Blue Ridge Rock Fest Canceled Over Weather...Or Was It?

Words by Rachel Surdi

Blue Ridge Rock Festival is touted as the largest rock and metal festival in North America, promising to be an unforgettable experience for music enthusiasts looking to spend a weekend with their favorite heavy bands.

In the past few years, however, the conditions of the festival have felt more like a nightmare for staff and attendees. Beneath the surface of the “ridge” lies a host of issues that need attention.

The reality is that there are many aspects of the Blue Ridge Rock Festival that line up with the deception that was the infamous Fyre Festival and the fiasco that was the Kentucky Irate Festival.

What do all of these music festivals have in common? They each ended up getting canceled.

Blue Ridge festival organizers, according to their social media pages, claim weather was the cause for cancellation, but a Facebook group that has quickly grown by the thousands in the last few days tells a much different story.

Before the 2023 festival kicked off on Thursday, September 7, the Facebook group “Screwed by Blue Ridge Rock Festival” had ~10,000 members. Nearly overnight, the group has quickly grown to over 20,000 members and counting. Members have been using the group as a safe space to air their grievances about the festival; many have been members since 2021 or earlier.

“I’ve gotten bent over the last 3 years of attending this festival,” attendee Dustin Allen told us. “Gave them another chance because it’s the second time at this festival grounds, hoping they would get their sh*t together, but they didn’t. And I’m not even mad about the weather. I get it, you can’t control it. Just the overall bull we all had to go through is insane.”

Music festivals are meant to be a safe haven, a place where fans can immerse themselves in the euphoria of live music performances and connect with like-minded individuals. Some of the bands who played, like Bodysnatcher, shared with us that they had no issues, other than the security that was hired and the fact that there was only one road into the festival. However, some witnesses describe the negligence at Blue Ridge to be more like a scene out of a horror movie.

According to attendees and members of the FB group, the top issues with Blue Ridge are:

1. Major Safety Concerns

One of the most pressing issues surrounding the Blue Ridge Rock Festival is the alarming growing number of safety concerns. In 2023 and in previous years, attendees reported overcrowding, inadequate security measures, and pure negligence from staff.

These incidents not only put festival-goers at risk but also tarnished the festival’s reputation. Blue Ridge Rock Festival claims it prioritizes the safety and well-being of its attendees, but Blue Ridge seems to have fallen short in this regard.

Jason Cage, who traveled nearly 1,400 miles to attend (not counting the 72-mile drive each way to and from the festival all 3 days), told us, “Business ethics aside, the way this festival approaches safety is tantamount to criminal negligence. If the storm had been anything more severe, I am convinced this would have been a mass casualty event.”

Nick Snider, who spent hundreds to attend the festival with his wife, said it was the worst experience he’s ever had at any type of festival or concert in his 10+ years of attending them. “The security was nowhere to be found,” he said. “Nobody checked our bags or patted us down before entering, which made me instantly uncomfortable knowing that anyone could snuggle just about anything into the festival with little effort.”

John Smith (name has been changed due to privacy), who was hired by Blue Ridge as a security staff member for the 2023 festival, told us that “Communication with staff was extremely bad. [We were] totally in the dark about what was going on. I found out the festival was canceled at the same time the fans did, through Blue Ridge’s Instagram.”

He also shared that “a majority of the security staff seemed to be random people that were wanting to make money” and “there was never a point where I had to show any certifications or anything like that. It was more of an, ‘Oh, you can handle doing crowd surfers? Are you strong? You’re a crowd catcher today.’”

Snider recalls that his wife overheard a woman frantically trying to get a security guard’s attention to no avail. “Once she got close enough to him, she explained that someone was down and needed medical attention ASAP,” Snider shares. “[Security] pointed to the MED tent a good 200 yards away and said, ‘You will have to bring them there. I have no way to get ahold of any EMS because my cell service sucks.’ Seriously? Security wasn’t given walkie-talkies to communicate with one another for important situations like this?”

The Tour Manager for Electric Callboy, who were scheduled to play at this year’s Blue Ridge Rock Festival, reportedly posted on Discord that “Blue Ridge was an absolute sh*t show fest even on our end. No joke, worst show I’ve been a part of in almost 20 years of touring. I told the promoter straight to his face that it was the most unprofessional, unorganized, unsafe pile of sh*t festival I’ve ever seen in my life.”

