Phoenix Lights Shines In Rawhide

Most festivals with more than 10,000 daily attendees would see a venue change less than two days out as a death sentence. But when Relentless Beats realized during its Thursday morning setup that there would not be enough time to get the original venue ready for Phoenix Lights  April 8-9, founder Thomas Turner called the audible to move 20 miles away to a new location.

aLIVE Coverage – Live Shots Week Of 02/09/2015
Zeds Dead shines during Lights All Night at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas Dec. 27.

Despite the frantic pace Relentless Beats and crew had to work at, by pretty much every metric the promoters pulled it off. The setup began in Margaret T. Hance Park in downtown Phoenix April 6, 48 hours before the gates were to open. It soon became clear that those 48 hours would not be enough to get the venue ready, so Turner made the decision to move operations to Rawhide Event Center.

“I was thinking about this as a crazy reality show. ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’” Turner told Pollstar. “The trucks are driving off and I’m hearing ‘Relentless Beats races against the clock.’”

Switching to Rawhide, a venue that Relentless Beats has utilized many times previously, put the team on home turf and cut the main stage setup time in half. Logistically, things became much simpler on the flat and familiar terrain of Rawhide.

The distance from downtown Phoenix to the new venue was not insignificant though, and many people were traveling long distances for the festival, some with hotels already booked in downtown Phoenix.  Relentless took to social media to begin blasting the venue change, but knew that wouldn’t be enough.

“Of course, social media and our voice only reaches so far,” he said. “There [were] going to be people who showed up to this festival and they were not going to know it had been moved. I [didn’t] know how many but it was going to happen.”

The solution was to get 30 buses running for 32 hours during the festival to provide free shuttling from Margaret T. Hance Park to Rawhide, with free parking for those who would drive themselves.

The event opened on time and every act performed according to previously agreed-upon terms.

“Any time you are being moved to a new venue, the agent wants to talk to the buyer, the manager wants to talk in advance to be sure of everything that we’re doing. It was very natural that happened, but we had to go talk to every single one of them.”

In addition to stage setups, there were eight after-parties at the festival, all of which had to be set up according to the artists’ specifications.

“My internal team went on no sleep,” Turner said. “My team got no sleep for 5-6 days.” 

In the end, more than 20,000 showed up over the two-day festival and, while there were some complaints, the feedback was relatively positive. 

“You guys scared everyone with the venue change but in the end you guys definitely pulled through. Had the time of my life this weekend. Above & Beyond, Zeds Dead, and Alesso put on spectacular performances,” one individual wrote on the event’s Facebook page.

Turner gave a special shout out to Insomniac, which helped him out a lot through the chaotic moments, Rawhide Event Center and the community of electronic music enthusiasts that populated the festival.

“Our typical customers have the attitude ‘Nothing is going to stop our party, nothing is going to stop us from having the best weekend,’” he said. “The Arizona dance-music community made it happen. We threw them some curveballs, we gave them some hills to climb, and they ran it right over and killed it.”