Major Promoter Reveals Worst States for To Promote Music Festivals

Tennessee for Country Music Festivals, Oregon for Jamband festivals and West Virginia for Bluegrass Festivals.

Hal Royce Abramson should know. He's promoted each genre in these three states and claims negative forces and acute government stupidity, destroys the dreams of independent, low budget promoters.

You would never know until you navigated through the unnecessary and totally bureaucratic barriers the governments throw in your face once you are already started.
Recently Abramson produced a sizable weekend country music in east Tennessee North of Knoxville. The county, Mayor, commission were great? Only problem was E.L. Morton, the Chamber of Commerce Director of Campbell County sent our check beck upset our logo had already had been designed and that he had no idea how to accommodate the scale of an event our size. Sent a nasty email out to all concerned and sent our check back. "Just a complete idiot." Royce-Abramson said. "The only guy who's job it is to bring tourism rebukes a major country music festival coming to his county at no charge to the government. Just insanity."

Then, 2 months into the promotion, "the State Health Department throws 3 different ancient camping ordinances in our face requiring everything from telling them exactly how many attendees we expected 3 months out, on a first time event to needing a stick in the ground for every campsite to demanding a hand washing station outside every portojohn, (sanitizers were not ok. Did we nation the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water even if most of the attendees were not camping. They dictated where the perimeter fence should go, that even though we had sufficient EMS, We needed a doctor and RNs no matter how many people were there. Then they wanted stick int he ground for every uniform camp space to correspond to a 5 foot map because the 1974 permanent campground law required it. The demands went on and on requiring out attorney to get involved, diverting our attention from promoting and other infrastructure planning. At that point we knew we put the festival in the wrong state." said Abramson.   

Washington County, Oregon canceled our Horning's Hideout Music Festival in 2005 without any discussion. The Lowell MacGregor finished us off by canceling our festival at the bland location we had moved to and told the media we canceled. We paid him $35,000. in cash for the rent, were not required to pay him more until midnight but August 25, 2005, he had been making weeks of additional demands and pulled the plug
killing the Shakedown Campout Music Festival holding Abramson responsible for the aftermath. MacGregor has been lying ever since and kept all the cash.

1999: Abramson put a bluegrass festival in NE West Virginia and a confrontational venue owner Jim Newburn coerced an undercover State Policeman to block Hal's leaving a heated blindside meeting demanding documents after midnight. The authorities didn't care. Totally corrupt state" Hal said.   

There's much more, but promoters looking for a safe state to promote their campout music festivals should steer clear of these states. Oh, did we mention Volusia County Florida, forget it, they don't allow campout festivals, just the Daytona 500.

Do you due diligence very, very carefully before committing  your event to any state.
See Abramson's concert and music fest\ival promotions book at concert-promotions.com
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