I canвЂ™t take my family for a day at $100 a ticket.вЂ™ They have no idea that one of their friends is the one behind the lineupвЂ¦ but if you go see The Weeknd at an arena, itвЂ™s going to cost you $75. They have families and they say вЂWell, this is a load of sh*t.

People who IвЂ™m friends with who are around the same age as me, 45-46. And people want to throw the ticket price in your face, but artists cost a lot of money. You know for a time, the festival was almost free. ItвЂ™s been a local festival for a long time.Дid you feel any pressure being a local taking over this Seattle institution, especially since this is your first time booking a festival? Of course, we have to pepper it with local acts.

Could it be better? Could it be 50 percent? Maybe. And the percentages of females were so low.В Thank god weвЂ™re not on those lists. were coming out showing what percentages of festivals were male and female. That was a conscious decision to have more women, which isВ still a very big problem with festivals. Is there a particular balance you are trying to strike between regional or national acts? Was it a conscious decision to book local acts ? We canвЂ™t say вЂњOh, I wanвЂ™t that person, I want this person.вЂќ So to go out and get the caliber of artists we did, it worked out pretty well. Then we got HozierвЂ¦ We donвЂ™t have the carte blanche of a bigger festival like Lollapalooza or Coachella. The Weeknd came on board and that was very exciting. But Chris Stapleton rules, and Kacey Musgraves rules. Truthfully, I wanted Sturgill and he couldnвЂ™t do it. I wanted to get some of the new country in there. We got Ellie Goulding at the end of a big year for her, with her arena run and eventually everything started falling into place.В We got Cake, Social Distortion and Neko Case. I wanted to pull in some of the older, classic acts but due to things like health, we ended up booking it younger. We started looking for who might be touring, who might be available, while trying to stay true to the history of the festival. I started in January, already a good four to fiveВ months behind on this. Most of these festivals start start booking a good year out. What are you looking for in an act? How do you go about looking for them? So we started negotiations with the city of Seattle, put in a lot of work in November and December in the hopes that we could hopefully spring the festival back to life and bring in a little more talent. As a Seattle native who had grown up with the festival, I couldnвЂ™t stomach the thing going away. For the last few years, it hadnвЂ™t made money and was starting to fall apart financially. When we came on to the fest, it had gone through this very interesting progression. How did you come to your position booking for Bumbershoot? Queirolo is vice president of Talent at AEG Live Pacific Northwest the parent company oversees Coachella and New Orleans Jazz Fest, among other signature music festivals. With that in mind, Uproxx sat down with Chad Queirolo вЂ“ the man in charge of booking musical acts for SeattleвЂ™s 45th Bumbershoot FestivalВ вЂ“ to figure out how it all comes together. What typically gets lost in the constant churn of fest news (and rarely garners a thought from sunburnt fest-goers) is just how hard it is to pull off an A-list festival and the logistics of getting several hundred touring acts in the same space at the same time. Throughout the period from spring to early fall known as вЂњfestival season,вЂќ readers and writers alike are kept busy with lineup announcements, biggest moments round-ups and thinkpieces trying to suss out what the most вЂњproblematicвЂќ thing going was. Lots of ink gets spilled over music festivals every year.

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