Q’s With Goldenvoice’s Nic Adler On Arroyo Seco’s Successes, Future & DNA

(Photo by Chelsea Lauren/WireImage) – Nic Adler
at the 5th Annual Sunset Strip Music Festival launch on August 16, 2012 in West Hollywood, California.

As Goldenvoice’s Festival Director of Arroyo Seco, Nic Adler oversaw the confab’s second year which ran like a well-oiled and well-curated machine that managed to keep 25k people a day sated and entertained. Pollstar caught up with Adler on day two, just after The Bangles’ awesome set, to find out what made this year successful, plans for 2019 and what exactly’s in his DNA that makes him so well-suited for this gig.

Pollstar You seem incredibly calm and relaxed considering you’re in the middle of running a major festival.
Nic Adler: I am a calm person normally so I think that helps, but it’s almost like a giant ship right? And so the captain can’t steer out of the way very quickly. It’s like it’s going to take us about 45 minutes to do a U-turn. Obviously, we have little things we can do, but to make big changes at a festival, there’s not much you can do.

From last year to this year you made a big turn moving all the stages around.
Yeah, this year we totally changed the layout.

Arroyo Seco Day One: Supremely User-Friendly Fest Melts Middle-Aged Faces (Review)

It’s really impressive how user friendly and accessible all the stages are and the flow of people.
The triangle set-up really helped. You can see the second stage but it’s a far enough walk where you can talk to your friends during transition, but you can get there fairly quickly. The Willow stage gives you a whole different vibe when you go over on the west side.

Is there ever any congestion issues getting over those riverbed bridges to the Willow?
Not really, but as the show grows, we may move the main stage back and have more room behind it to keep moving back.

I parked there last night.
We work with the City of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl and might actually put a 60-foot bridge across. We’re here for not one year or two, but this is supposed to be 15 or 20-year partnership with the Rose Bowl. So things like infrastructure are things we’re looking at right now.

And the capacity is 25,000, how close did you come to selling out?
We did twenty-five thousand yesterday.

Will today be less?
It’s actually a little up-tick from yesterday.

(Courtesy Goldenvoice) – Thunder of the God:
Robert Plant, whose Arroyo Seco set included Zeppelin’s “The Lemon Song,” “What Is And What Should Never Be,” “Going to California.”

Surprised to hear that having Neil Young at the top of day one but I guess Robert Plant is no slouch…
This festival, as much as it’s about the top of the bill, lives in the middle. S you have Gary Clark Jr, Alanis [Morissette], The Bangles, The Violent Femmes. These are all artists we all know and grew up with. And then Kings of Leon today. Same thing with Mumford & Sons last year. It was a little uptick on Sunday for Mumford. Because not all people that love Neil want to go to a festival. They’re not ready for that.

Part of what seems to make this one of the most hassle-free festivals I’ve been to seems to be having so many middle-aged people, do you have other concerns for that demographic like hydration, walking, their knees?
We do, but I also think it’s the other things like … It sounds silly, but like the libraries, the Kid Space and seeing kids run around helps calms people down.

And not having vast areas between stages.
Just to walk around and sit. People can bring their own blankets and chairs. They usually can’t at other festivals.

What changes might you make for next year?

If we’re going to grow, we need more room by the main stage and we need to create a new food and beverage area that people can go to. One of the things we did at Coachella this year, my team did, was that Indio Central Market concept.

That was great.

We put a bunch of food in one area because, it’s so funny now, but back in the day we’d all go to the same place and eat the same thing. Now, I want ramen, you want pizza, and someone else wants sushi. That’s how we have to make it.

In many ways GA seems like it’s getting closer to VIP especially when you can get the same quality food offerings.
It pushes VIP to be better. For me, bringing in the Craft Beer Barn, and the Indio Central Market did that. GA doesn’t have to be white tents, and vinyl banners, and port-o-pottys. We can build infrastructure. We have the ability to do that. GA should be great for everyone that comes.

(Courtesy Goldenvoice) – Family Affair:
Arroyo Seco’s demo skewed older and younger with many families in attendance.

How does the fest look to you today?
Good. I just walked across the field, and I saw what I was expecting: A lot of kids, dancing, people throwing a Frisbee, a lot eating and drinking. I just sang along to The Bangles.

Me too. Was that your booking or was that all Paul Tollett?
Paul does the booking.

And you’re more like the entire operation and the logistics?
Yeah, the look and the feel. Everything other than the booking.

(Courtesy Goldenvoice) – Manic Sunday:
The Bangles rock the Sycamore stage

What other new elements did you introduce this year?
This year is the first we’ve implemented a second tier of VIP. It’s called Club House VIP. We actually took the clubhouse at the golf course and we kept it only to the people that bought the tickets. It’s not for artists, it’s not for production, it’s really for these select people. We have five or six chefs in there doing tastings. Constantly every hour there’s a new thing. We have complimentary Kombucha and cold brew. We have a festival mixologist so you go in there and you really get overwhelmed.

So more VIP levels?

I think that’s where we’re headed. This show should never be a show that has 50-60 thousand people at it. This is a small intimate show, but how can we create different experiences for different people. We don’t all festival the same way.

