Chris: 0:00

This is Chris Weber, One Hour to Doors.

Jon: 0:06

This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about the business and soul of the festivals and events industry. I am your host, John Stone. Every episode of One Hour to Doors explores the people, issues, insights, and trends impacting the enterprise and bringing people and communities together in common cause. Today we are catching up with my old friend and former Bumpershoot colleague, Chris Weber. Chris is one of the most esteemed festival arts programmers in the Pacific Northwest, and he's been performing his multidisciplinary arts magic for communities large and small for over two decades. Today we will talk about his background and inevitably we will reminisce about some of his greatest arts hits. Welcome to the show, Chris. Thanks so much. It's great to be here, John. For the edification of our listeners, what exactly does an arts programmer do?

Chris: 1:06

In my case, I think of myself as a multidisciplinary arts programmer, and I'm a generalist in a lot of ways. And so what I'm programming is everything from uh literary, poetry, comedy, performing arts, theater, uh, visual arts, film, and uh yeah, trying to make that all make sense. And so that's working with artists, doing contracts, figuring out exhibition spaces, all the things that make any kind of programming work.

Jon: 1:33

And so why is it that the music programmers just don't do all of that too? Where's the line drawn in there?

Chris: 1:40

Um, I don't think that there's necessarily a a line. I think there's probably a lot of music people that are well-rounded to do that. And as someone, I mean, in a lot of ways, I think I probably even started doing more music at the beginning and then found myself doing other things. But I think it's probably more the industry than the people, especially in if we're talking about festivals. Even arts festivals, they often even just call themselves music festivals first. And so what they think their money is coming from and what what they think their main thing is, is music, and so arts is just the secondary thing. And so they have people doing one thing and then they have some other people uh doing the arts. Do you suppose that's because of the belief that music is what sells the tickets? Yeah, which and in some cases that's and maybe in most cases is true, but not always the case. Aaron Powell How did you get into this line of work? Well, I think starting by booking music, working in small rock clubs in Denton, Texas, and then it kind of uh there was an art collective there called Good Bad Art Collective that was doing these music, they they were just doing weirdo art in the middle of Texas, and they uh would do these music benefits to pay for their weirdo art. And at one point, and I was friends with them, and they were just like, hey, do you want to help us book these festivals or book these benefits, which I think was their I think was honestly what they were doing, but at the same time I think they were secretly trying to get me into their weird fold, which didn't take very long. And so all of a sudden I was a music guy in an arts collective, but then slowly we would do individual events throughout the year arts, music, film, lots of different things, and then occasionally we would all come together and make giant art installations as a team, and we did that for about 10 years in Texas and then moved it to New York and for a while, even had it in both places, had a couple museum shows um in the 90s, got some decent press in Texas and a little bit in New York.

Jon: 3:35

When you talk about Denton, Texas, that makes me think about the rock lottery, one of the coolest musical creations that I've ever encountered, and I was actually fortunate enough to participate in uh one year way back. But uh describe rock lottery for the listeners.

Chris: 3:52

Yeah, rock lottery was one of those benefits. And at that point, one of the things we were doing for those music benefits was like, oh, instead of just having three or four bands play, why don't we do something to mess with either the audience or the band or both? And so we started this series called Inflicted Music. The first one was just really silly where this guy centramatic, who's still Will Johnson, who's still around playing, we just dressed him in a giant bunny suit and put him on a swing and had him play his singer-songwriter music. Um, we had another band, the Dooms UK, who we didn't let them be together. We made them separate around the room, and the audience was in the middle. And then this band EFF Electric Freestyle Fantasy actually played on a trampoline. All the members were on a trampoline, except for the except for the drummer who was on the back of a pickup truck who was circling the trampoline. And they were just like, even the keyboard player was just like jumping 10 feet in the air and doing doing splits and stuff. It was really kind of amazing. But one of those things that we did was was rock lottery. And so we as part of the at the time was just part of the inflicted music series. And the idea was that we invited 25 musicians from different bands, different genres, different ages and and backgrounds. And we they came into the venue at 10 a.m. They were divided into five bands of five people each, with a and then they were sent off to practice, write three to five songs, and come back that night with a band name in front of a waiting audience at 10 p.m., 12 hours later, and play a show. It was meant to be a one-off, and then about nine months later, we did it again because a bunch of people were like, I want to be in it. And then we did it again about a year later, and then I'm gonna go to Denton, Texas in November for the 25th anniversary of it, and it's still happening in Denton. And for a while it was happening in Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles, and then I think it's happened, and that was just me being part of that 30 other 40 other cities in at least three continents have done some version of it. Um, some give credit to that original but a lot don't, and that's okay.

