Like many music festival producers, Paul Levine didn’t chart his career path. It formed over time, culminating in his role as a producer of such events as Suwannee Hulaween, Bear Creek, the Aura Festival, Fool’s Paradise, and Purple Hatter’s Ball and his role at one of the most celebrated RV and festival camping destinations, the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Florida. It started when Levine was a student at Lehigh University outside Philadelphia from 1987 to 1991. He’d travel to Grateful Dead shows throughout the Northeast. Having banked 100 or more shows, Levine found himself in his dorm room one day wondering how to get the Dead to play Lehigh?
He never pulled that one off. But Levine convinced some frats to pay him to stage a concert on a nearby farm. He set up a stage and enlisted a few local bands. About 700 people showed. “It was incredible,” he recalls. Three “Farmhouse Parties” later, and Levine was hooked.
After graduation, Levine worked in the New York City restaurant business before heading to Aspen, Colorado. He found a business partner, and in 1995 opened The Howling Wolf, a Greenwich Village-style coffee house, arts gallery, and gathering place.
Aspen was an emerging music scene during those days, he recalls, and Howling Wolf became a destination. During its three-year run under Levine, Richie Havens played its stage, as did String Cheese Incident, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, and Leftover Salmon. Lyle Lovett, in town for a charity event, once performed a free show.
“It was pretty remarkable,” Levine recalls. “Aspen was a special place where special things could happen that wouldn’t in other communities.”
Soon, Levine was booking block parties and jam shows at the local opera house. In 1997, the Aspen Harmony Festival on Buttermilk Mountain welcomed SCI, Widespread Panic, and the Black Crowes. It drew 8,500 fans from throughout the West.
By 1999, traffic woes, tenters pitching camp in people’s backyards, and the event’s general footprint proved too much. “Our inexperience caught up with us and the town was less than enthusiastic about us coming back,” he recalls.
So Levine moved on. He worked in restaurants, first in Austin, Texas, then Myrtle Beach, then Washington, D.C.,where he helped a friend with the Mid-Atlantic Music Festival. He arrived in Florida in 2004, where he helped stage the “Down on the Farm” music fest in Quincy.
After a three-year run, it morphed into the Bear Creek festival. But local “power that be” weren’t having it and denied his permit a month out. Levine knew of the Cornett Family, who had been running Magnolia Fest, Spring Fest, Country Jam, and an upstart festival, Wanee, from their 800-acre Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park. He called James Cornett, who welcomed Bear Creek to his spread. It enjoyed an eight-year run.
In the meantime, Levine became a fixture at SOSMP. From his base in Live Oak, Purple Hat Productions has produced such shows as Suwannee Hulaween, hosted by String Cheese Incident; the Aura Festival; Fool’s Paradise, hosted by Lettuce at held at the St. Augustine Amphitheater; and Purple Hatter’s Ball, in honor of Rachel Hoffman, who was killed in an undercover drug sting.
With these chops to his credit, RoadtripMojo chatted with Levine about what makes a great festival – and festival camping experience…
What do you consider when creating a festival experience?
It depends on the festival. We’ve done plenty of niche festivals, or boutique festivals, Bear Creek was a special event steeped in funk and R&B and jazz, and some if our events have a bluegrass and americana flavor. Hulaween certainly has a unique feel, and Wanee, which is a Livenation event, certainly has its own vibe and flagor. It depends on what your overall goals are. The overall theme to any of these is to present the best live acts possible, regardless of genre, and to contribute and to add other elements that create a warm, inclusive community feeling so people feel comfortable and want to come together.
Talk about the camping experience at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park.
The camping element is a crucial component to people’s experience. The Spirit of the Suwannee has the best camping for any facility of its size. Everybody has the option of camping in comfortable shade. People are allowed to bring their cars and food and beverage. People bring couches and kitchens, and they settle in for an experience because of the friendliness of the camping situation. The tolerance of the park and cooperation with law enforcement has created an ideal camping situation where people come and take some ownership of their piece of land and their venue. There’s a shared love of the venue and that energy infiltrates the campground and brings people together. People are watching each other’s backs and loving each other and I think that translates into the energy of the show.
What advice would you give your 21-year-old self starting out as an event producer?
One of the best things about what I’ve been able to be involved with, and what also was a flaw, was somehow when we got started at a young age, when Howling Wolf got started, it was four young people who hadn’t had the experience of owning their own business and didn’t have the wisdom we probably could have used in tackling certain business decisions and strategies. So some of the easily avoidable mistakes that happened along the way could have been avoided, possibly by greater period of apprenticeship at higher levels of management. But in the same regard, if that had happened a lot of the things that had happened might not have gone down.