wow..that really sucks

http://www.jambands.com/news/2015/09/11/from-the-friday-lockn-times-mission-in-the-rain/

Published: 2015/09/11
by Dean Budnick

From the Friday Lockn Times: Mission in the Rain

This pummeling was altogether unexpected.

Shortly after 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Lockn’ Production Director Jon Dindas looked out over the concert field, saw the darkened skies and made a quick call to the festival’s meteorologist. He was told to expect “only sprinkles for the next 90 minutes.”

A few moments later the sprinkles arrived.

Shortly afterwards the torrential rains made an appearance.

Then the wind gusts accelerated to 65 mph, placing the Lockn’ Festival within the throes of tropical storm conditions.

It was then that Dindas heard a groan coming from the stage and he thought, “We are on the precipice of a real disaster.”

Thankfully that disaster was averted. Which is not to say that all was peaches and cream (or perhaps that should be apples and honey given that Lockn’ is in orchard country).

Portions of the lighting rig were torn from the stage, tents were ripped asunder and the grounds quickly absorbed water beyond the saturation point.

Shortly afterwards, as the Lockn’ production team made the rounds, it became clear that the festival was in full-on crisis mode. After a discussion with their site ops team, promoters Peter Shapiro and Dave Frey determined that in order to ensure the safety of musicians, staffers and festivalgoers alike, the campgrounds could not open on Thursday and that all music would be cancelled.

The Lockn’ crew then worked around the clock, gutting it out through periods of additional rain, laboring to restore the site (with a bonus rainbow of encouragement). By the next day the common sentiment at Oak Ridge Farm was profound relief that no major injuries had ensued.

Festival lighting director/designer Chris Ragan reflected, “Those micro-bursts dropped on us like tornados. The wind blew the lighting fixtures off the stage and I found myself out there at the front of house, trying to bilge water off the roof. But from the darkness must come the light. So we kept pushing through, creating a safe event space so that people can rage.”

While the crew worked on the physical site, Frey and Shapiro scrambled to make adjustments to ensure that some of the acts slated to appear on Thursday would yet take the stage at Lockn’ 2015. As the rains began to fall on Wednesday afternoon, the String Cheese Incident was on hand rehearsing with the members of the Doobie Brothers. On Friday the Doobies have a gig in North Carolina, so it looked like there would be no Doobie Incident at Lockn’ 2015. But over the course of Thursday, travel plans were altered and logistics sorted so that their performance, originally slated for Thursday night will now take place on Friday afternoon. Similarly, EOTO will still collaborate with Mickey Hart (who will celebrate his 72nd birthday at Lockn’ on Friday) but now this will occur during Hart’s late night Deep Rhythm Experience in The Woods. Billy & The Kids’ Thursday set was rescheduled for Saturday, where Bob Weir will be the featured guest.

Friday night also features Frey’s pick for his festival highlight, the Mad Dogs and Englishmen show anchored by the Tedeschi Trucks Band, with multiple special guests and many of the original artists who appeared with the late Joe Cocker on that celebrated tour (for more, see page 13). Shapiro’s selection comes a day later, as he points to Phil Lesh’s set with Carlos Santana as a can’t miss moment of Lockn’ 2015.

As for Thursday, it’s fair to say most would-be festivalgoers expressed disappointment, while congregating at various gathering spaces from Lynchburg to Charlottesville and all points in-between. Still the social media chatter confirmed that they remained good-natured about the nature of the situation, and some even found a way to see some music, with area performances by Thursday acts Billy & the Kids, Strangefolk and Moogatu.

While no live music took place on the main stages, some profound sounds were produced at Lockn’ on Thursday, as Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Leon Russell and a few dozen musicians worked up the material for Friday’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen set.

One of the people who popped into their performance for a few minutes was Jon Dindas and he found the music to be a sweet salvation. The exhausted Production Director affirmed, “Yesterday was one of the most intense moments of my life, making sure that everyone was safe when our site got attacked by the weather. It shook my faith in what we do. But tonight I was able to go over and watch some of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen rehearsal and seeing what we’re going to present just restored that faith.We’re going to make history on Friday with Derek and Susan.”