Jon: 5:50

Who was your most important mentor in the industry?

Chris: 5:53

Oh my goodness. Um probably uh I mentioned good bad earlier, uh, the guy, this guy Martin Martin Niles, who talked me into even doing this in the first place, that and especially took me away from music to think about things that are are broader than that. I think he was probably the main person. He was also probably the person that taught me about art as spectacle and spectacle as art, and a lot of the stuff we did was wild and big.

Jon: 6:20

What are two or three of your proudest arts accomplishments?

Chris: 6:26

Yeah. I mean, rock lottery, which we talked about earlier, is is is one of those. And I think a lot of the stuff I was doing with good bad at the time, which was just they were silly, but it was silliness for a reason. And uh I think especially at the time living in a small college town. I mean, I think the reason for even doing that and why small college towns often have interesting music and art scenes is that we were bored, and so we were entertaining ourselves and entertaining our friends. So a lot of the things we were doing there felt exciting. And then a lot of the stuff I was doing at Bumbershoot, I still feel proud about. One of those is Words and Ideas, the literary program. Um and I think everything at Bumbershoot, one of the the things that I liked about it was that it was a general audience. So it was my chance to try to make those people year-round arts patrons, or at least maybe the first year, like, oh, I don't hate poetry, or dance is cooler than I thought it would be. And so I took that really seriously. And but I also knew that people went there were people that went to dance year-round. There were people that traveled across the country to see what I was programming in dance or poetry or other visual art. And so I had to hit those levels. Almost everything I booked, I tried to have an in for everybody. It was like people who knew a lot, there was a quality that they could see, or something that there was a weight to it. But then also there was it was just fun, or there was a spectacle to it. The fact that we even had a discipline that we called spectacles um was also really fun. And I think the first big one I did for Bummer Shoot is probably still one of my favorites is uh booking Una circus sideshow, which was a high wire that we put up.

Jon: 7:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris: 8:00

And then there was a motorcycle that rode on that high wire, and then there was an aerialist, a trapeze artist that would then do suspended from the suspended from the motorcycle, and then the motorcycle would then flip around the wire and go loop-de-loo, and the fact that we had that in the shadow of the space needle, so all the photos, the space needles in the background, and there's an aerialist upside down and a motorcycle upside down. That was also a proud moment working with the rest of the music team and the production team. We had like a the more metal and punk stage was just across the way. And so the audience was in the middle of these two things. People would see the band Health or the band Anvil, and that band would end, and then immediately they would hear a motorcycle behind them, and and they would turn around and watch this happen, and then the next band would start and they'd turn around and see that it was on purpose and it felt that way.

Jon: 8:50

That was a big deal, and I recall that you know, not only did you work collaboratively with the music programming team, but you're also forced to work very closely with the technical stages production team, which was at that time the best in the business. Yeah, that was a bold project. And anytime you're suspending people in the air, that's a whole different ballgame. But what we were doing was one step beyond that, and we were suspending people in the air over other people. It had to be flawless in its execution, and that's exactly what you and the team did.

Chris: 9:24

Yeah, and I think it was also the first time that I had to make a call that was probably life or death, where there was uh rain one of the days. Yeah, they were doing that performance, I think, five to seven times a day.

Jon: 9:36

Yeah.

