If only I had known then what I know now, and that’s that the ‘Blue Ridge Rock Festival’ is an unorganized conglomerate of deceitful practices, ineptitude, and an overall disregard for the safety and health of their employees, freelancers, vendors, and attendees.

It started with ticketing issues, followed by long (and I mean long) 3-4 hour wait times for shuttles to and from the festival with many fans disappointed and frustrated. Many were not willing to return the next day due to this alone, and I can’t say that I blame them. Shuttle services were reported to have improved by Saturday (Day 3 of 4) but still had fans seeing 1.5-2 hour wait times to their cars.

ADA was a complete joke with vendors, friends and family pushing wheelchairs up and down a very steep hill that festival goers coined as, “The Hill” or the “Kate Bush Hill”. The inaccessibility forced many ticket holders to miss out on bands they paid to see due to the steep terrain. One fan shared their experience when asking for assistance,

“I tried speaking with someone about ADA there, and the response I received was, ‘“If someone is that handicapped to the point they can’t get around without aids then they probably shouldn’t be at a rock concert.’”

Reddit user ‘Surtorias’ quoted,

“I walk with a cane and it was really difficult for me. The Hill was my biggest challenge, and so was the lack of promised water refill stations. I opted out of seeing certain bands to avoid hiking up/down The Hill and it left me feeling really frustrated.”

While shuttle services were already a known nightmare, those with any type of disability that required ADA transport were met with additional adverse conditions. One attendee noted, “There’s no lighting near the field that you must cross to get to the shuttles. I hit a hole that I couldn’t see and flipped my mobility scooter.”

A photo shared by a fan utilizing the ADA shuttles shows festival goers waiting under the glow of flood lamps late into the evening stating, “all of the able bodied people are long gone”. When ADA shuttles did arrive, drivers had no care or patience left to attend to the needs of those they were transporting.

“By the second day, the ADA shuttle drivers were no longer bothering to anchor my mobility scooter in. I tilted over on my son's 90 pound girlfriend Saturday.”

The problems didn't stop there; in the mud filled venue grounds, one camper broke her leg in two places when she stepped into a hole trying to navigate her way to a bathroom. And speaking of bathrooms, sanitation was completely nonexistent with trash cans and ‘Port-a-Potties’ overflowing and a severe lack of toilet paper being a theme throughout the weekend; but perhaps the worst part of it all was the absence of hand washing stations. It was apparent that hygiene and personal health were a non-priority with showers costing $10.00 a pop and not a sanitary station in sight. This alone had many questioning how food vendors were maintaining safe food practices. One anonymous bartender had this to say,

“We had NO staff showers and four individual staff Port-a-Potties, and they were cleaned only after the smell was so bad that we complained. We had no access to working showers (pretty gross since we handle food and beverages all day). “

Lauren Wiecek a camper who stayed at the festival over the weekend shared,

“The showers were awful. We waited 2 hours one morning to take one, and after paying $10 for each of us I was the only one who got a real shower. My partner had the water cut off and was kinda just told, oh well.”

Food vendors were also at a huge disadvantage with many having a high vendor fee of $3000.00 AND a 25% cut of all earned sales. Therefore, some vendors were forced to increase prices that had customers complaining all weekend long. Meanwhile, other vendors claimed that they had no traction at all due to the placement of their booth.

“Food vendors are screwed too; we are tucked away in the corner where no one can find us. We haven’t even made up the vendor fee yet.”

Security issues were prevalent in every department from the front gate to the back of the house with staff not checking bags and doing proper pat downs, to credential checkpoints being unmanned with insufficient to no guards in the barricades. I never saw a ‘roaming crew’ whose responsibility was to walk the grounds and check for disturbances or of anyone in need; there was no type of crowd control and no evacuation plan that I was aware of. One attendee noted,

“Security didn’t check pockets. Didn’t check refillable water bottles and let in large backpacks. I followed the rule for no reason.”

Thursday saw empty barricades at the main stage and had photographers laying down their equipment to help catch crowd surfers in the ‘ZYN’ barricade. High risk security checkpoints including busses and trailers, backstage entry points, front of stage barricades, and artist areas would find themselves with overwhelmed guards or no guard at all.

A Tik Tok created by the band and username ‘Pulsesvr’ shared a video of band members catching crowd surfers following their performance at the 2021 Blue Ridge Rock Festival captioning, “When the festival doesn’t hire enough security, so you have to catch crowd surfers for them after our set.” That video has since been deleted but check out this screenshot from the video before it was removed.

‘Blue Ridge Rock Festival’ continues to understaff security for their events and does little to nothing to solve the issue. A security guard working with the contracted company, ‘Solaren Risk Management LLP’ stated,

“We were contracted to bring 50 people, which I knew from the get-go would make us understaffed…., I assumed there was going to be another company helping us out.”

But there was no other company helping out, instead the promoters from ‘Purpose Driven Events' and the head of security from ‘Solaren Risk Management LLC’ consulted with a group of volunteers known as the “IcON Pit Crew” to step forward and secure what was perhaps the most dangerous position in security, the barricade.

