Name: Robert Jones
Occupation: Technical producer, Festival Productions, Inc., producer of
the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals.
Background: He began working for George Wein, founder of the festivals,
36 years ago.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Boston University.
Age: 64
Family: Married, three children.
Residence: Ridgefield, Conn.
Yesterday — Sunday (August 12) marked the conclusion of this year’s Newport
Jazz Festival. The folk festival was the previous weekend. The two were forerunners
to many of the music festivals around not only this country, but the world, and
combined have brought Newport and Rhode Island considerable national and international
exposure
PBN: What was your position when you began working for the festivals in 1965?
JONES: It was very difficult to explain positions with George’s company. The positions
are, certainly in the early days, what needs to be done ends up being your position.
All of us did a little bit of everything — box office, setting up chairs, housing
people, tour managers. It hasn’t really changed that much for some of us. The
younger kids want a job description. Sometimes it’s hard to handle that in your
own head.
How many total festivals does the company put on?
We’re involved in about 40 festivals.
This is the oldest, but by now festivals like Jazz Fest are larger?
We’ve established an office in New Orleans. We’re actually now partners. They
do the Jazz Fest, a festival for Essence Magazine and other projects there. We
also have an office in Los Angeles (and one in New York).
How many people does Festival Productions, Inc. employ?
Obviously there’s expansion during the summer months when festival activity really
kicks in. I would say, the minimum number at any given point during the year,
the New Orleans office has 15 to 20 people. About 15 in New York. Los Angeles
is the smallest office with four or five. It expands geometrically when the season
starts. Right here, when the festival is on we’re talking about 50 people working
— field crew, concessions, ticket takers, security, press people. We also bring
in stagehands from the area. We bring about five to six people from the New Orleans
office.
How many people do you employ locally during the festival?
We have to employ at least 100, 110, 120 locally. The field crew alone is something
like 25-30 at peak periods.
You bring sound with you or do you bring it in?
We bring sound in. It’s from Mansfield, Mass.
Do you use other local vendors?
The people who supply most of our tents, chairs and tables.
Have you ever done a study of the economic impact a festival like this has on the local community?
I think about four or five years ago, it was a considerable impact. We definitely
know we have an impact on traffic, impact on hotels. It’s hard to know whether
you have an impact on restaurants because it is hard to get in anyway, especially
on a weekend in a tourist resort town. It was quite evident the impact was quite
heavy.
We’re talking in the millions obviously?
Yea. It’s become of an issue in an odd sense. The impact in fact may be somewhat
less, slipping a little bit, because the position within the city with its hotels,
lodging has now become quite expensive. Many of our artists don’t stay here. It’s
too expensive.
Do you find this more expensive than other places?
Oh yea.
Where do the artists stay?
They stay near the airport. If you have an artist who comes in to play on a Friday
or Saturday night, he wants to get rooms — let’s say he’s coming from New York,
comes up Friday night, plays on Saturday, drive back to New York. Well the hotel
says you need to give us three nights lodging. And the lodging can be as much
as $280 a night. Let’s say the artist has 10 rooms, he’s talking $2,500 – $3,000
for rooms. So they stay at one of those business residence inns near the airport.
What would you invest in putting on a particular festival?
Well it varies, depending upon which festival and how you are applying overheads.
Many festivals we do now there are a lot of free events because they’re sponsor
oriented. So for us it’s what the sponsor’s willing to spend. For this event,
both here and at the Casino, they’re basically risk dates for us. I’m not sure
we’ve ever broken it out solely as a concert event what it costs, but I know it’s
an expensive adventure. We’re talking in the hundreds of thousands of dollars
here.
Traditionally has the Newport folk and jazz festivals done well financially?
There have been up and down years. The last two years for the folk festival, including
this year, have definitely not been the greatest years. I know we lost quite a
bit of money the last day of the folk festival. We also lost our sponsor, Newport
Creamery, a key factor in whether we made money or lost money.
