AEG’s VP Of Global Touring & Talent Alicia Karlin On The Magic Of Electric Forest

Every year toward the end of June, fans of electronic music flock to Rothbury, Michigan’s Sherwood Forest for Electric Forest, flying in from all over the country and making the hour drive from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to the forest. Ticketholders will set up camp before the June 20-23 festival officially opens, with pre-parties slotted on Wednesday, June 19, and festivities planned through late Sun- day night. The festival is produced by AEG and Insomniac.

This year features performances by Pretty Lights, Subtronics, Excision, The Disco Biscuits, Umphrey’s McGee and more. The festival is keeping with its jam band roots, with The String Cheese Incident returning once again for two sets.

“I’m excited for some of the unique moments we have,” Alicia Karlin, VP of global touring and talent at AEG Presents, who serves as the talent buyer for the festival, tells Pollstar. “We have Nelly Furtado, we have Ludacris, we’ve got Everything Always with John Summit and Dom Dolla, we’ve got GIGANTIC NGHTMRE — Big Gigantic has played the festival many, many times. We’ve got a lot of bands coming, a lot of different musical influences. We always like to incorporate a lot of different world sounds, and I’m pretty excited about all those coming.”

Electric Forest remains a favorite festival among dance music artists. Oftentimes, those performing each year will block out the entire weekend from their touring calendar so they can also attend as fans. While Karlin doesn’t start plotting out the lineup for next year’s festival until she’s already gotten through the current one (she’ll start doing a deep dive in August), artists who are skipping a year already anticipate putting the festival on their calendar.

“The relationships I have over the years with different artists and different agents and different managers, and just having a lot of trust in what we’re doing in terms of the production and the programming, allows us to have something really special,” Karlin says. “We have so many stages and a lot of counter-programming that we’re working through. You have to have a really great relationship with people who trust you and that you will put their artists in the best light. I think that comes over time, earning that trust to know that if someone might usually only want to play after a certain time of night, but they know that on this show, if they’re playing a little earlier, they know they’re going to have a great crowd based on the overall picture of the show.”

For those who haven’t yet broken through to the lineup, Electric Forest’s campgrounds are filled with RVs that throw late-night renegade parties after the main headliner has finished and the festival grounds have shut down for the night. Those parties can launch careers of aspiring artists, the most recent of which happened for bass music trio Levity, who hopped on a party at last year’s festival and found virality on social media. Their original song, “Flip It,” was signed to Dead- beats, and this year they’ll be attending the festival once again – this time, on the lineup.

The festival features 10 stages with more than 200 artists. Karlin aims to avoid back-to-back bookings, leaving artists off one year in order to give someone else a chance. While there are exceptions (String Cheese Incident performs several sets each year and has done so since the festival’s founding. String Cheese Incident is managed by Madison House), the majority of artists return every two or three years. Karlin notes her favorite part of working with the festival year after year has been seeing artists move up the lineup as their career steadily grows, and she always ensures to leave space for developing artists.

“There’s something really special; there’s so many artists that have played, that you’ve seen them move their way up to headline,” Karlin says. “That’s part of the experience and part of the culture, as well, that I think the fans really love — being there for the journey of people’s career.”

Some of Electric Forest’s organizers are already on site, having gotten there last month to start on the festival’s build. It takes over a month to get everything ready for attendees, with the builds on production starting much sooner than that. About a month afterward is when the last person leaves the grounds, the whole event with parts of the crew spending two months on-site year after year.

“You can feel the passion the team spends year-round, curating every element of the show,” Karlin says. “All the fan programs that contribute to making it really unique. The art, artists, musicians and performing artists. We have a huge dedicated space to perform- ing artists as well. So, it’s just very different than anything else that people see around.”