A statement made by Rob Hersh Jr. from the “IcON Pit Crew” whose team stepped in to help during the event had this to say,

“Initial conversations with the head of security happened prior to the festival because of our reputation as being very aware during mosh pits, so they already had an idea of who we are…; Friday was primarily manned by Pit Crew which are hand selected…the next couple of days we asked for a bit more help cause of heavier days on the lineup.”

The ‘IcON Pit Crew’ is composed of well-intentioned civilians with “a goal to keep concert goers safe” who insert themselves into unsafe positions for the sake of fan safety. While this seems honorable it is actually very dangerous, and the fact that ‘Blue Ridge Rock Festival’ was willing to have these untrained individuals placed in high risk areas is alarming. Several fans claimed to have seen ‘IcON Pit Crew’ members intoxicated, recording the show, taking selfies, posting credentials on social media, inserting themselves into the fan experience and being overall distracted with the performance instead of the “duties” they signed up for.

Initially the ‘IcON Pit Crew’ consisted of 17 members, but that number grew by Friday when security fell behind and called upon ‘IcON’ founder ‘William Spoon Foy’ to help out. Foy released an announcement calling for any and all extra hands at the festival to join the 'Pit Crew’. Anyone could join and in return, every volunteer would receive $100.00 for the day, two paid meals, and would be ‘officially licensed in the state of Virginia’.

The post caused quite a controversy when it reached the ‘Screwed by Blue Ridge Rock Festival’ Facebook group so when I spoke to Hersh Jr. he wanted to clarify that individuals wouldn’t be “licensed on the spot” despite how the posting reads. The company, presumably ‘Solaren Risk Management LLP’, would give any individual who volunteered with the ‘Pit Crew’ the opportunity to attend their classes free of charge in order to be officially licensed as a guard.

This not only promotes sketchy hiring practices, but was a false promise to those who signed up and anticipated that one night of service would guarantee an opportunity to be licensed. See the hiring post below:

This oversight and lack of allocated funds put artists, fans, and employees at risk for a potentially catastrophic event, which we know can be an all-too-common occurrence in the wake of ‘Travis Scott’ and ‘Route 91 Harvest Festival’. Luckily this year we only saw broken bones, but if Blue Ridge Rock Festival doesn’t fix this by next year, we could be writing a completely different story.

The lack of accountability from the promoters run by ‘Purpose Driven Events’ and the contracted security firm known as ‘Solaren Risk Management LLP’ who claims they are “The leading provider of security and police personnel in the state of Tennessee and the Southeastern states” failed in their responsibilities and duties to provide a safe environment for artists, fans, and workers of the event. The liability to fans and artists alike is shocking, but even more so are the people who are willing to turn a blind eye to the obvious issues by claiming it was, “still a good time”. Unarguably the bands were amazing but the experience became difficult to enjoy due to so many failures from the festival organizers along the way. In conclusion, if you are planning on attending the 2023 ‘Blue Ridge Rock Festival’ I encourage you to rethink that decision or invest in really great insurance.

Honorable Mentions

1. EMS could be found recoding the show, smoking cigarettes and having slow response times.

2. Todd Stone and his chained up women. Stone runs the ‘Blue Ridge Rock Festival Fan Zone’ page on Facebook and is notorious for creating a one sided narrative by deleting any constructive or negative comments towards the festival.

3: ‘IcON Pit Crew’

This group of unlicensed, untrained volunteers is providing a false safety net so companies can get away with hiring less guards and depend on uninsured individuals to risk harm to themselves and those they are trying to help.

4. VIP or is it? Check out the view from the VIP seating area…the backside of a bar!

5: THE MEDIA “LOUNGE” The media accommodations consisted of a tent with 20 chairs, 2 power cords and a cooler of water bottles for the four, 12 hour day festival, with zero security for the professionals to leave their valuable gear unattended while working the event. The tent was located at an elevation, somewhat closer to the ‘Monster’ and ‘Zyn’ stage, and far away from all the other stages. However that was not the worst of it. Communications to the photographers and press from the Media Coordinator Liza was lackluster at best. Bands that dropped from the bill (Lacuna Coil) and bands that prohibited the access of photographers to their set (Stone Temple Pilots and Slipknot) was something press members only knew about once they arrived to the stages toting heavy and expensive gear through thick crowds and rocky terrain

The lack of respect and consideration for media did not stop there. Subsequent emails from the Media Coordinator followed, asking photographers not to touch any bottles of water that they might find laying around the photo pit or its surroundings, but instead forced them to hike back to the media tent if they were thirsty. When photographers started to use a paved back road to go to the far distant stages (URW and Fan Driven Stage) in an effort to avoid the swarm of bodies surrounding the two main stages, another email from the Media Coordinator came in prohibiting that area of travel.

Media was treated as an afterthought and an annoyance during the 4 days. If you sum up the total years of experience from the near 50 accredited individuals there to document the experience, you'd probably get well over 100 years easily, with the vast majority of them agreeing to the fact they had never been treated in such blatantly disrespectful manner and would refrain from supporting the event in the future.

What Went Wrong at 'Blue Ridge Rock Festival' 2022?

©WAV RECORDS • POWERED BY SQUARESPACE