The sponsor for the jazz festival is JVC?
Right. We would definitely be in a tough position without sponsors. I think breaking
even or making money on ticket sales alone is a very difficult proposition. Not
so in some other places.
If this is a risky festival financially, is its future secure?
We all give that a thought, especially if you have two or three bad years in a
row and you don’t have a sponsor. If you have two or three years with bad attendance
the sponsor looks at you differently. There’s a lot of risk things, but this is
the bedrock certainly — it’s the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport. It would be
difficult to part. The folk festival we do other dates around the country using
the name Newport Folk Festival presents. We’re going to do 15 or 16 events with
Suzanne Vega. The Newport Folk Festival presents. The Newport Jazz Festival does
the same thing. We also go to Europe and Japan with the use of the name Newport.
We didn’t do an event for years in Newport. It was a nice idea to come back and
do an event in your home turf, even though we’re not from Newport. It would be
hard to leave. I mean really hard to leave. Maybe you’d find a different way to
do it. I think it’s important to keep the Newport name solid.
How many years did you not do it in Newport?
From ’71 to ’81.
When were the festivals founded?
Fifty four the jazz, ’58 the folk festival and organized by George Wein and Albert
Grossman. Albert died some years ago.
It seems that festivals are more popular than ever.
It does not make it any easier for us. There’s a jazz festival every time you
turn around. They’re all over the place. Boston, New Bedford has a folk festival.
And a lot of them are free. It definitely does not make our life any easier. Not
that we are averse to competition. We like to think that it spreads out the entertainment
dollar. When Joan and Joe Smith have a summer and they’re going to look and see
what they’re going to do and there are a lot of things happening and suddenly
there’s a lot of choices. By the time August rolls around, we’ve already spent
that money.
Do artists look at Newport as somewhere special to play?
Folk artists still look at it as something special. We have a lot of younger,
up and coming folk people and jazz artists like to come up and play here. As a
festival site, the audience comes here and thinks this is a gorgeous site. The
best site and view is the guy on the stage (looking out at the water). Artists
walking up there for the first time saying ‘Oh man, this is gorgeous,’ and the
audience is right on top of them. It’s an active audience. We have no alcohol.
The audience is listening. It’s a pretty hip audience. Both festivals are like
that. No scammin’ around. You don’t come up with the goods and they’ll dismiss
you quickly.
How well did you do for the folk festival (the interview took place before
the jazz festival)?
We did only 6,200 yesterday (Sunday) and 4,200 Saturday for the folk festival.
It was way off. We did some ticket resistance on price. This whole ticket arrangement
with this computerize service I think is a killer for the fans. I’m talking the
Ticketmaster kind of thing. Their service charges per ticket are astronomical.
A couple comes down and buys tickets for three events, charges are up to 24 bucks.
Makes no sense anymore. This is another thing everyone is looking at.
What do you think the festivals mean to this community? It certainly has been
a real point of identity. How does it translate to this community?
I’ve toured all around the world. If I mentioned the Newport Jazz Festival people
knew that name. There’s no doubt about it, early on, ’60s on. I don’t know whether
the community here has really used us properly. They’ve used us in a way they
might be trying to gain something out of us. But I don’t think they’ve really
used us as a community effort in a different way.
How would they do that?
If they had, during the folk festival, if they had a folk festival week, where
they had singers down on the docks. Music outside. A theater place showing some
historic films. They haven’t really made it a town that could be totally festival
oriented. In some towns, the whole town is the festival. This town hasn’t got
to that structure yet, probably because they don’t feel they need to. If we weren’t
here the town would still fill up. I think that that’s a whole scene that could
be looked at in a different way. Even at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, the whole town,
everything’s happening. The clubs feature the artists. Street vendors. Events
take place in the daytime, the whole evening is people in town. We think they
could maybe arrange huge barbecues. There’s got to be a way they could have music
at night. They just don’t think in that fashion. So people come, they get into
a traffic jam, and just want to get out of town.
