FEATURE ARTICLE
Making Festivals: Falcon Ridge and Noppet Hill
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., July 24, 1997)
Q: What do you get when you add a housing contractor, a biochemist and a couple of dairy farmers?
A: The people behind Falcon Ridge Folk and Noppet Hill Bluegrass, the two biggest acoustic music festivals of the summer in the Berkshires.
This weekend, fans of contemporary folk and bluegrass in the Berkshires and the greater region will converge on Falcon Ridge and Noppet Hill, where they will be afforded the rare opportunity to soak in the sights and sounds of some of the top performers in their respective fields amidst the relaxed, informal setting of the outdoor music festival. Both festivals take place at working farms, boast a variety of activities besides the mainstage performances, run Friday through Sunday and offer on-site camping.
And both are organized and presented by amateurs -- people whose main occupation or background is not in concert promotion. Although at this point, given the experience they have amassed, some of them may qualify for semi-professional status.
For most of its nine years, Falcon Ridge has been produced at the Long Hill Farm in Hillsdale, N.Y., by the husband-and-wife team of Howard "Bub" Randall -- a co-founder of the prestigious Winterhawk Bluegrass Festival -- and Anne Saunders of Sharon, Conn. When they are not impersonating concert promoters, Randall is a building contractor and Saunders is a molecular biologist who has worked in AIDS research.
In its second year, Noppet Hill is the creation of Robert and Jenifer Steele of Lanesboro. In real life, the Steeles run their own dairy farm.
While in both cases the lion's share of the production effort falls on the owner-couples, the festivals are also the fruit of the labors of many, including volunteer and hired help. But for the most part, the festivals are a reflection of the sweat and vision of their owners.
Anne Saunders estimates that she and Randall account for 80 percent of the effort that goes into making the festival one of the most successful of its kind. Among those who closely follow contemporary folk, Falcon Ridge is regarded as one of the top showcases for up- and-coming performers. People like Shawn Colvin, Alison Krauss, Ani DiFranco and the Nields were given mainstage time at Falcon Ridge years before the rest of the country caught on to them.
Between herself and Randall, Saunders says they work nearly 3,000 hours a year on Falcon Ridge business. Saunders stopped working as a scientist a few years ago to devote herself full-time to Falcon Ridge and a few other music-related offshoots of the festival business, but Randall still runs his contracting business for most of the year.
For the Steeles, Noppet Hill relates a bit more directly to their day job. In a sense, the bluegrass festival is just another type of farming, if "farming" is understood to mean making a living off the land. With it becoming increasingly more difficult to turn a profit milking cows, Robbie Steele -- himself a musician and avid bluegrass fan -- has taken advantage of the ideal setting he already owns -- Steele's Family Dairy Farm -- and turned it into his "Field of Dreams" as the location for an annual bluegrass festival.
Whether or not one weekend music festival can turn a profit for the promoter remains to be seen. Both the Steeles and Saunders and Randall are in it for the long haul, hoping that eventually they will be able to earn back what they have put into their festivals, with maybe something left over as an added bonus.
Saunders said that last year for the first time Falcon Ridge turned a slight profit. "It's a touchy subject, but not a secret," she said. "What we hope to do is make a living, not a killing, and always give back to this community. We have losses from previous years, and we'd like to recoup some of that eventually. Basically, we put money in from other sources in the past, but now the festival is paying its own way."
With Noppet Hill only in its second year, Steele needs to be patient before he can expect to turn the festival into a money-making proposition. Right now, he is planting the seeds of what he hopes will grow into an annual event with the stature of a Winterhawk or a Falcon Ridge. Towards that end, he got a big boost this past May when Noppet Hill was featured by the Sunday New York Times in its annual summer preview section.
The work of a promoter includes arranging permits with the local governing authority, booking and programming all the performers (in Falcon Ridge's case, four stages and 100 hours of entertainment), publicity and advertising, coordinating non-performing on-site activities (vendors, children's programs, merchandising), program book, volunteers, security, food tent, infrastructure (road, stages, tents, portable toilets), and the sound, lights and technical stage management.
It's an enormous task, and the potential for things to go wrong is nerve-wracking. Still, the promoters persevere.
"It's all a lot of work, but it must also be fun too, or we wouldn't do it," said Saunders. "The madness and stress of it all is balanced by the feelings of community and accomplishment. It is a roller-coaster ride, though."
[This article originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on July 24, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
music news, interviews, reviews, et al.
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