Q&A: Legion Fest founder John Sankey addresses cancellation
Earlier this afternoon, in a press release sent to the music fans who contributed to the festival’s Pozible campaign, Legion Fest announced it would not go ahead in March.
The email, which you can read here, lists seven main reasons as to why Legion has been rescheduled to take place through January 21-29 next year. Namely, its founders John Sankey, Kristie Lawrence and Mark Spillane said the tight turnaround meant they had trouble securing venues, permits, major sponsors and international headliners on such short notice.
Those who did take part in the Pozible campaign have been given until 5pm today to decide whether they’d like to have their contribution roll over for the 2017 event, or be refunded.
14 bands are locked in for the three East Coast open air shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, plus the two mini-festival club shows in Perth and Adelaide.They include DevilDriver, Aversions Crown, Devil You Know, Dream on Dreamer and Darkest Hour.
In the short Q&A below, Devil You Know drummerand Legion Fest founder John Sankey chats to TMN about why we’ll be seeing more fan-funded festivals, which hurdles were the hardest to jump, and the feedback he’s received from the industry.
Is it possible you were a little overzealous in how quickly you planned on pulling it all together?
In terms of logistics, we were, and still are, confident that the festival could’ve happened in March. I think the hurdles that wedidn’t consider being such issues were the fan’s response to the Easter long weekend (particularly thatfamilycommitments made that time reallydifficult for them) and the fact that the major international headliners are still a little gun shy and needed the extra time to prepare.
John Sankey
Which bands weren’t able to commit on such short notice?
Can’t make a comment on that just yet, but given the new dates, we now have a number of high profile international acts that we’re hoping will give us the green light to announce them to the line up within the next few weeks.
Will you still take the fan-funded method for Legion Fest 2017? Absolutely! This is key for a few reasons. Firstly – we wanted to make sure that we’re not actually taking anyone’s money until we are 100% certain that the event is fullyfunded and moving ahead.
Thismodel takes the risk away for fans, artists and suppliers and, we believe, is the most sustainable model moving forward. Also, given the fact that the festival has only been around for a month and hasn’t announced anyheadliners, but has still managed to raise almost $320,000 worth of ticket sales already, tells us that this is amodel that can absolutely work for the debut year and all years moving forward.
As the guinea pig of sorts, what’s your view on the fan-funded method at large? Would you recommend it to other festival promoters?
We believe that this is the way that a lot of music festivals and events will be funded in the future. It notonly provides thebenefits as per my above comments but, without the need for traditional promoters or‘investors’ we have theopportunity to give all ticket proceeds (over and above what it takes to actually put the event on) back to theartists. It’s a great incentive for the bands tocontinue to support the market here and also gives the fans comfort that their artists are being supported in theright way.
What kind of feedback had you gotten from the music industry about Legion?
The industry feedback has been overwhelming! We’ve had a number of companies and individuals that have been a part of this industry for a really long time throw their full support behind the concept. Given that we’re committed totransparency and longevity, we’ve found that the people that know thisindustry really well see this as a greatopportunity ongoing for the music scene as a whole.
What can you tell us about the soon-to-be-announced new headliners? Sorry! Still strictly bound by confidentiality here! Hoping to have something to announce by the end of the week so will definitely let you know as soon as we do.