The Hopscotch Music Festival, founded by Greg Lowenhagen in 2009, will feature 175 bands and talent from Raleigh-based to international icons, all performing in a single weekend—this year the weekend of Sept. 5.
“I started Hopscotch when I was working at The Independent Weekly, the Triangle’s weekly newspaper,” said Lowenhagen, “It came about when I asked some friends who were venue owners and musicians about what big weekend of bigger national, international and local festivals I should put on my calen- dar but they said there wasn’t anything.”
Though the festival is in its fourth year, Lowenhagen said the original vision still remains.
“The vision was exactly what it is now. It’s meant to be a weekend of music for local bands and bands that come from out-of-town to Raleigh, so we can show downtown-Raleigh off,” Lowenhagen, said. “We make sure to mix the local and national acts but we maintain 35 to 40 percent of the bands in the festival to be local.”
According to Lowenhagen, putting this show together is a lot of hard work.
“It’s basically a year’s worth of work, we start planning around two weeks after, and we wrap up the finances for that year’s festival a week after the event,” said Lowenhagen, “then we start looking forward to next year’s.”
Lowenhagen and his team of “two and a half” members—including full-time employee and general manager Becky Ramino and part-timer and co-director Grayson Currin—do mostly all of the behind-the-scenes work. This includes working with sponsors, booking agents, bands, venues, the city of Raleigh, police officers and private security.
“We are still a bit of a start up business. If you look at our model, we pour most of our money into talent and then there is a wide variety of other costs that come along with producing an event this size,” Lowenhagen said. “We don’t have a lot of money left over to pay ourselves because we have to pay staff, so we try and do it with as few people as possible.”
The festival requires 15 employees the week leading up to the event and another 300 employees for the weekend itself. Two hundred and eighty volunteers also devote some of their weekend to making sure the festival runs smoothly.
According to Josh Poole, a junior in mechanical engineering, a lot of people volunteer so they don’t have to pay for their tickets.
Tickets for the festival ranges from 40 to 180 dollars, Lowenhagen explained.
“Basically we have two main forms of income—we sell tickets and we sell sponsorships, that’s a big part of it,” Lowenhagen said.
Lowenhagen said the team does not take in much revenue between after the event until about January.
“The majority of the revenue goes to the talent, so it takes a good amount of money to book 175 artists,” Lowenhagen said, “All of the bands at Hopscotch get paid; over half of our budget is going to the bands.”
According to Iggy Cosky, front man for The Lollipops, his band is getting $150 for playing Hopscotch. He considers the publicity from playing main stage a part of their payment.
“I think the most we got paid was like 500 bucks at Kings, but sometimes we will play a show and only make like 75 bucks and split it five ways,” Cosky said. “Well I mean we typically get paid in beer and fun times and high fives … Grayson [Currin] and Greg [Lowenhagen] are just giving us great opportunities. They have a festival that showcases local talent but also mixes in national talent making a big festival and I think it’s really beautiful.”
According to Lowenhagen, a lot of the costs aside from booking bands are paying the off-duty police officers, getting security for the main stage and paying those extra employees—then paying themselves a bit.
Lowenhagen explained that he and Currin choose the bands that perform according to the same process they have used since year one.
“We just look across the board and see what is going on in music now, we look at what is going on in the Triangle, who’s producing records and who’s actively working.”
According to Lowenhagen, a wide variety of different acts perform at Hopscotch including everything from hip-hop and electronic to metal and folk and indie rock—including a band called the Lollipops.
Front man of The Lollipops, Iggy Cosky, explained that his band owes their spot on the main stage to both Greg Lowenhagen and Grayson Currin.
“Grayson [Currin] was the one who had confidence in us to put us on the main stage, he is really supportive,” Cosky said, “He is a force to be reckoned with, but he is also really rad.”
Cosky writes all of the music for the band and said the band is headed in a new musical direction.
“When we first started it was kind of like bedroom-pop but I think we are going to try to make it sound a bit bigger,” Cosky said. “I have been really obsessed with Prince and so we are trying to incorporate some funky aspects into the new songs.”
The Lollipops are currently recording a full band record, which will be out after Hopscotch, as opposed to their previous records, which Cosky recorded by himself.
“When I was doing it by myself it was really two dimensional, so it will sound a lot bigger, and we will capture that on the record,” Cosky said, “I kind of want to make it a bit more schizophrenic—keep it catchy but do something weird.”
According to Cosky, he wants his band to be successful but stay grounded.
“I do want to be successful, but also I don’t want to get a big head because when people think that they are locally successful, they think that they are really hot,” Cosky said, “and when you turn into a jerk, your songs start to suck.”
Cosky expressed his thanks to their supporters and his hope for the future.
“Raleigh has always been so supportive and so sweet and come out to the show’s, and it’s like one big family that’s also a party,” said Cosky, “N.C. State especially has been very supportive with WKNC. I just hope that we continue to play more shows and go on more tours and realize more material and just keep moving with a good heart.”
Lowenhagen explains his purpose and expressed what he would like the attendees to get out of the festival.
“It’s really simple, we just want people to have a really great time and we want people to walk away saying that that was the best weekend of the year,” Lowenhagen said. “I want them to want to come back and put it on their calendar again and return the following year.”
