A Conversation with Phases Of The Moon’s Sam & Barry Shear – HuffPost 9.2.14
Mike Ragogna: Sam and Barry, what inspired you to form a “Phases Of The Moon” festival? What’s the history?
Sam Shear: I was attending college in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. For my Bachelors of Fine Art, I found myself completely immersed in the art community and always learning about new visual artists. At the same time my school had a class dedicated to going to Burning Man Festival every other year. Although I never took the opportunity to go, I studied some amazing visual artists as well as participating in the class, building my own Geo-Dome, learning about the culture. At the same time, I have always had a passion for music, in particular The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, old school rock. After graduating and coming back to Chicago, I wanted to infuse my passions into one. That’s when Phases of the Moon was born.
Barry Shear: When Sam first approached me with the idea of putting together a music festival I was intrigued. We worked together on a business plan and researched successful festivals and felt that there was an opportunity to build and develop a new festival, incorporating and expanding the best elements of other iconic festivals. We held several focus groups to understand what festival goers liked and did not like about their festival experience. We worked hard to use that input as a “road map” in building Phases of the Moon. We spent months locating the venue. At Kennekuk County Park in Danville, Illinois we found the right combination. Beautiful venue, centrally located to several large cities and universities and strong community support.
MR: Not having been in entertainment previously, did you initially find putting on the event a little daunting? What is some of the minutia?
SS: Although Barry and myself have not been in the entertainment business before; we have an outstanding team working behind us to make Phases of the Moon a reality. From Barry’s 30+ years in finance to my love for music and art, I feel we are working to create something really special for everyone attending. Minutia-Logistics!!!
BS: To put together a large festival together is indeed a daunting task. We have put together a very strong and experienced team, which is key to dealing with all the complicated logistics. Many of the major elements include security, medical staffing, lighting staging, art installations, parking, the list is endless. There is also the minutia of such things as color of wristbands, merchandise design, shirts for volunteers, artist scheduling, etc, etc.
MR: Who will be performing at the POTM this year and how do you see its future?
SS: We have tons of amazing musical acts from headliners such as Widespread Panic for 2 nights, The String Cheese Incident for 2 nights, Leon Russell, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Gov’t Mule, Jackie Greene, Chris Robinson Brotherhood to some smaller acts like Anders Osborne, Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers, California Honeydrops, The Revivalists, all the way down to local bands like James Jones trio, Flatland Harmey Experiment even the local state representative Chad Hays and the Boat Drink Caucus will join us for a night. Musical artists are just one facet of many performing acts throughout the 4 day weekend. We also have a slate of Performance Artists such as Quixotic, Tammy Firefly, Astral Gypsies and tons more! There should be something fun and entertaining going on for everyone!!
BS: We have a stellar line up of music, performing artists and visual arts. As we grow over the next few years we want to continue to bring to POTM exciting and diverse artists.
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
SS: All I could say to an up-and-coming artist or any artist for that matter… I would say continue to be true to their craft and continue to do what it is they do that makes their fans love them so much! From crazy collaborations to out of sight improvisations to amazing stage presence to simply creating that connection with your fans, these are the reasons I became so attached to music.
BS: My advice to new artist would be to continue to develop their craft and their own personality and try to get exposure at POTM
MR: Will you now be diving head first into the music business, how will you not want to create a label and management and publishing divisions?
SS: I think you could say that. Our goal right now is to have a successful first year with Phases of the Moon the hopefully expand our ideas and themes into another event. Maybe county/bluegrass…
BS: I would say in the foreseeable future we will have our hands full building POTM into a major music and art festival. Our long term goal would be to develop one more annual festival., with no current thoughts of moving into other areas of the music industry.