Chris: 9:36

And it rained luckily only a little bit one of the days, and they wanted to go on, and I was like, you know, let's we're gonna skip this one. And and so they did, but it was it was this moment where they were like the artist was actually kind of pressuring me, like, I can do it. It's like, you know, it's not worth it. You probably can, but right, that's not something I want to live with.

Jon: 9:57

Right. What you just touched on there is one of the differences. I'm going back now to where I asked the question about where's the line between music programming and arts programming. Music programming, you know, it is a whole world of very unique and often outlier personalities. But at the end of the day, just to use the worn-out phrase, it's all rock and roll. And so it can be very gruff, it can be very abrupt in the business of things. So sometimes the answer is no, there is no further conversation. But in the arts world, you've got an even broader spectrum. Because you're dealing with folks on any given day, any given event that might not even necessarily be familiar with major events and how all these things go, and they don't know how it works, but there's sensitivities there.

Chris: 10:40

Yeah, and I think that's also probably where it's different than at least some music. A lot of the at least for the bigger acts, you're going through agents, you're going through managers. And there's some of that in the arts world, especially for the bigger people. John Waters go through as agent. Sure. Um, but for a lot of the stuff, it's maybe not even an act, it's just something that, like, oh, it would be cool to bring that to Bumber Shoot. Um, and so one, I have to talk them into even that what they do is worthy of that, and then talk them through all of that. I think a lot of the spectacles were that zombies. I booked a zombie horde, um, which um still a lot of people are probably still annoyed by the I I still have really mixed feelings about that one, man.

Jon: 11:20

I'm not joking. I can't decide if that was brilliant or if that was like one of the most messed up, worst ideas ever.

Chris: 11:27

Well, maybe it was both. I don't know. I think it was probably both. And I think in context for our listeners, a few years ago, because there were people who dressed up like zombies and they would meet up and they would call themselves hordes, hordes of zombies, and they would go and just zombie walk in public.

Jon: 11:45

Um let's give this due credit in context here. Over the last 10 years, zombies are everywhere. Yeah, zombies are mainstream. There it's our favorite television programming, there's movies, zombies everywhere. But what we're talking about here, what you did was just before all of that. So just before zombies became an everyday uh pop culture, if you will, you brought them to the masses in a very unexpected way.

Chris: 12:11

Yeah, and it was in a bunch of different ways. They had a zombie green room, and they would then go, it was like, all right, now go to this space, choreographed a lot of the same way that we did had parades or marching bands or whatever, like this is your route, do this. I know we asked, they especially were wanting to do certain things that I think you and other people were like, no, and I also agreed with. Um, but there were also moments where I know they got on stage with a local artist who had a song about a zombie on the Fisher Green stage, which was hilarious. And we also just put them in the audience just to watch the band The Zombies in the just in the back, which honestly was maybe one of the reasons I booked them. Um, and then I think you're right. I think a lot of what I did was doing trends, and probably another thing I'm really proud of is the words and ideas. I created a program called Why This, Why That, Why Now, which was a literary and lecture program where it was pairing two trends together and then having experts and also people that just liked it. Enthusiasts, I think is what I called it at the time, experts and enthusiasts. Um, and then had a different host every year to help pick those themes and then also to give it their own spin on how they wanted that program to go. And one of those was zombies. I actually don't remember what I paired zombies with. It's some some of those pairings were obvious, they were food related. I think I had sometimes they were just like two food items, sometimes they were um didn't you wasn't that where you did the vegan black metal chef? Oh no, that was a separate one. Um that was a similar moment where the vegan black metal chef, this guy that just on YouTube did this cooking show, which was just the him singing these black metal songs, and then the music booker, Chris Porter at the time, we were both like, we should do something with this guy. And one of them, he did have a band, so Chris was thinking about booking the band, and we ended up just we just did a just a panel, and it was getting a bunch of different kinds of vegans together that also were into music, and so we had a a vegan from the hip-hop community, a vegan from the indie rock community, a vegan from like the hardcore community, and then this black metal chef, and they just talked about why like their differences and their the the kind of veganism bringing them together, and it was pretty just seeing those people sitting talking about a thing that they cared about equally was also pretty amazing. And it was hugely popular, and yeah, and it filled the Leo K Theater.

