Q’s With Life Is Beautiful’s Justin Weniger: ‘Doing Our Part To Shine A Light On The Road To Recovery’

Justin Weniger: This entire year we felt a higher sense of purpose and duty to our city and community, the collective Life Is Beautiful community, the people who come every year and work on it every year, and the touring industry. [It’s important] to help do our part and shine a little bit of a light on the road to recovery, in a city where a disportionate amount of income is all tied to the live events and tourism industries. We had a heightened sense to rise and kind of shine a little bit of a path to hopefully open the door for other people to do the same. Our hope is this creates a domino effect for other organizations to have their own announcement, have a little confidence that these announcements can be made, and have a better understanding of what they’ll be met with… Based on the timing of the festival, the unique situation we’re in, we did serve the industry in the sense of taking the first shot at it.

Will we be in a situation where there’s a requirement to have a digital health pass, like the things that are happening in the NHL and NBA and other big organizations bringing people together so far? If there’s that kind of situation, we’re ready for it. And if we’re in the situation where vaccinations have hit their mark and it feels like a more normal society that’s ready for a full festival, we’re ready for that as well. The reality may be something between those two.  We’re planning on the full capacity for the festival this year. There’s considerably more demand than we can begin to house. We went completely clean on every single ticket type that we have, with certainly a lot more people in waiting rooms and the website trying to get tickets. We think it’s a great signal for the industry that people are excited to get back out.

I don’t want to insinuate that, as an example, say, every person has to wear a mask or you have to prove you’re vaccinated. We just don’t know what the world will look like then.

In any year this would be a great lineup, but coming back from a year with no music, I can tell you all the artists are really excited to play and get out there again. We felt like we met this moment with the appropriate lineup.  Credit to the folks at Another Planet, we’re extremely fortunate to have a partner like them. It requires a lot of people working together. Most shows are dependent on other shows happening. They want to rout around tours to spread costs. Life is Beautiful’s plan is to be as supportive as we can to the rest of the industry, and now if there’s a festival or shows or tours are coming back, I’d hope we can provide any learnings or tailwind to anyone else that is in a position to do that right now.