Tom Ossa, Event Producer
Well, this is it. Less than a week away from Rockland Music Fest XII.
If you are a close friend or colleague of mine, you’ll appreciate next week – because all the marketing for this festival will no longer be up in your grills.
The digital advertising for this event is largely done. But we’re still behind in physical promotionals.
Logistics are starting to balance out. We have our location, stage, sound and lights all planned properly…next up is getting more vendors and food trucks, as well as a slew of volunteers. We need a total of 20. (If you volunteer, you get 4 free tickets for you and your friends).
But the thing I am worried the most about…is attendance.
So please – if you care, share out this event with a few friends.
I’d like to also tell you a brief personal story, that spans back quite some time.
11 Years of Festivals: Epic Wins, Crushing Disappointments
In the past, we have had some great successes, and one epic failure….Stony Music Fest 6.
I’ll start with failure. Stony Music Fest 6 had one attendee, not counting the bands, volunteers, etc. It just was a terrible event. We moved it at the last minute because the venue became unavailable due to a double booking. It was one of my lowest moments. I told nobody how I really felt. But it was a very lonely place.
I took some time to decide if I wanted to keep going with all this. It was a lot of deep soul searching. After all…insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, right? Why would I even think about trying to put together another 6 music festivals??
In the end, my response to that question was, “Why not?”
(Thankfully nobody was in the room that day to list the actual reasons at that point.)
Since that time, we’ve seen some amazing successes. From there – we regrouped the next year and expanded. The event moved to Riverfront Park in Stony Point for 5 years, where it saw more and more activity. During that time, we also dealt with a pandemic, lack of funding, stage and vendor issues, a few very bad weather days, and a lot of band/techs/committees drama, which I will not detail here. Yet.
And the result thus far has been great. When we moved the event to Clover Stadium last year, we saw up to 1200 people attend the show over the course of the day. Magical Mystery Doors had the most amazing light show we have ever seen. Lights.
This year, we are aiming to accomplish the same attendance or more, with a yet-again amazing lineup of artists, with headliner Appetite for Destruction, and a cause that speaks to my soul – traffic safety awareness.
Some of you know that when I was 12, my Father was killed near-instantly in a traffic accident. This year, we made the cause to donate to 2 families of victims of traffic accidents in Rockland. So, the cause speaks to me – and by inheritance…this year’s festival truly speaks to me.
There’s a lot of anxiety that I consciously chose to take on for this festival. We’re doing in three months what we accomplished in 8 months last year. It’s a lot – especially with a trimmed budget and staff for this one. I don’t even know what is going to happen next, after this year. Maybe more soul searching? There’s a lot to consider, and honestly all those upcoming considerations will be informed by the results of Rockland Music Fest XII.
If there is one thing I can assure you of right now, it’s this…whoever is reading down to the bottom of this post. God as my witness…I will do everything in my power to make this the best festival we have ever done.
~ Tom
