Source: Hopscotch Music Festival
Hopscotch Music Festival, a massive attraction in downtown Raleigh each year, is filled with all the music genres one can imagine. Raleigh will play host to the festival Sept. 10-12.
Its inception came at the mind and hands of Greg Lowenhagen in September 2010. During this time, Lowenhagen wrote for the INDY Week, and he had a desire to highlight bands from the Triangle area. Although Hopscotch has reached a national, and even international level of interest, the festival still features several bands from North Carolina.
“The idea from the start was to integrate Triangle musicians, and, also, it’s grown to the coast of North Carolina, the mountains, Charlotte, other places,” Lowehnhagen said. “The local aspect has been a huge part of what we’ve done from the beginning, and we haven’t strayed from that one bit.”
Nathan Price, Hopscotch talent coordinator, said about one-third of the bands they book are from North Carolina or the mid-Atlantic area.
“We do that on purpose for sure,” Price said. “That’s where we’re from. I go to a lot of shows with all these bands all year round, so we definitely want to make sure everyone’s a part of it come September.”
The process of planning Hopscotch is not an easy process, according to Lowenhagen and Price. After about two weeks of reviewing and accounting the music festival, the Hopscotch team starts planning the next Hopscotch. Having to contact, coordinate, schedule and organize about 140 bands, along with the 12 venues and other Hopscotch events, is a lot for a staff to do, especially with only two full-time and 15 part-time employees, working inside of Lowenhagen’s kitchen.
“It’s kind of like doing a giant puzzle every year,” Lowenhagen said. “It’s kind of fun, and it’s kind of frustrating, just like a puzzle.”
Once the lineup is decided, the staff releases it between mid-April and mid-May. Then by mid-summer, they release the Hopscotch schedule. However, the lineup can still change a lot, according to Lowenhagen. For instance, experimental noise rock band Deerhunter was one of this year’s headliners for the music festival. A change of plans for the Hopscotch team occurred when Deerhunter canceled their performance.
“We booked Deerhunter … pretty far in advance, and we announced it early in the year,” Price said. “So things changed between when we announced the lineup and when they were planning on touring. [Originally] they thought they were going to be doing some festivals, but they decided to hold off, and we were lucky enough to have Ought step in, and they seem really excited to come play.”
In order to choose which 140 bands perform at the three-day music festival, Lowenhagen, Price and the other staff must sift through thousands of submissions throughout the year. Not only are the staff of Hopscotch reaching out to managers, bands and artists, but the bands and artists reach out to the Hopscotch staff as well.
“I’d say we get 1,500 to 2,000 submissions a year from different bands … sometimes five to eight submissions a day,” Lowenhagen said. “It’s not like Prince has called and said, ‘Hey, we want to play at Hopscotch,” but there are many, many bands now that are familiar with the festival. They’ve either heard about it from friends who have played there before, or they’re aware through the Internet or the world out there. So there tends to be a pretty positive reaction if we contact someone asking them to be a part of it.”
One strategy the Hopscotch team uses while choosing the artists for the festival is looking at an artist’s album release, according to Price.
“We try to book bands that are releasing records leading up to the festival,” Price said. “So this year we have Bully, who we booked at Slims headlining Thursday night, and as it got closer, it kind of became apparent that they were maybe too big for that space and that we might have overbooked and created a line out the door, so Greg was able to get them to come a day early and play Design at the free block party.”
However, the planning, coordinating and organizing certainly does not stop for Lowenhagen, Price and the rest of the staff once Hopscotch begins. If anything, it can get even more intense, according to Lowenhagen.
“You can only be at one place at once,” Lowenhagen said. “There’s so much going on with the 12 venues, and then the Convention Center, and all the Day Party locations and all these things. But really, you’re just focused on keeping the bands on time, keeping people safe, making sure everyone seems like they’re having fun. We set this environment that hopefully is a blank canvas for everyone to go crazy and have a good time at.”
Lowenhagen said that Hopscotch Music Festival’s main goal is to become sustainable.
Hopscotch has never been in a place that it’s automatically going to happen the following year, so we just put all of our energy into the actual weekend, hope that it works out enough so that I don’t lose enough money to stop doing it,” Lowenhagen said. “It would be fun to plan 2016 knowing that 2017 is going to happen. We’ve never done that … so that’s why it feels carefree, weird and risky. It’s just fun the weekend we have it.”
With all of the running around the Hopscotch staff does during the music festival, Lowenhagen and Price said they aren’t actually able to attend many of the concerts, but that doesn’t take the fun out of the festival for them.
“I think the most fun part comes from knowing other people are having fun,” Lowenhagen said. “Everyone seems like they’re having an excellent time during Hopscotch, and I think … we all feed off that energy and have fun …. For the most part, it’s not about seeing music during Hopscotch; we have the rest of the year to try to see music. It’s more about making sure everyone else is having a good time.”
To listen to the whole interview with Lowenhagen and Price, visit www.blog.wknc.org.