Original Article: http://glenarborsun.com/dunegrass-savior-glen-arbor-sun-interview-with-ryan-lake/

You’d have a hard time imagining it once you see how great this year’s Dunegrass Festival (July 31-Aug. 2) turns out, but Ryan Lake and Win Win Productions didn’t come aboard to help revive Empire’s cherished music festival until two months ago. Seemingly dead in the water after last year’s debacle — when Grassroots Productions overbooked bands, overextended its reach, lost a small fortune, and dragged Dunegrass’ good name through the muck — the Sleeping Bear Dunegrass Music Festival is nonetheless entering its 17th season … and Dunegrass founder and eternal kindred spirit, the late Mike Vanderberg, will be staring down upon us with a gleeful grin. The Glen Arbor Sun spoke to Ryan Lake just a week before the gates open (and we’ll post Dunegrass updates on our website, GlenArborSun.com, all weekend long!)

Glen Arbor Sun: Congratulations on reviving the Dunegrass Festival! Would you tell us about your role in bringing it back for a 17th season, from inspiration to actuality?

Ryan Lake: Thank you very much! Well, my job as producer has been to put together the line-up and look over all the other various elements of putting on a music festival. This is a great old Michigan festival, and the community really came together to make sure that it lives on.

Sun: And tell us a bit about yourself, your ties to the area, and to music scene.

Lake: I moved to Empire in May of this year. Before that, I lived in Big Rapids. I’m a songwriter and a musician myself, and have been drawn to this area by the beauty, and the quality of music. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and play with many of the local favorites and have developed a deep connection with the Michigan music scene. I’m so honored to be able to contribute on this level.

Sun: Moving forward, what are the mission and objectives of the Dunegrass Festival this year and in the future?

Lake: First and foremost, have a successful year financially in 2009. If we are able to do that, next year should be no problem. We’ve focused on bringing the festival back to more of a local event, not as big as the past couple years have been. Going with the local talent has really helped our budget.

Sun: Under Grassroots Productions, the Dunegrass Festival allegedly grew too big, too fast. Last year the company clearly suffered from mismanagement and ultimately faced a debt of nearly $200,000. What will your outfit, Win Win Productions, do differently?

Lake: Like I said, the budget is the key here. The biggest expense of a music festival is usually the music. You can spend $250 thousand booking 45 bands. We’ve done it for under $30 thousand, while maintaining an extremely high quality of music. We don’t have the flights and hotels and private jets to pay for. I would guess that we’re at less than 20 percent of the budget from last year, so we have a much better chance of success.

Sun: What are your numerical goals for this year, either in terms of profits or number of attendees?

Lake: We’re expecting around 2,000 people at Dunegrass this year.

Sun: What will be the biggest differences from previous Dunegrass Festivals? How do you anticipate the new location on M-72 will change things?

Lake: I think it will be very much like the Dunegrass in years past, peaceful and rewarding.

Sun: What will stay the same? Any traditions that will carry over from the festival’s first 16 years?

Lake: Of course. We’ll have the kids tent, and we’ve got a great old Maple tree that will carry on the tradition of a pickin’ tree. We’ve also got shuttles to Lake Michigan, as in years past.

Sun: Ryan, which bands and acts are you most excited about seeing?

Lake: I’m overjoyed to have Porter Batiste Stoltz. They are legendary musicians out of New Orleans who are bringing some of the best funk you can find anywhere. These guys are classic and everyone loves them. Even more, I’m excited to have so many friends from right here in Michigan coming to perform: Jen Sygit, The Ragbirds, Rootstand, The Macpodz, Joshua Davis, Luke Winslow-King, U.V. Hippo, and My Dear Disco, to name a few.

Sun: I noticed that the two stage names — Vandergrass and Duneberg — seem to play off the late Dunegrass founder Mike Vanderberg’s name. Ryan, what are your favorite memories of Mike?

Lake: Ted Grossmeyer came up with the names for the stages. He’s been a major influence on this festival for years. I remember Mike as a musician. He was full of music and wanted only to share it.

Sun: What can locals do to support this cherished music festival?

Lake: Buy your tickets online at www.dunegrassmusicfestival.org

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Original article source: http://glenarborsun.com/dunegrass-lives-popular-music-festival-rises-from-the-ashes-for-17th-year

The Sleeping Bear Dunegrass Music Festival is back, albeit in a new location on the Empire Eagles’ M-72 property six miles east of Empire. Come join the revelry from Friday, July 31-Sunday, Aug. 2, and enjoy excellent blues, roots, rock, reggae, bluegrass, progressive, funk and contemporary acoustic music playing on two stages from around Leelanau County and the state.

Dunegrass kicks off with a set by Susan Fawcett on the Vandergrass Stage, Friday at 6 p.m. and continues past midnight. Friday and Saturday feature open mic sessions from 11 a.m. until noon and then roll all day long and into the night. Check out the website www.dunegrassmusicfestival.org for a full lineup. Organizer and Winwin Productions owner Ryan Lake says he’s most excited about Porter Batiste Stoltz, which will play Saturday at midnight. But locals are also psyched to see so many familiar faces, including The New Third Coast, The Corvairs, Cabin Fever and Ms. Princess Sarah Jane Everlasting.