Jon: 14:20

Yeah, yep. Chris, there has been so much change in every aspect of the festival business. What are your observations on where we've come from versus where we are now?

Chris: 14:35

Specifically thinking about the arts part of that, I think a lot of festivals didn't have I think a lot of festivals it's separated, and so you do have music festivals and you have your theater festivals and you have your performing arts dance festivals and your literary festivals. But there were those special ones, like Bumbershute, that had all of those together. And I think what ended up happening more and more, and this is probably in a post-Burning Man world, um, and then Coachella was the the one that was like big after that of having eight or nine big spending a lot of money on eight or nine giant visual art spectacle sculpture things. I think that was also selfies and things were also part of the reason for that. Like, oh, they need to have selfies. No, we need a thing for them to have selfies in front of. And and that's not uh denigrating the art. A lot of that art is really great. Um, they hire really good artists. For me, it's not an arts program. I hope our the artists that I work with get that opportunity because it is a well-paying, very high profile thing. But I know that I had someone when I went to Coachella's, I had someone afterwards make a comment of, well, now you've seen a real arts program. Um and uh and I was like my flippant answer was like, yeah, those seven sculptures were pretty cool. Um but um to be fair, I those seven sculptures were really cool. Sure. Um, but again, were all those people at Coachella there to see those seven sculptures? I honestly don't think most people at Coachella are even there to see the music. Um it was a very odd thing. Um, not a place that I want to go again. I know people love it and that I'm happy for them. I am also a little bit of a I am not a little bit, I am a very big introvert, and so I will also say that Bumber shoot and folk life and things that happen at the Seattle Center are some of my favorite festivals because they have indoor spaces. Um and probably one of the reasons for liking the arts is that I can go see, I can stand in a crowd and see Wu-Tang clan and be surrounded, but then oh, I'm gonna go sit in a theater and hear someone read poetry or do comedy, or if I really need even more than that, I can go watch a movie for 30 minutes. And so having those levels, I think, is really great. In a lot of ways, I wish we would have marketed that. The best vessel for introverts, because I think it probably was. I do think that arts programming has become a little it is just that extra thing. Coachella has it, so we have to have big sculptures too. And oh, we have to have sculptures because we need something for selfies.

Jon: 16:55

Your comment about sculpture perhaps being in place primarily to provide selfie opportunities, that just hit me like a ton of bricks. Right. You're probably right, but I've never thought about it that way.

Chris: 17:09

Yeah, and and I mean I think a lot of those big festivals and Bumpershoot, specifically even the pre-selfie world, had a bunch of big things that would have been great for selfies. So I think we were already doing that, thinking Space Harp, thinking Strange Fruit, um, Cyclocide, any of those things would have been great to have a selfie in front of, but um that wasn't its intent. I'm definitely generalizing of why people book certain things, but what have you seen out there lately that's inspired you? I don't know if it's necessarily arts, but I I I just went to the Timber Music Festival Incarnation, Washington, and it's one of those that it's been going for eight to ten years. Yeah, lots of friends work at it, and I just had never been. Oftentimes I had other things opposite it or really close to opposite it, and I've like, I'm not going to a festival, I'm planning a festival. But I went this year finally. It was really comfortable. It's a camping festival. I I just went for the day mostly because I'm was scared I wouldn't as a someone who doesn't camp very often anymore. I wanted to make sure that me and my my family and my small, my seven-year-old could handle whatever that was, and so we were like, let's just do a day trip and then next year we can talk about wanting to camp. But yeah, it was just it was really charming. There were tons of kids, there were tons of older people, but there were also like cool people, young people doing cool stuff. Yeah, there was something inspirational about that. Um, I also liked it was it's not arts programming, I guess it's science programming. They had nighttime, they had scientists that would take you on a bat-looking trip. Oh, cool, or or they had uh telescopes with astrophysicists who would like point out stars.

Jon: 18:43

Oh, I didn't know that.