Which element here are you most proud of?
The Huntington Gardens is fantastic. They have a great plant exhibition with the microscopes where you can look at plants on a microscopic level. There’s little libraries from Vroman’s Boookstore which is famous in Pasadena. When talking to the residents of Pasadena the love for books kept coming up so we did a lot of work with the neighborhoods and built these little libraries. Vroman’s stacked them with books about Pasadena and people are sitting around and reading books at a festival. That’s dichotomy to me says a lot about the people that are coming.

(Courtesy Goldenvoice) – Reading Is Knowledge:
Pasadena’s Vroman’s Boookstore, founded in 1894, supplied the weekend’s book offerings.

Those plants are the trippiest thing.
Yeah. Huntington Gardens is in Pasadena. And the Jet Propulsion Laboratories [NASA] Dome is local. You walk into a NASA booth and they’re like, “Where do you want to go today? You want to go to Mars? Let us tell you what your trip to Mars is going to be like. Oh, let us tell you what your hotel’s going to be like.” It’s called The Intergalactic Travel Agency as if you’re going on some trip.

How about the culinary offerings?
The food’s been amazing. It’s a music and food festival and people are eating. You have the Voltaggio Brothers here. You have Jon and Vinny’s here. You have Freedman’s Deli here. Some of the biggest places in L.A. are doing festival food. It’s very difficult but we’re using the power of the knowledge that we learn at Coachella and our other festivals. We have relationships now. We can make food work like that at this festival.

(Courtesy Goldenvoice) – Fairfax’s Finest:
Jon & Vinny’s delectable food offerings were one of the many locally sourced food vendors.

What are the biggest challenges this year?
I just want people to learn about this festival. It’s a young festival in a crowded festival market and you have to have amazing line-ups, you have to have things that are different than every other festival. There’s a lot of them out there. You got to have the right art, you got to have the right conversation around it. So for me it’s just making sure that the people who leave here go to someone and say, “That’s the festival I want to go to.” And then next year we can grow. Again, this is not a one, two, three-year commitment that we have here. We want to take every step. We don’t want to step backwards.

Did FYF going down help boost attendance? Were more people funneled into coming here? It’s not that far from Exposition Park.
Maybe the fringe ended up coming, meaning some people were just like, “Hey lets go to a festival, I like those bands.” But the core of FYF really is a certain kind of music lover. Not that there’s not a crossover, but the way that Paul booked this it appeals to someone a little different than someone who grew up listening to what’s booked at FYF.

The age demographic stands out, but there’s definitely bands that could play both.
There’s a lot of moms here and a lot of kids. They brought their kids yesterday. I don’t see as many kids today, so I think there’s something about going to a two-day festival, bringing your kids for one of the days … My wife did it. She brought my kid yesterday, she’s with her friends today and I think we’re seeing that. Pasadena, Arcadia, Monrovia, South Pasadena, Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Echo Park, Silver Lake, that’s where the billboards are. We wanted it to be that everybody at this festival is in bed at 12:00 a.m. But the goal of this is that if this is in all of our backyards. We should be able to go and have the best time of our lives and still get home to wake up in the morning and take care of our kids.

(Photo: Eric Risberg/AP) – Andrew Oldham and Lou Adler
Listen to Charles Bradley and his Extarordinaires during the Monterey International Pop Festival in Monterey, Calif.

I had the good fortune of interviewing your dad Lou Adler when Mario Maglieri, the co-owner of the Whisky A Go Go and the Rainbow Room passed.
Did You see him yesterday? He was here.

No, I didn’t, but it was great to interview him. What has he taught you in your years of being in the business?
It’s great for me. One of my favorite things in life is making my dad proud, that definitely drives me because everything that he’s done in front of me. He is someone that says, “You know, “Don’t try it. Do it. Don’t half-ass it, don’t almost do it, be all in.” If you look at all the things my dad’s done, he’s been all in and he’s believed in it. So maybe I’ve got a little bit of that in my DNA in that I have the ability to see something and then instead of being timid about it, just believe in those ideas. Even if they are against the norm or it makes no sense to have libraries at a festival, it doesn’t matter if that’s not the norm. That’s what my dad’s done his whole career. He has identified something that is not what everybody else is doing and then it becomes what everybody else is doing.

Did you work together when you were at the Roxy?
I ran the Roxy for 15 years. I had a little crossover with my dad, but not too much. I get to talk to my dad every day and he’s the greatest grandfather to my kids and he goes to Coachella, Camp Flog Gnaw, he goes to this festival. He’s a big supporter.

Does he give you insights? Does he say like this could be improved or this is really awesome?
A little bit. I think he’s just more a dad. Sometimes you overlook things that maybe you should mention but he’s just like a proud dad.

But he’s also a very successful person you can learn a lot from.
And I do. My dad is very calm, you know. He’s someone that is always in the moment, looking around, never loses his cool, so I think maybe some of that has rubbed off on me as well.

That’s not a bad thing if you’re doing festivals.
Yeah, not a bad thing at all.