working on an intermittent basis, the car will still run…but you're not going to win some kind of race with it."

Some of those factors, based on conversations with Boudreau, the venues, and the ticket sellers: sales of tickets (Boudreau wouldn't give specifics), rooms booked at the National Harbor's flagship hotel (convention events like Boudreau's must commit to filling a certain number of rooms in order to book the place), and the cost of airfare for talent (an attempt to broker a sponsorship deal with an airline didn't work out, Boudreau says). Boudreau also alludes to some sort of municipal licensing snafu, but declines to offer any details.

Joe Loverde, the founder of MissionTix, a Baltimore firm, won't say how many tickets his company sold for Zep Fest. "It wasn't as large [a number] as the promoters had once planned," he says.

Amie Gorrell, a spokeswoman for Gaylord, says the hotel has been in weekly contact with Boudreau since last fall. She says the event had made very few hotel-room bookings, but says Boudreau assured officials that ticket sales were strong. For such events, room bookings don't tend to surge until the final two to three weeks before an event, Gorrell says, so the hotel wasn't worried. And last week, a member of Boudreau's team did a walk-through. The loss won't be huge for Gaylord but Gorrell says she hasn't heard from Boudreau since the festival was canceled.

Boudreau is 50 and lives in Arlington. According to a November 2009 copy of his résuméforwarded by a group he performed some contractual work forhe has a long history in "guerilla marketing," managing marketing tours on a contract basis for brands like Boost Mobile and Maxwell House. He's tour-managed for musical tribute acts. In the mid-'90s, he ran the restaurant Las Cruces on 14th Street NW as well as a catering company. Last year, he was contracted as an on-site operations manager for Abbey Road on the River, which took place in September, also at Gaylord. Boudreau says he has experience planning large events, musical and otherwise, but declines to further discuss his work history.

Gaylord's Gorrell and Rocell Viniard, National Harbor's director of marketing, say Boudreau was vetted, and that throughout the planning stages they'd had no concerns. Like every person interviewed for this article, neither knew how Boudreau was financing the festivalsome referred to a group of backers based in New York. Again, Boudreau isn't offering any sunshine.

Asked if National Harbor would work with Boudreau again, Viniard says: "Probably not at this point."

It turns out that planning a nostalgia event is hard workjust as hard as booking a roster of contemporary acts. Gary Jacob, the founder of Abbey Road on the River, started his festival in Louisville 10 years ago, and added the D.C. version in 2010. "Anything can happen at these outdoor events," he says. "What you have to do is put systems in place…so that the only X factors are weather and what P.T. Barnum said: 'If the people do not want to come, you can't stop them.'" When that happens, Jacob says, you have to scale back your production.

"When we came to Washington, I cut our expectations in half from what Louisville does," Jacob says. Last year's local version of Abbey Road on the River had 80 bands and about 15,000 festival-goers, he says.

Zep Fest, with about 50 acts booked, was shooting for about the same attendance. The only problem: A group dressed up in Sgt. Pepper's outfits is a much easier sell than obscure bluesmen and skiffle bands, no matter what bearing they had on Jimmy Page's guitar solos. Especially if tickets are $300.

Boudreau, who listened to Led Zeppelin as a kid and through it eventually discovered the blues, may simply have been too much of a fan for his own good.

"I wanted people to understand Pinetop Perkins...and witness the power of Vanilla Fudge," he says. "Nobody wanted [Zep Fest] to happen more than I did."

http://www.washingto...t-was-canceled/

[Lake of Shadows]

It's a damn shame.

My only consolation is that I discovered several weeks ago that I would probably not be able to go... before I bought a ticket.

[Silver Rider]

Boudreau, who listened to Led Zeppelin as a kid and through it eventually discovered the blues, may simply have been too much of a fan for his own good.

"I wanted people to understand Pinetop Perkins...and witness the power of Vanilla Fudge," he says. "Nobody wanted [Zep Fest] to happen more than I did."

http://www.washingto...t-was-canceled/

RIP Pinetop Perkins

I guess he's hard to replace.

[Silver Rider]

Sad to hear of Pinetop Perkins' passing recently. It would have been great to have seen him.

Honeyboy Edwards will be there, though.

R

May he RIP.