GULF SHORES, Ala. - Karen Pery doesn’t consider herself a jazz fan. Yet for each of the past four years, she has spent $3,000 and flown nearly 4,000 miles round trip to attend the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
“It’s humid. It’s hot. It’s crowded,” the 42-year-old Los Angeles resident says. But, “It’s so much fun and it’s such a great experience.”
Music festivals are nothing new, but they are more popular than ever, attracting millions of fans. There are about 270 festivals of various types annually in the United States, and worldwide there are more than 800 in 57 countries, according to Pollstar, a trade publication covering the concert industry.
Yet, given that most bands tour, what would prompt someone to invest the time and money in traveling far afield to hear music they could hear closer to home?
For Pery, it’s a combination of the people - big headliners like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Robert Plant and Simon and Garfunkel - exposure to new bands, great New Orleans food and a reason to spend some time in the city.
“It’s like homecoming. Everyone is super friendly. It’s this sense of, ‘We’re all in this together,’” says Pery, a life coach. “I have amazing stories from the Port-A-Potty lines.”
Last year, the music lineup was so impressive that she and her husband attended the first weekend in late April with their children, ages 8 and 10,then flew home for a few days before returning the following weekend to meet friends from Boston and Philadelphia.
“There is one direct flight from L.A. to New Orleans and it’s at 9:30 a.m., and it’s a party on a plane,” she says. “Everyone is going to the jazz festival.”
The New Orleans festival attracted 450,000 people over seven days last year, a lower daily attendance than some of the other major festivals. Since the city itself is a tourist mecca, it’s hard to say how many traveled specifically for the jazz festival, entering its 43rd year, versus how many were in town for another reason and decided to take in a day’s music.
But head a couple of hundred miles east along the coast to the summer resort of Gulf Shores, Ala., and it’s much easier to see the draw that a music festival can have. That’s where the Hangout Music Fest - which debuted in 2010 amid the Deep water Horizon oil spill - holds its annual event on the beach.
After the inauspicious start, the festival took off, selling out all 35,000 tickets each day for the three-day event and winning the 2011 Pollstar Music Festival of the Year award.
Between fans and the festival’s 5,000 workers, the population of Gulf Shores-Orange Beach nearly triples for the weekend before Memorial Day.
“We’ve had people travel from all 50 states for the festival - definitely opening up our typical eight-hour drive market,” says Missy Zak, spokesman for Meyer Vacation Rentals, which manages more than 1,500 area properties.
Before the festival, occupancy in the rental units generally ran below 50 percent for the third weekend in May. The past two years, it has been above 90 percent for that period.
Despite the travel costs, some view music festivals as good value, and an incentive to visit places they otherwise wouldn’t.
“I think the big thing is you have tons of your favorite artists in one venue. It’s like a kid in a candy store,” says Megan Given, 25, a nail technician from Fort Collins, Colo., who says aside from the festivals, she doesn’t travel much.
Last year, Given and 10 friends in three cars drove for 24 hours to get to the Electric Forest Festival in Rothbury, Mich., a town of 430 about 250 miles west of Detroit.
The four-day festival in late June offered more than 50 bands for about $200. They camped to help cut costs, and because it is a “bonding” experience that they enjoy, she says.
“For us to see all the artists we really wanted to see individually by going to Red Rocks [an amphitheater near Denver] it would have cost us so much more money,” she says.
Two years ago, Given drove 16 hours to the Wakarusa Music Festival near Ozark, held over four days in early June, because they wanted to hear String Cheese Incident perform. In February, she and her boyfriend are flying to Costa Rica, where they plan to attend the Envision Festival. In addition to the fiveday music, art and yoga festival, they are working with a travel agency to sight-see around the country for about 10 days.
Style, Pages 31 on 04/23/2013