Later this month, the artists that dominate Active Rock radio’s airwaves will amass in Columbus, Ohio for Rock on the Range, a veritable Coachella for fans of Hard Rock music, and the brainchild of Right Arm Entertainment and AEG Live. Ever since its inception in 2007, marking a matching of indie and corporate concert promoters, Rock on the Range has grown and even spawned a companion concert, Carolina Rebellion. Don’t expect Right Arm Entertainment and AEG Live to stop there as they continue to develop compelling concert events.
By Michael Parrish
Gary Spivack & Joe Litvag
Later this month, the artists that dominate Active Rock radio’s airwaves will amass in Columbus, Ohio at OSU’s Columbus Crew Stadium. The pounding laid upon the ears of those filling the stadium is only surpassed at the bi-annual beatings administered to the Michigan Wolverines. This is Rock on the Range, a veritable Coachella for fans of Hard Rock music, and the brainchild of Right Arm Entertainment and AEG Live.
The importance of Rock on the Range cannot be denied as Rock music seems to be under attack from all sides. Discussions of sagging sales have led to a challenge laid upon Rock radio to develop lasting artists and maintain relevance in the eyes of record companies. On this weekend, over 40 stations from the Rock radio community gather and rise to the challenge as they broadcast a tsunami of its most important artists around the country and hold the Rock n’ Roll flag high.
Ever since its inception in 2007, marking a matching of indie and corporate concert promoters, Rock on the Range has grown and even spawned a companion concert, Carolina Rebellion. Don’t expect Right Arm Entertainment and AEG Live to stop there as they expect to continue to develop compelling concert events. We catch up with Gary Spivack and Joe Litvag for details.
Let’s start with a little background on how Rock on the Range came to fruition.
JL: I started in the business almost 20 years ago with a company called Contemporary Productions and kind of cut my teeth as an independent concert promoter, but we were one of the companies that got purchased by SFX, which became Clear Channel Entertainment. It was around that time that I decided to choose a different path, so I made the jump to AEG in 2003 and focused my attention on growing the middle of the country. I have a twelve-state region I’m responsible for, with Rockfest in Kansas City among the events I handled. When Gary and his partners called me and asked about trying to do another show in the middle of the country, we zeroed in on Columbus, Ohio.
GS: It was really naïve when we called Joe early one day and said, “We want to put on a show.” We felt that there was a missing Rock festival in America. We looked at Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza, and that Alternative lane seemed really taken. But where was the great Rock festival? We knew Joe was doing Rockfest, and we were thinking in terms of a big destination Rock festival weekend with camping and hotel. We literally took out a map of the United States and went right to the middle of the country, which was Independence, Missouri, so we called Joe.
JL: That was my first mistake, picking up the call.
GS: Exactly, but Joe already had a big festival in Missouri. Since we’re all about open lanes and serving the underserved, we needed to find the right area to put on a show that wasn’t overcrowded. Like you said, Columbus is such a great area because you’ve got Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo and Detroit, all these great Rock n’ Roll towns surrounding and within a drive to Columbus. It felt like a great home.
Now with the success of Rock on the Range, you launched Carolina Rebellion and have some other shows coming in the future. It seems as if the model can grow to help keep Rock music alive.
GS: It’s proud to talk franchise and we think about branding so much with Rock on the Range on everything from our merch to the bands chosen. We put out a coffee table book for our fifth anniversary capturing the five years of Rock on the Range in photographs. We’ve been propositioned to expand Rock on the Range in terms of the show, but we are wary to do anything that would kill the credibility and special factor of this destination festival.
JL: To chime in and second what Gary said, we’ve really done our best to keep Rock on the Range as a unique entity in the United States. When we decided last year that we wanted to try to do this together again down in the Carolinas, the first question we asked ourselves was, “Do we call this Rock on the Range Carolina? Or Rock on the Range South?” We had to decide if we wanted to build on the brand we’ve worked hard to establish over the last five or six years. We all collectively said, “No, let’s not do that.” If we’re going to create something new somewhere else it needed to have its own identity. We didn’t want to do anything that was going to dilute the name we created with Rock on the Range in Columbus. Part of the reason it’s continued to grow each year is because we don’t have any desire to turn it into McDonald’s, one in every city. It wasn’t going to be like a tour or anything like that, where we just take it from city to city. We want to have a home and we want to continue to develop the festival and give this audience something to look forward to each year, a place to go where they can experience a large number of bands they love at a reasonable price.
How important is it for you to involve radio in these annual benchmark events?
JL: I embrace the ability to create unique events with and for radio and we’ve been very successful working with our partners to do just that. The Rock audience, in particular, is looking for something a little bit different. There are markets where we promote festivals at amphitheaters that do a good number of Rock shows each summer, but Rock on the Range is a little bit more unique of an experience and that’s really what it’s about: creating a very unique experience and each one of them is a little bit different. No two of these festivals are exactly alike, even though some of the bands may be the same. We try to make the look and feel of each one of these festivals a little bit different than the others. That’s very important to us and I know it’s important to Right Arm Entertainment that we don’t try to turn it into the same thing in each of the cities where we do it.
