In the weeks after the abrupt finish to this 12 months’s Blue Ridge Rock Festival, which was canceled part-way via it is four-day weekend on Sept. 9, extra info continues to come back to mild. Earlier this week, Alton, Virginia’s WSLS spoke with two stagehands concerning the circumstances and the “hot mess” the state of affairs total had turn into.
Attendees and varied pageant personnel had beforehand documented what they noticed and skilled on-site, starting from overflowing rubbish, filth-covered rest room and bathe services, hours-long waits for shuttle buses, insufficient area to shelter throughout a storm evacuation, weather-ravaged campsites, inadequate water services, parking points, employee strikes and extra.
It later got here to mild that the Virginia Department of Health uncovered an unspecified quantity of well being violations, whereas the sheriff’s workplace put attendance estimates between 50,000 and 60,000 folks after being knowledgeable 45,000 tickets had been offered. Attendees additionally stay at midnight concerning potential refunds.
Now, two stagehands have come ahead to relay their very own experiences working for the pageant.
What Did the Stagehands Say About Blue Ridge Rock Festival?
”Of the entire laborious work that we do, it was like we had been devalued,” stagehand Justin Sirry tells WSLS in a report from earlier this week.
Stagehand Devon Taylor supplied the native information outlet with footage of the residing circumstances. “Immediately [I was] just greeted with the smell of mold. It was dilapidated and run down,” he claims because the video report (seen right here) exhibits a clip of the bathe and toilet space designated for staff.
Taylor additionally alleges that the showers had been usually inoperable.
Disputing Blue Ridge Rock Festival’s clarification that the pageant was canceled on Saturday, Sept. 9, resulting from “continued severe weather,” Taylor contends {that a} staffing concern figured into the choice.
“The combination of us, the security, just the complete degradation of the event itself, they were realizing that they had a hot mess on their hands and it was not going to be able to continue,” Taylor claims.
Prior to the cancelation, stagehands struggled to correctly get issues arrange on the pageant grounds, in accordance with Taylor.
This notion is corroborated in a recap video printed by Electric Callboy tour supervisor Tank the Tech, who described logistics points and lack of vital gear to cycle bands and crews out and in of the backstage areas to prepared their performances. He known as the occasion “unsafe” and argued, “People need to be held accountable in this business. I am so fucking tired of things happening where nobody has any accountability… The fans were treated horribly. The crews were treated horribly. The staff, the bands — nobody should have to experience this, ever.”
“It took them til almost noon, the festival, to even get a water source out to us, and we’re out there in an unseasonably hot week of September,” Taylor alleges, additionally calling for accountability. “More accountability in this industry. It’s not just Blue Ridge Rock Fest. I mean this was the cherry on the cake, but there’s no accountability for when these things happen,” the stagehand says.
He, too, places the followers in focus, wrapping up, “At the tip of the day, we do that for the followers. This is what we love that is what we breathe. We eat and breathe these items.”
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