Tickets at the gate cost $90  for all three days (or $74 on the website if you get them in time). The Empire Eagles’ location offers more than 20 acres of property for parking, primitive camping, food and craft vendors, safety services, a kids’ tent, an events tent and three days of beautiful music.

At first glance, this year’s festival will appear a shadow of what Dunegrass became under the guidance of Grassroots Productions, a nationally known company that went bankrupt after mismanaging and overbooking bands for last year’s festival. Lake estimates that the 2009 festival will spend less than 20 percent of what Grassroots did last year. Lake’s expectations of 2,000 attendees are much more modest, and realistic, than the miscalculations that saddled Grassroots with an insurmountable debt of $175,000 (see interview with Lake here).

But downsizing the festival — making it local again — is exactly the point.

“We are very excited about this year’s lineup,” says fellow organizer Ted Grossmeyer. “We have concentrated on producing a ‘Made in Michigan’ festival this year, and with only a few exceptions we are featuring bands and performers from Michigan. We are reaching back to the festival’s foundations, and following the vision of the founding Vanderberg family, that together have made the festival such a success over the years.”

Recent setbacks

Until just two months ago, Dunegrass was seemingly dead in the ashes following a series of setbacks in recent years. Days after the festival in 2007, founder Mike Vanderberg collapsed and died in the field — owned by the Deering family and adjacent to the St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Empire — where the festival was held. (During the 1990s, Dunegrass was in the field now occupied by the New Neighborhood across M-72 from the National Park Visitors Center.)

Steven Volas of Grassroots Productions had already taken over the job of booking bands and managing the festival’s finances from the Vanderberg family, and last year he brought a lineup of Woodstock proportions to Empire. Household names including Donna the Buffalo, Buckethead, Peter Rowan, Bela Fleck and the ageless folk artists Richie Havens and Arlo Guthrie were to grace our tiny town.

But if that lineup appeared too good to be true, it was. Sun editor and Dunegrass emcee Norm Wheeler recounted after last year’s festival, “A lotta people didn’t get paid, that’s the buzz … By Saturday noon of Festival weekend it was clear backstage that something was amiss. The Grassroots brain trust huddled in the big motor home and emerged frequently with long faces or in tears. Someone in the know told me that there wasn’t enough money coming in to ‘cover the nut’ (pay the bills), and maybe some big names on the schedule would cancel. Sunday morning started with the news that Richie Havens would not be coming (‘His flight had been canceled’).”

In an interview with GlenArborSun.com before last year’s festival, Arlo Guthrie said, perhaps prophetically, “It’s nice to see [that Dunegrass is] still going. It’s natural for it to grow into a bigger thing, but you don’t want it getting too big. Every organization has to decide at some point what it wants to do. Most feel the pressure from an audience asking, ‘How are you gonna top this? Who you gonna get that you didn’t have last year?’ Soon you get caught in a spiral … as if what happened before wasn’t good enough.”

By the time the dust settled on Dunegrass ’08, many bands, venders and organizers had not been paid — neither had a law firm that Grassroots contracted to fight a “not in my backyard” suit filed by a couple renters who lived next to the Dunegrass site. Grassroots Productions was $175,000 in the hole, the festival’s name was seemingly tarnished within the music industry, and Volas left town with his tail between his legs.

Mike Vanderberg’s daughter Amelia considered reviving the Dunegrass festival without Grassroots Productions, but by late fall it was clear that the Deering family would not agree to host Dunegrass again. And Volas missed a deadline in February to appear before the Empire Village Council to discuss future Dunegrass plans.

Fast forward to May. A group of local residents including Grossmeyer, Laura Sielaff of the Empire Eagles, and Mike’s surviving wife Carol Vanderberg, were meeting regularly to discuss reviving the local festival. Sielaff and the Empire Eagles could provide the land, but they needed someone with connections to the local music industry. Entire Ryan Lake, who joined them and agreed to start Winwin Productions for the purpose of pulling the Dunegrass Festival out of the ashes.

Though he wouldn’t mention specific names, Lake admits that some Michigan musicians he contacted were wary of playing at Dunegrass after last year’s debacle. “They felt burned,” he says. Nonetheless, through Lake’s connections (he’s a musician, himself, and will play Sunday at 2 p.m.), he was able to build trust among local musicians — especially those from the Earthworks Collective, which includes Steppin’ In It, Daisy May & Seth Bernard and Luke Winslow King — that this year’s festival was returning to its roots and focusing on local talent.

Through Lake’s damage control efforts, Davis (whose band Steppin’ In It played at this summer’s Manitou Music Festival Dune Climb concert) re-upped to play on the first night of this year’s Dunegrass Festival.

Did Lake ever think there were simply too many obstacles to overcome to bring back this vibrant music festival in just two months?

“Nope,” he answered. “The wind just seemed to be blowing our way.”