Chris: 18:44

Yeah, like that element, again, I think a little bit a secret uh the secret sauce. It's like the arts programming of that camping festival. Um we just know that Jeff Tweety played, but really there were all these other um you can like do tree climbing and rock climbing and swimming and all these other things that were really fun. I also enjoyed seeing the music, but I enjoyed all those other parts probably equally see now.

Jon: 19:07

I'm interested in going to check that out. I've I never had heard that they had all that other stuff.

Chris: 19:12

Yeah. And it's just a beautiful park. And if you just like wandered around and camped, you'd probably it'd probably be worth it.

Jon: 19:19

You know, you've worked with hundreds, realistically, probably thousands of artists of all disciplines. For many of them, I'm sure you worked with them and it's their first time in front of a large audience. Or in front of a you know, diverse audience, meaning an audience that didn't come to see them. What would you name as some of the most important things for artists to understand about positioning themselves for exposure through participating in festivals?

Chris: 19:47

Uh, number one is probably what you just said that there's a good chance people are not there to see you. There's going to be some indifference. And I think that's with any festival, even bigger music acts, they still have people who walk by, are like, oh and so I think. There's that. Also, come early. All the all the things you tell anybody, especially people who've never done it before, it's gonna be harder to get in the gates and get your passes and get all the things than you think it is. And then I think I think be true to what the whoever booked you, and in this case, me. Um, I booked them for a reason. I told them why I booked them. Um I um more than likely told them about the audience and why I book them. And so being true to themselves in that way, too, of just no matter how big the audience or no matter what else is happening, is just be true to that. Also to listen to your tech team, especially if you're in a theater, they're there to help you. They're often also, depending on who they are, they're they may not coddle you. Um, they may just be assume you you're gonna do it. Um, and a lot of the people we work with were really good and knew that they needed to be extra careful with some of these people because they don't know, but it's a professional thing and you need to be professional and just walk walk in and do your thing.

Jon: 20:56

That's a really, really good point. I would add to that if you find yourself as an artist in that position where you're at the the big gig and they've got the the A team working there, and the A team may be a little rough around the edges with their people skills, but if you don't understand something, if you don't know something, you've got to raise your hand and just say, I don't know, I don't understand. I need help with this because you will get it. If it's a music festival, your technical team is most likely going to come from a position of assuming you know everything you need to know. Yeah, that's where that world kind of starts. Uh, and no harm, no foul if you don't, they just have to know that.

Chris: 21:38

Yeah, and a lot of the people I'm was working with either were music or they were professional theater people, but the same. Like they work in a professional theater with professional actors and professional people, and then I'm having someone who's just an enthusiast about my little pony or beards or cupcakes or whatever the trend is, and like go in there and talk about it. And they're just like, What? Um, and so yeah, that is a lot of it. And just also, especially if this is something you do want to do, um, where there's one-off people are probably not that, but if they're a young comedian or a young literary person or you know, a young dancer, um, if this is what you want to do, like learn how to work with these people, um, and also work with the people in the backstage, you might be able to work with them again. Yeah, and this is a professional, this is a way to meet people and and move up in the world.

Jon: 22:28

Let's put the shoe on the other foot for a second. Let's say you're someone who's starting off and they they envision for themselves a career as an arts program or a curator. Where do you start? Like what would you recommend as kind of a uh a path of entry?

Chris: 22:43

I think just do it. That was like my mantra for a long time. Probably still is in a lot of ways. Yeah, I just want to make cool stuff happen and and and then that somehow turned into a career. And I think that is one of the especially if you're doing this kind of arts programming um that's like multidisciplinary. I think if you want to be a curator in a museum, that's a whole different go to school. Um, museum's not gonna hire you unless you have your master's or doctorate. But if you're yeah, you want to work at festivals or art centers, or there are actually programs now that will help you, which did not exist, or at least I didn't know about them when I was in school, volunteer, do it yourself, yeah. Um, meet people. I think I've had two jobs in my whole life that I didn't know somebody. I don't think I necessarily got the job just because I knew somebody, but it didn't hurt. Um, and then in some cases I totally got the job because I knew someone and they knew they already knew of me in some way. And so, yeah, getting to know people, volunteering, just doing it yourself, and also just go to a bunch of stuff. I think if you want to work in the arts, you should be a person that goes to the arts.

