Jam Band Concert Promoter Goes Country

On a sunny November afternoon at a Hunterdon County restaurant, my girlfriend and I met some friends to hear the Grateful Dead tribute band This Old Engine (TOE) perform on a grassy hill behind the building. Bands like TOE have made it possible for local live music to continue in the pandemic-induced canceled culture and help prevent bars and restaurants from temporarily shutting down or, in some cases, permanently going out of business.

As I walked to my seat to catch the band’s next set, I heard a gravelly voice behind me say, “When did you see Matisyahu?” I quickly turned around to see who was the owner of the voice that spotted me wearing the orthodox Jewish reggae rapper’s concert tour T-shirt. His name was Mike Kestin, an imposing figure who was several inches taller than me. I replied that I saw Matisyahu at NYC’s Hammerstein Ballroom more than a decade ago.

Surprised I would bump into anyone at the show who knew anything about Matisyahu, I continued my conversation with Mike. During our talk, I told him about this great Railroad Earth concert that my girlfriend and I recently saw at the Sussex County Fairgrounds. Bowing to the demands of health and safety in the age of COVID, patrons could only watch the show from the comfort of their vehicles (or at least some of us did). Mike smiled, and said, “Are you kidding? I produced that show.”

That chance meeting led to the idea of interviewing Mike for this blog. It’s also the first time that I interviewed someone for Muligo. So, fortunately, Mike was gracious enough to give me the lowdown on how JamFam Productions, his company which was involved in bringing the phenomenal bands Railroad Earth and Twiddle to perform drive-in concerts at the fairgrounds. The interview also includes Mike’s ill-fated JamFam Music Festival –scheduled this past July at Waterloo Village- which was canceled due to the pandemic. And, lastly, what possessed him to grow up to become a concert promoter and his thoughts on where the live entertainment business is headed during and after the pandemic. To wit:

Mike decided on getting into the music biz only a couple years ago, after quitting his 12-year real estate career. Like many people his age and older, he grew up during a time when rock was at the forefront of the music scene, allowing him to mix with other sweaty, adrenaline-pumped bodies to see their favorite bands perform live. So, it made sense to do something he always loved. And his experience as an event planner was a perfect prerequisite to joining the ranks of others earning a living in one of the craziest businesses in the world.

His first real major test in the live entertainment biz was producing a summertime jam band festival at Waterloo Village in Stanhope, NJ. He had lined up several local and regional acts for the JamFam Music Festival including TOE, Dogs In A Pile, Jazz Is Phsh, Waiting on Mongo, Creamery Station, Jabbawaukee, Divided Sky, and several others. The two-day July event also planned to include camping for 2500 festival-goers and a total capacity of 5000 fans. For those of you who know nothing about Waterloo Village, this former tourist attraction, located near I-80, hosted many major acts in the ’80s, 90s, and early 2000 including multiple Lollapalooza festivals. In 1995, Waterloo Village considered banning rock concerts when a 20-year-old fan died from a head injury after jumping from a car during a Phish concert at the site.

Mike had everything he needed to pull off the jam band festival at Waterloo Village–except funding. He contacted a number of people to see if they would help him finance the festival but struck out. All was not lost, however, as he was given the telephone number of a wealthy entrepreneur who was interested in Mike’s plans. After a few meetings that involved downing shots of tequila and bong hits, Mike persuaded the entrepreneur to make the investment. The festival was indeed becoming a viable reality.

Shortly after the deal was sealed, and prior to the line-up announcement, Mike got a call from Johnny Markowski, a member of the New Riders of the Purple Sage and Jersey City resident. Markowski told Mike that he had heard about the festival and the legendary country-rock band was interested in performing there. Before you could hum a few bars of “Panama Red”, NRPS was billed as the headliner for one of the nights of the festival. But there was a slight problem, the festival needed a headliner for the second night and more money. Mike met again with his financial backer, told him about the situation, and happily walked away with another round of investment. The headliner for the second night was Melvin Seals & JGB, Jerry Garcia’s old side project.

Unfortunately, Mike’s dream to produce the rock festival turned into a nightmare when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in the spring. “It was heartbreaking,” recalled Mike of how hard that he and others had worked on an event, as well as the disappointment among fans. This was to be the largest music festival in New Jersey in decades.

But Mike was determined to not let a once-in-a-century global pandemic stand in his way of bringing live music to the masses. Sussex County Fairgrounds, located in the bucolic hinterlands of northwestern New Jersey, was an ideal location to produce a socially distanced live music event called “Sussex County Live”. Fairground officials were amenable to the idea of hosting rock concerts since all of the fairground’s events this year were canceled as a result of the virus’s spread. But instead of a Waterloo Village-type multi-day music festival, Mike proposed the concept of a drive-in concert, similar to the one that he had attended in New Hampshire earlier this year. The format proved to be doing well in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other locations.

The concerts were set for Halloween weekend–the first two nights featuring New Grass band Railroad Earth and the last night with jam band Twiddle. They were everything that you wanted in a live concert: amazing performances, crystal-clear sound, hypnotic light show, and a well-behaved crowd. Mike admitted that the shows “took a little bit of a (revenue) loss”. He blamed that on the fact that he and others involved in the production had less than three weeks to put on the shows. The cold weather that weekend and short timeframe to adequately promote the shows didn’t help matters. But given the circumstances, Mike was not disappointed with the turnout or the fabulous fan response!

As of this writing, Mike has lined up a number of weekends for concerts next summer at the fairgrounds, and more is yet to come. At this point, Mike was tight-lipped on the names of those acts, but they will hail from the ranks of jam band, R&B, country, and rock idioms (Hey, any chance of booking Matisyahu for one of the shows?).

Could Mike’s deal with the fairgrounds eventually become part of post-pandemic trend in producing music festivals and other live entertainment events? Could more deals like this one, in which independent promoters like Mike work directly with venues like the Sussex County Fairgrounds, result in an industry backlash against the monopolistic pursuits of Live Nation/Ticketmaster? One can only hope that happens.

Speaking of the evil vampire squid of the live entertainment business, Live Nation/Ticketmaster recently came up with a hare-brained scheme for 2021 concerts. They are planning to force fans to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccination or negative test results of the virus within 24 to 72 hours in order to gain admission to shows at Live Nation venues. Mike says that plan is deeply flawed because approximately 20 percent of concert-goers wait until the last minute to buy tickets, usually on reseller platforms like Stubhub, and won’t have the time to provide the required documentation. By the way, don’t hold your breath hoping Live Nation/Ticketmaster will step in and do the charitable thing of providing needed financial assistance to all of those independent stages struggling to stay open during the pause. That’s because the company ostensibly can buy these venues for pennies on the dollar in bankruptcy court if they go belly up, or fewer independent stages mean less competition for Live Nation/Ticketmaster.

Mike exudes confidence that his plans for live entertainment in New Jersey are a welcome alternative for live music-starved fans in the coming year. Hats off to Mike Kestin for making this all possible.