William: One week ago tomorrow was the HopeFest.
Bill: Or, fifty-one weeks from today is the HopeFest.
Emma Grace: Daddy, can you make another HopeFest?
William: Yeah, and invite Switchfoot and U2.
That’s how the conversation went last Saturday morning over breakfast, and now two weeks have gone by since HopeFest 2006, and still we are thinking about it, amazed.
What a day that was.
But isn’t thinking about planning the next HopeFest a little like asking a mother, newly delivered, if she wants to have another baby? We are two weeks out, and I think the man is still just a Wee Bit Exhausted.
Why?
Planning the HopeFest takes a Long Time.
It is No Small Thing to choose from among a vast array of artists to perform at your music festival. It is No Small Thing to guess at what kind of audience you’ll have so you can know how many tickets you’ll sell to pay for your event and raise money besides. It is No Small Thing to deal with booking agents and make offers and wait to hear decisions so that you can solicit business support based on musicians you know are coming and musicians you hope might be coming.
But he did it.
And it is No Small Thing to sit on your sofa until the wee hours with your friend and right arm Jenny, and to read and read and read the riders so you’ll know what the musicians require in their dressing rooms and what they’ll be wanting for breakfast and what for lunch and what they like to drink and how many towels they might conceivably be using that day. And then, once you’ve had that meeting(s), you have to go get ready for Every Possibility. That’s No Small Thing, either.
But they did it.
And then there’s insurance and trying to figure out how much you’ll be spending In All and trying to figure out whether your advertising is reaching Anyone At All and wondering if you’re spending for advertising in the Right Places or somehow in the Wrong Ones and checking ticket sales every Monday and basically feeling your way in the dark for Months On End.
Which might go some distance to explain why Bill began checking weather.com about two weeks in advance. Because this, O Reader, as you know, is the Wrong Thing To Do. But when your venue is an outdoor one, and when you are selling tickets to people who are planning on a show, well, it’s hard Not to check.
The forecast wasn’t great: rain, they said, or a high chance of it, and clouds. Temperatures in the seventies, but rain is Always Wet. And we had the greater reason for fear because of what Margie had said, months ago: “Oh, whenever we go to the Koka Boothe Amphitheatre in Cary, it Always Rains.”
But on October first, the clouds that covered the sky burned off before nine a.m., and when I arrived at the venue, three children and two students in tow, it was a Glorious Day. Just before we reached the parking lot, we saw a man standing by the curb; his sign said “We Need Tickets.”
Caedmon’s Call was on stage, warming up. Someone was tuning the piano. Beach balls saying “HopeFest” and “Lenovo” dotted the lawn. My children found their friends, I found some of mine. We got a press pass for one of my students. The temperature flirted with being hot. The gates opened and Jenny joined us backstage: “People are pouring in,” she said.
And after that, how did it go? Well, Caedmon’s Call opened and was wonderful. They were the first of fourteen acts that played in staggered performances that day: eight on the mainstage and six in the Six Strings Tent not far away. I enjoyed the many friends that came for the day even as I chaperoned my students to where they needed to be. The children played and listened and ate ice cream and frozen lemonade and got the autographs of everyone in Roman Candle. The sun got hot and the sky was cloudless. I helped my students get interviews with (also) Roman Candle and Alli Rogers and Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls. I ate a fabulous vegetarian lunch backstage. The chairs in front of the stage filled up and the lawn was absolutely covered. We listened to Over the Rhine and I met Aimee Mann and my student Sasha took wonderful pictures and we tried not to worry that the acts seemed to be falling behind schedule and then suddenly look! They were back on schedule and that, truly, seemed like magic.
And then the Indigo Girls took the stage On Time at 8:45 and the sky was dark but starry and the stage was all lit up like nobody’s business and the chairs and the lawn were absolutely full of people and Bill could Finally Relax. We stood at the back of the chair section and we sang with the Girls at the tops of our lungs and we Danced.
The venue closed at 10:00 p.m. Amy and Emily finished their encore at 9:59 On The Nose.
Carolina Hope raised $32,000 in ticket and rug sales for Beacon of Hope that day. The Entire Day was a smashing success.
It would be nice to say that he did it. It would be nice to say that my husband pulled off this event of epic proportions. It would be nice to say that this was his brainchild and his doing due to his intelligence and his charisma and his ambitious entrepreneurial greatness, and that this success (isn’t he amazing?) occurred in only the second year of HopeFest history.
But like everything else in our lives, October 1, 2006 was a Mercy, rich and sweet. It was the brainchild of our God and given to Bill to put into action, and all of the miracles—mostly unnamed here—that helped to bring it about were His doing. This was work wrought first in hands that are deeply scarred, then passed on to Bill and to Jenny for them to carry out.
And it was a Great Time.
So I think we’ll be holding the HopeFest again next year. It’s looking good, at any rate. And Bill already knows who the prime target is for his first musical guest invitation, William’s recommendations notwithstanding.
And Margie and Michael, I hope you’ll come in 2007, even if you still believe it’s your responsibility to bring the rain.
