13167756:Mr.LemonPie said:
Alright looking for a bit of advice here...
I've never been to a festival in the US and am not really familiar with the scene at all, but all of the festivals I've been to in other countries have been the best times I've ever had.
Next summer I want to just go festival to festival. Has anyone done this? The plan is sort of to buy a camper-van for transport/sleeping and hit as many as possible. Obviously financially it isn't very viable but I think it wouldn't be too hard if we were able to get free tickets for all the festivals. Does anyone know about cleaning up after the fests or getting in on entertainer tickets? Is there any other way to get free tickets to festivals that people know of?
The other options I were thinking about were working at like a bar or on security crew or something...Anyone have any idea if those people travel from fest to fest or is it all different?
The last option I was thinking about is making and selling a whole bunch of tie dye...Anyone have an idea on how expensive it is to get a booth for selling retail goods at festivals, or other ideas for things we could sell other than tie dye?
Any help is greatly appreciated...I don't even know where to start really.
What kind of music are you into, what size fests are you looking at, what part of the country are you looking at. I don't know as much about the west coast stuff but I still know about a few. Very few fests that arent super small on the east half of the states I haven't heard of though.
If you're looking to volunteer the 2 main ones at the bigger fests are Clean Vibes and Wet (work exchange team) I haven't done wet but had friends from canada on tour with us that did it at several fests and like it. Basically you put up a deposit the value of the ticket, then you work and if you don't show up and work you don't get your deposit back.
I did clean vibes at superball(phish fest) a few years ago. I was beat from working all day in the sun picking up garbage but it wasn't that bad. I had NOOOOOO money so it was massively better seeing phish each night than being home. Met some people, got some free drinks, food, other things, and high fives from festival goers for cleaning up garbage everywhere. Also you have the option with clean vibes of doing post festy clean up. You can ground score some crazy stuff but I just wanted to be done at 3pm the last night of music and rage and then leave the next morning.
http://www.cleanvibes.com/events.cfm
https://www.workexchangeteam.com/init.action?active=home
I think there's one for phish as well. Might be through clean vibes. I know they have people but not sure how to get involved.
All fests run on volunteer effort. The smaller fests couldn't exist without it. If there's a fest you're looking into email, or call as early as possible and see if they can work something out. Some of the small ones you can even work half the time for half the ticket. Festivals, especially the smaller ones very greatly in the amount of work they want you to do.
I've volunteered at more smaller ones. I prefer to just buy a ticket at the bigger ones. If you're doing a bunch of fests you can street team some of them for tickets to others. I've done that but not sure how easy it is for certain fests.
Are you trying to road trip or just bounce around wherever? There are fests every weekend from mid/late may - late sept/even october depending on location. In NY they go mid may- late september 100% and it's cold up here so you can bet there are some even earlier later farther south. Also way down south there's stuff in the winter even. Going to Aura in FL in Febuary.
Let me know what type of music, what part of the country and what sizes, what dates you'll be around for and will go from there.
There are SOOOOOOO many good fests in the states. I was bummed to miss pretty much all of them this year. The only downside to being in NZ/AUS. IF I hadn't hit my head I would have raged the late spring/early summer stuff. Going to go hard may/june if I'm around this year.