A lighting tech for Blue Ridge Rock Festival this year, Maya Jones, also reportedly posted to her Facebook page that the staff went on strike due to poor conditions:

“Final day as a lighting tech @ Blue Ridge Rock Fest. Glad it’s coming to an end at this point. We have no labor help anymore from the hands striking due to poor accommodations provided by the festival and no catering. We only got to run 1 successful day of [the] show. And now about 15 of us are heading in to break down all production by ourselves. This is what happens when the stagehands, aka the backbone of all festivals, are treated like the lowest of the totem pole when they are one of the most necessary components of a successful event. To all techs out there who treat stagehands like you don’t need them, THIS COULD BE YOU loading out your own crap, in the mud and rain with just you and your techs. We are stagehands first! Never forget that! We need them and need to treat them better.”

“To be clear, this community is amazing, and will make the best of a bad situation when they can,” Cage said. “Whether it’s ICON pit crew keeping people safe when they’re short on security, or campers banding together to help each other weather the storm, they all deserve praise for their efforts. The point though, is that they shouldn’t have to. It should be on the festival organizers to prepare for and oversee these operations, and they failed.”

2. Financial Problems and Price Gouging

Jonathan Slye, CEO and founder of Blue Ridge Rock Fest, admits in a June 2023 interview with Digital Beat Mag that the festival does not have a qualified CFO, and instead has one Executive Producer who is tasked with everything from accounting to website updates to being the liaison for the department of health to managing all department heads and staff. Slye also states that they were not in a position to “provide toilets in bulk or whatever”, which he attributes to inflation as well as due to being an independently run production company.

Slye has since deleted his social media accounts. This isn’t the first time the festival’s owner has gone into hiding or experienced backlash. In 2021, Slye attempted to publicly address his social media absence with a long apology statement on his Facebook page.

The cost of attending the festival has also raised some eyebrows, both for attendees and for vendors.

“$560 for two tickets, plus $100 for two shuttle passes, and this is the experience we get on DAY 1 of a 4-day festival?” Snider questioned. “We are never coming back.”

These sponsorship prices reportedly show how expensive it was to advertise at Blue Ridge Rock Festival:

Source: Unknown

“Prices are outrageous,” one camper shared with us. “7 dollars for a tiny popsicle. 25 dollars for a bag OF ICE. No water [because] they ran out. No one has cleaned the portapotties. WOODSTOCK 2023 OVER HERE. Apparently, the festival is [run] by ONE SINGULAR 25-YEAR-OLD MAN who clearly has no f*cking idea what he’s doing.”

Blue Ridge Rock Festival was not available to comment.

3. Size, Location, and Environmental Impact

Large-scale music festivals have long been criticized for their environmental footprint, and the festival that claims to be North America’s largest rock and metal festival is no exception. According to a recent WSET article, organizers were expecting nearly 50,000 attendees at the Virginia International Raceway for each day of the four-day-long festival, with 70-80% of those camping out all weekend.

With that massive of a crowd, things can go awry quickly.

This year’s Blue Ridge Rock Festival reportedly had uncontrolled trash, a lack of showers, and not enough food or water. Many packed up and left due to the poor conditions.

Source: Screwed by Blue Ridge Rock Festival Facebook Group

Blue Ridge Rock Festival’s location in Alton, Virginia has a significant impact on the local community. While the festival can provide an economic boost to the area, it also disrupts the residential areas with traffic congestion and other logistical challenges. There was also only one way in and out of the festival, which caused a lot of issues for attendees.

Robert Winans, who traveled 700+ miles from Buffalo, NY to attend Blue Ridge in VA, said, “My experience was genuinely awful. In 14 years of going from everything to Lollapalooza to Aftershock to Riot Fest, I’ve never witnessed any festival this drastically unprepared or without the needed resources for the 50,000 in attendance.”

Photo Credit: Robert Bruce Winans

“The parking lots for our cars are a solid 6 miles from the festival, and we had to take a shuttle to get there that morning,” Snider said. “So we ended up standing in a line of probably 50,000+ people trying to get into one of 8 shuttles to get out of the rain and back to our cars. We stood in a line that didn’t move for two hours in the cold rain.”