Talk a bit about who the target audience is for these shows.
JL: This audience is a working class audience. We’re still in challenging times in this country and these festivals offer a tremendous value to the consumer. Gary and I are both guilty of spending a little bit too much time on the festival Facebook pages reading the comments, good and bad, and we certainly pay attention to all of it. One of the overwhelming things we see is people responding to for Rock on the Range is the ticket price. That value is what really speaks the most to this audience. They’re definitely loyal music lovers, but times are tough out there, so we make it affordable for them to come and experience these things.
GS: We’ve grown into this model of serving the underserved. There’s gluttony of indie Alternative-minded music festivals, but there wasn’t for Rock. Our model is tonnage and bulk. Instead of spending 80 percent of the talent budget on one or two bands, we spend it on bulk, and give the Rock fan their money’s worth.
How is this different than the wave of radio-sponsored festivals that was prevalent at the turn of the century?
JL: At the peak of those kinds of shows, I became the defacto radio show guy for the region at my former company, and there was one summer that I did 22 different radio shows. I remember laughing that there was no difference between how I do this one and how I do that one. We treated them all the same but it was just a different radio station hanging their banners inside the venue. They rode the wave, but those radio shows have fallen by the wayside because they couldn’t sustain them.
GS: There’s a big lifestyle element to what happens at Rock on the Range, Carolina Rebellion, and Rocklahoma that also happens at Coachello and Lollapalooza that unfortunately some radio shows never captured because it became a churn and burn thing. Fans caught onto that
JL: There are exceptions. Rockfest in Kansas City is one. Gary does Edgefest in Dallas with my AEG counterparts. Those are two that have not only got over the hump, but they’ve thrived in recent years, because the people running KQRC and KDGE have figured out that they need to be unique and treat the event more of an experience for the listeners and fans than just churn and burn.
GS: They also don’t let the show dominate the playlist. That’s one of the big things the fans caught on to as well. But when doing specifically branded ones like Live 105’s BFD, their listeners trust that they’re not selling out their playlist to book that thing.
JL: Those are all good stations that are very in touch with their listeners. I’ve been dealing with KQRC and doing that show from way back when it was at an amphitheater. And then they took a leap with me by moving into a non-traditional venue. They know their listeners like no radio station I’ve ever worked with before and creating the value for their listeners is what made Rockfest what it is. There’s not a whole lot of radio shows out there selling 55,000 tickets a year; every year. But the reason why is because they keep the ticket prices reasonable; they keep the beer prices reasonable; they keep the parking reasonable. Everything is with the listener in mind.
Let’s talk about Rock artists in general. Is Rock still strong and viable to sell venues?
GS: Everything is cyclical. Rock overall as a genre is a little down, compared to others. But it will come back around and be the jewel of the ball again. That’s our take on modern music, but that is another reason why our model of bulk, tonnage, and stacked lineups is so important to give the Rock fan the best value.
JL: The genre is alive and well. I don’t think it’s gone anywhere. The fans are extremely loyal, and that’s key. Unfortunately, the genre has been a bit of a victim to technology and the evolution of the business. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that Alternative Rock was one format. You could be hearing a more Active sounding song followed by a really Alt leaning song. It was all one genre. Then, in the last ten years or so, it has splintered off into Active Rock and Alternative. Alternative has gone in one direction and Active has gone the other. But the genre is alive and well. It’s just that, we, as an industry, have to do a better job of incubating the next wave of artists, and that’s up to the record labels. We’re seeing a lot of independents popping up in Rock now. Labels like Eleven Seven and The Collective and similar companies that are embracing and nurturing Rock bands again. Look at a band like Five Finger Death Punch. They’ve made huge headway in the last few years. I wish there was ten more of those right now. As long as we have situations like that and we all do our part to try to nurture the next wave of entertainment, we’ll be fine for years to come. So I feel good about where we are, and we’re thankful for the fans that believe in what we’re trying to do for them and are very loyal to us, and loyal to all the bands that play every year.
Let’s end this on a little fun note. Give me the first concert that you attended and then worked?
JL: The first concert I ever attended was with my parents, and I’m not embarrassed to say it was Barry Manilow. I’m a huge Barry Manilow fan and I’ve done a lot of shows with him over the years. The first concert I ever attended by myself with friends was Quiet Riot in 1981. The first concert I worked was in college at the University of Kansas. I was asked to work security for The Rolling Stones Steel Wheels
GS: It was a Friday night with Foreigner at the Forum on the Double Vision tour. The next night, I went to see Joe Jackson in Santa Monica at the Civic Center. It was a wonderful weekend and both were fantastic concerts. And then, the first show I booked as a senior in college, because I’m an L.A. boy that went to the University of Colorado, I booked Fishbone into the cafeteria, and the show was cancelled because it was overcrowded and there was no stage. The first concert I ever truly worked as a record label rep was Motley Crue and Faster Pussycat at the Cal Palace in San Francisco. I thank Ray Gmeiner for showing me the ropes, because I did not know what I was doing.
[eQB Content by Michael Parrish]
