Woodstock May Have Merriweather, But Will It Have Artists?

Since Dentsu’s departure, Woodstock 50 has attempted fruitlessly to keep the festival afloat, both in court and in applying for and getting denied permits at the original Watkins Glen International race track site and at Vernon Downs, a smaller “racino” (racetrack + casino) in Vernon, N.Y. (as well as a reported attempt to enlist New York City’s Citi Field stadium). That is, until today (July 25) when word got out that Merriweather would be willing to host the festival, which at press time is only three weeks out.

Pollstar reached out to Seth Hurwitz, the chairman and co-founder of I.M.P., which operates the amphitheater for the Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission, for comment. According to Hurwitz, I.M.P. is “ready to do a show if they have one. We would help produce the show in-house for them if they bring us the show, but as far as the content is concerned, we have nothing to do with that; that’s all them.”

Content, yet again, is king. But if in this situation the content is artists, they may be under no  obligation to appear – despite Woodstock 50 paying out some $32 million in artist deposits when the festival was initially slated for Watkins Glen.

According to a source with legal knowledge of the situation, moving the location some 270 miles south to the D.C. area is a material breach of contract with its relative distance from the original site. One could argue, at least in legal terms, that when the site was moved to Vernon, N.Y., roughly 100 miles from Watkins Glen, it was still in the same upstate New York region which would fall under “curing a breach,” a reasonable solution to ameliorate a breached contract. 

If for example, Madison Square Garden lost its electricity, promoters might reasonably seek to relocate a show to nearby Newark’s Prudential Center or Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. To move it to Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, however, would be reason enough for parties to back out and be entitled to damages if not their entire fee. In this case, Merriweather, at some 272 miles away, wouldn’t at the outset appear to be “curing the breach.”

“If I represented any one of those artists  scheduled to play … depending on the contract and its terms, I would argue that moving the site over 250 miles away is a hardship and material breach and the artist should not be required to play. I would also make an argument to keep all or some of the money,” says Dina LaPolt, founder and owner of LaPolt Law, P.C.   “What we would do is put together an analysis of the money it’s costing the artist to move the crew to a distant location and also show that the artist gave up other dates to play this show which ultimately caused them damages.”

Part of that analysis would include the cost of transporting production, the crew, accommodations and possibly having to miss other shows. Additionally, a number of artists on the Woodstock bill, which was slated to take place Aug. 16-18, are already booked into Merriweather within a few weeks of the festival. 

This includes Santana on July 30, Margo Price on Aug. 11, Cage the Elephant on Aug. 22 and Gary Clark, Jr. on Aug. 25. To play again in the same market might cannibalize their audience and could be argument enough to back out. 

Another issue facing  promoters is capacity, which at Merriweather, according to I.M.P. ,is 32,500 on Saturday and Sunday and lower on the weekdays. This is a far cry from the Woodstock 50 capacity at Watkins Glen, which reportedly was 75,000 (half of the initial 150,000 the promoters had hoped to have). At that number, the pricing of tickets would have to increase dramatically to cover costs or else losses would be heavily compounded.

Sadly, much of the cluster-f-word that’s become synonymous with Woodstock 50 over the last three months is in keeping with a 50-year-old Woodstock tradition. While the cultural lodestar that was the original 1969 Woodstock had an immeasurable influence on our social, political and cultural mores, to say the festival itself didn’t run smoothly would be a vast understatement.

Then, too, the site was moved a month out from Wallkill, N.Y., to Bethel, N.Y. There was little in the way of security, infrastructure, fences (anyone could walk in) or amenities. They were incredibly fortunate it wasn’t more of a disaster with the estimated half a million people who turned up. The festival lost money, though the subsequent album and film on the back-end provided some recompense. The following Woodstock iterations in 1994 and 1999, the latter of which turned into near riots, reportedly fared even worse from a business perspective.

Today, when asked if booking Woodstock into Merriweather was just like bringing in any other festival, Hurwitz is pragmatic. “Yes,” he said, “the only thing is in this case is I’d want to speak to agents and make sure their artists are doing it.”  Indeed, that’s the multimillion-dollar question.