Jon: 23:50

You know, in this business, it doesn't really matter what role you're playing, what hat you're wearing, there's bad days, and oftentimes our bad days are really bad days for one reason or another. Yet, people such as you, people such as me, keep getting up every morning and we brush our teeth and we put on some clothes and we go right back in, even in the middle of uh a stretch of bad news or extreme stress, we don't really have a choice, and we kind of wear that as a badge of pride sometimes. What is that for you? What what has enabled you to just shake it off and go back to work in the morning?

Chris: 24:32

The main one, back to what I just said, is I like to I want to make cool shit happen. And I've been put in a situation and in I've had a lot of situations where I can and and for larger and larger audiences. I also like that I have been able to make a lot of opportunities for artists to move up in their career, um, which is amazing, giving someone their first big gig, introducing them to someone else that gave them the first gig, that that sort of thing. Um, seeing people that are now a big deal in in their different art form. It's something I I definitely take pride in to be a small part of that. And then I think I love art. Um I love bringing people together to see it. And I I believe I've probably made a bunch of people change their mind about different art forms. People who are now like, oh yeah, dance isn't awful and poetry can be cool. I really believe that. And I I have seen people that I think I believe weren't into that stuff that I now see at at dance wrestles. And I I am probably somewhat responsible for that, and that feels really good. I will also say that there are oftentimes, there occasionally I do halfway through that event go, man, last time, never doing it again. I think every rock lottery I do that. Last one, and then halfway through it, I'm like, can't wait for next year. So I think with big events, it's often before, but and then it's often like somewhere in the middle. I'm like, something bad happens, you're like, ugh. Um, and then it's over, and then I get depressed, and then like, well, I wouldn't be this depressed about something that I hate. And then you start, and then I'd get back in the office, and the first thing I do is like start writing ideas for the next year. Yeah. Almost I'm you know, I always do it immediately. I still do it even with my municipal events. Yeah, we do a drone show for the city of Redmond, and uh one of my roles is to help pick the music and and the the imagery. The last two years we've done the drone show, and I guess it's the first day I'm back. I update the the list, which is just that I hang up on on outside the cubicles, so that anyone that walks by can add ideas, songs that they want to hear in the drone show, or or imagery they want to see in the drone show. And it's like the next day, and people are just like, it just happened. That's for 2024. I'm like, yeah, get to work.

Jon: 26:44

So your current drone show, you said this is the second year. What's the duration of the show? Is like 20 minutes or something? It's 10 minutes. 10 minutes? And how many uh drones-ish?

Chris: 26:53

We had 200 this year, a little over two, or a little under 200, I think.

unknown: 26:59

Yeah.

Chris: 27:00

Audience love it? Oh, yeah. Tens of thousands of people, 20 thir 20 or 30,000 people watching a drone show. Wow. Yeah, they do think it's too short. That's the one, that's the one.

Jon: 27:09

But it's just it's the battery constraint, right?

Chris: 27:11

It's the battery that I think we could get up to 15 potentially, at least with the company we're working now and we're talking about it, it will be more money.

Jon: 27:17

But that's not one of those things where again with technology in the future, it's only you're only gonna have longer and longer capability.

Chris: 27:24

And even the shows like from last year to this year, that even what they could do with those drones was like 10% better. And and everyone we've talked to in that industry is like, oh yeah, it's gonna be like that every year, and maybe 20% next year, and like that's gonna come faster, it's gonna become cheaper. And and it's great. Like, I just make a file of images. I'm like, I want a I want a deer, I want a 30-foot deer walking across the sky, and they're like, Okay.

Jon: 27:53

Interesting.

Chris: 27:54

Yeah.

Jon: 27:54

So that's how it works.

