Lowell MacGregor ShakedownFest

Lowell MacGregor refused to give me any written proof he had a permit. “If I say it’s OK then my word is good”. Hal: I guess that goes for “I saved your festival” too?

Other Famous Quotes from Lowell MacGregor:

“If you don’t like the way we do business, take your festival elsewhere”.

“I’ll have to weigh the cost of litigation against how much money I’ll lose in costs”:

“I saved your festival”, “Just remember we saved your event” This was stated repeatedly from early July to 2 weeks before.

“To help you out, we’re not charging any rental fee” because “We want to see your festival grow here over the years”

Lowell MacGregor was admittedly inexperienced at multi day music festivals and showed it all summer:

1. Not allowing me to speak to security until repeated demands by our attorney, and then I got to speak to them one week before the festival over the phone, no live advance meetings.

2. No advance planning- thinking the entire festival plan could be planned and assembled in 2 weeks. This was not a concert which can be put together quickly because it’s in a standard venue with all of the amenities. Matt Chamberlain who was contracted to do the festival camping direction and some security sat down with Lowell and Eric and I for the first time Fri. Aug. 12 meeting and told what needed to be done for the first time. There was no contract between Chamberlain and our company the entire time leading up to this day. He took me aside and we discussed the difficulty in assembling the amount of staff required and do all of the planning needed to implement a major event in 15 days incl. weekends.

3. Expecting us to pay for everything outside the immediate concert area refusing to understand that it was all one event. He and Eric had “concert on the brain” and just didn’t get it. We were required to pay additional for and contract separately every service, commodes, security, EMS, etc. There was duplication of efforts everywhere.

4. Initially telling me he was going to park vehicles in one place and making people take their camping supplies and camp in another location. I made him aware this was not efficient and no customer wanted to park in one pace and camp in another, it makes no sense.

5. Because Lowell was inexperienced at festivals he did not believe or understand the power of this event and the expected attendance.

6. He and his attorney demanded financial assurances that we could pay our bills at the last minute. See email.

7. An $82,000 national marketing campaign, the biggest talent lineup of this kind ever in the area, great weather, no competition, and one of the best jamband markets in the country meant absolutely nothing to this man and his company as far as “assurances” were concerned.

8. His paradigm was that of a concert with a maximum 3 hour ingress. In this festival, people were coming from all over America 24 hours a day for 3 ½ days.

9. Because of his complete lack of understanding of these factors and the people around him telling him there would not be many people coming, he developed a serious paranoia that he would not have his bills covered, even with being paid the entire $110,000 by the end of Aug. 25.

10. His collective incompetence and his company’s throughout the summer, culminated in an adversarial, defensive, delayed, unplanned effort and on top of this he was changing the terms to benefit his company without and advantages to us.