Band instructor learns hard way about festivals

Cliff Eveland (photo by Beth Schlanker/PD)

If only there had been a book titled “Producing Music Festivals for Dummies” when a band of rookie promoters decided to stage a music festival four years ago in Petaluma.

In 2008, when Petaluma High School band instructor Cliff Eveland came up with the idea for a school music fundraiser, the plan was to hold a 10k road race called the Tuba Trot. They were going to hold it the morning of the annual jazz festival that the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce put on every year.

When they found out the chamber wasn’t holding the festival in 2008, “We decided we’d try to put on our own festival,” Eveland says.
It didn’t matter that they’d never actually produced a music festival before.

“We were trying to make a big splash and we spent too much money on everything,” he remembers.

By “too much” he’s referring to the “insane” budget of $80,000 that was partially funded by the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce and the Petaluma High School Music Boosters and helped book Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Pete Escovedo and Lydia Pense and Coldblood.

The festival was held in downtown Petaluma, mostly in the parking lot at B Street and Petaluma Boulevard. By the end of the day, 1,300 people bought tickets and they lost $14,000.

Where most fledgling promoters might have given up, “the next year we were determined to make our money back,” he said.

In 2009, they officially formed a nonprofit that would benefit music in all Petaluma schools. They moved the festival to the Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds and focused more on the blues, booking Charlie Musselwhite, Booker T. and Joe Louis Walker.

It was 100 degrees that day and also happened to be the same day as other big festivals like Outside Lands, a KRSH rockabilly festival at Hopmonk and the Bodega Seafood and Art Festival. Only 600 people showed up, but because “I was such a miser and we did it on a shoestring budget, we actually made $5,000,” Eveland says.