Chris: 27:55

How you just Yeah, I I I just I picked three songs, and then I and then we we come up with a series of images that made sense make sense for our event and for our city, and I put them in the order that I think they make sense, and then they they go and they they sometimes change it, and sometimes they change it, I think, for stylistic reasons, and then sometimes I think they do it because they can't go from that image to that image because the drones are in the wrong place. Right. And so um there were a couple of those things, but it also what they what they did was just as good or or at least differently good than what I was doing. And also really great is you can put logos in the sky. Is that a is that a fourth of July? It's uh it's it's our Derby Days event, it's which is the 83rd, I think that so it's it started in 1939 um as a bike race, and um and now it's uh it's just a it's your kind of classic community festival with a parade and bands and used to have fireworks. Um so it's uh usually the it used to be the second, it's now the third weekend in July. It's also a very eco-friendly city, and so and so let's um yeah, it's it's for all the reasons it's not loud, it's not dirty.

Jon: 29:06

Yeah.

Chris: 29:07

Um I get it. Yeah, uh this year we had some bees, you know, because we have some pollinator programs. Um we could also tie it to like parks and rec and city initiatives, which is also pretty cool.

Jon: 29:18

What's your favorite non-music arts discipline?

Chris: 29:24

My favorite non-music arts discipline? I love all my children equally. That's hard to say. I do like them all for different reasons. I had favorites that I like to program because I could be more creative in certain ways. So our literary program was one of those that I really enjoyed because I was making a lot of those up from scratch. It wasn't a thing I could buy off a menu. And the visual art was probably similar to that where I was able to hire curators who then were hiring artists, and uh it was just really collaborative in that way.

Jon: 29:54

What is your favorite uncomfortable emotion?

Chris: 29:57

Whoa, that's a good one. I was about to say anxiety, but it's not at all anxiety. I think, and probably it gets to probably our conversation is one of my favorite moments in the world is and definitely my favorite part of being uh in a festival is the moment that the doors open.

Jon: 30:16

Yeah.

Chris: 30:17

Where it's too late now and you can just enjoy yourself. Um and things may still be going wrong, and the first hour is often when a lot of the things are going wrong, but really the hour before is really when everything's going wrong. One hour to doors. One hour to doors. But yeah, that moment that the lights which all the problems that were the hour before are still happening, and I don't know what emotion that is. Maybe all the emotions.

Jon: 30:39

Maybe.

Chris: 30:40

Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of the most beautiful thing. Yeah, no matter how stressed you are, no matter what's happening, it's gonna happen, and you just keep moving forward, and there's a bunch of other people moving forward with you, and that's great.

Jon: 30:55

There's something humbling about it when it happens, and maybe this is what this like all emotions compressed into one that you were trying to vocalize at doors on a good day, there's this tremendous pride that you feel, along with apprehension and everything else, anxiety, but there's this pride that's just like did it. We did not fail. The show will go on, but it's also what am I trying to say? It's also an immediate end to everything that went before that. There's almost something a little bit sad about that same moment at the same time because all the planning, everything that's done. You're never gonna go back to it, you're never gonna do the same thing twice. It's just this this point, this microscopic little milestone that comes and goes in literally an instant in the blink of an eye, where there's a whole lot of emotion.

Chris: 31:44

Yeah, and for me, I get more of that at the end, and I think it's not always in the same part as the end. Sometimes it's when the last act is done, it hits early. Oftentimes it's even maybe the last day when I'm leaving for the night. And then sometimes it's if there's an event like Bumper Shoot where there's three days of deinstall, it's when I'm leaving for the last time for deinstall. I don't know why it hits at different times, but that's when the sadness really hits. And I definitely get post-event depression.

Jon: 32:11

Oh, yeah.

Chris: 32:12

I get it less now that I do smaller events, but when I was doing the big ones, it was just like, yeah, it'd be a couple weeks where I was just like, why am I so sad?

Jon: 32:19

Chris, thanks so much for being on the show today. Hope to talk with you again soon.

Chris: 32:24

Yeah, I'd love to. This was great. I'll call, I'll call one hour to doors.