“One of the security guards snapped and was giving death threats to people. Others tried to fight in the street, all while the shuttles weren’t moving,” Snider added. “We were all scared, cold and confused. After two hours, we decided to follow a nice group of people who said they were giving up and just walking the 5.5 miles back to the parking lot. We walked about 4 miles in the dark before a nice man in a pickup truck picked 6 of us up and dropped us off at our parking spots. It’s amazing how not even the people who worked the festival were going out of their way to help in this time of crisis. If it weren’t for them we could have been hit by a car on the side of the highway we had to walk on.”

4. Lack of Crisis Communication and Planning

Photo Credit: Robert Bruce Winans

Many festival attendees and campers shared horror stories of getting stuck for hours and wasting hundreds of dollars but not actually being able to see the bands they planned to.

“Attendees were pitched free parking as a selling point, but only the parking was free,” said Winans. “Using the shuttle to and from the parking lot was the only way to enter the festival if you weren’t camping, which was $60 per person for the weekend, and even still it often took hours of waiting in line to get to the festival grounds to wait in another line to get in.”

Caitlyn Wright, who had bought tickets and planned to attend the festival Friday and Saturday, couldn’t even get in “because they turned us away at the gates along with thousands of others, and then proceeded to post the bands continuing to play on their Instagram.” Wright waited in line on the side of the road for 4-5 hours in a hailstorm after security led her and about 200 others to the wrong place. “What a sh*tshow,” she said. “So unsafe and unfair to A LOT of people.”

“In the end, I get that you cannot control the weather,” Snider said. “However, you CAN control how to coordinate your attendees in a safe and manageable way so that everyone makes it out okay with no issues. There was no planning or safety measures for something as common as a THUNDERSTORM? Come on.”

Hunter King, who elected to camp this year, told us, “People were passing out from heat strokes and heat exhaustion. We had to set up our tent and everything in 100-degree weather. They had us in the blistering sun with no shade. No water stations at all. People are having seizures and going into cardiac arrest. People are dropping like f*cking flies.”

Severe weather hit the festival from every direction, from 100-degree heat to a severe thunder and lightning storm on the first day alone. “We get into the festival grounds for the one band we wanted to see and it starts literally downpouring on us so they made us go back to the campsites,” King said. “We go back there and our whole setup is destroyed; all our things are soaking wet and ruined, so we had no choice but to take down everything in the storm and leave and find a hotel an hour away.”

Getting in and out of the festival proved to be a challenge, and long lines for shuttle buses left campers and attendees stranded in the heat for hours, if they made it in at all.

“There was not enough staff to handle the evacuation that did occur,” said Winans. “There were no shelters campers could go to, and at no time did it feel like anything professional at all. This was a DIY festival left unattended and unsupervised in the most dangerous conditions I’ve ever seen. Though it boasts being the biggest Rock Festival in North America it definitely feels like nobody is really running the festival.”

5. Blatant Disregard for Safety and Accommodations

There are also many reports of mistreatment by those who need accommodations.

In spite of Blue Ridge advertising ADA accommodations front and center on the website, an attendee posted in the “Screwed by Blue Ridge Rock Festival” group that, “Upon all the other problems BRRF had, they REFUSED my disabled veteran best friend ADA.”

“I’m a type 1 diabetic,” Noraa Michael told us. “During the rush to the shuttles Thursday, I lost my bag containing my long-lasting insulin. I alerted a security guard who took me to the EMS tent where I was told they had no insulin and I had to WALK back to the shuttle lines AND wait in the line, not where they pulled me, but at the back. It took me crying and begging for mercy. A security guard finally listened and let me skip the line and I eventually got more insulin from my car. Moral of the story: they didn’t give a f*ck.”

While working the security gig, Smith was told he could leave his post at midnight, but he didn’t head home until 2 a.m. since he wound up helping people who were stuck with no way in or out of the festival by shuttling them in his personal car. “The shuttling was not something I was told to do, but wanted to do because no one was getting help,” he said.

In spite of all the recurring inconveniences that have happened over the past few years, he came last year as a camper and had a good time. “I was depressed about not being able to come as a fan, but was ecstatic to get the opportunity to work at Blue Ridge,” he said.

“At first, I loved it. I’m a rock and metal fan, and I live for this type of stuff,” Smith shared. “But I soon came to find out that this was a complete sh*t show, from the lack of planning, consideration, and communication between the people running Blue Ridge and the people [they] contracted.”

6. Lawsuits and Unanswered Claims for Refunds

Did you know that Blue Ridge Rock Festival and Jonathan Slye’s company Purpose Driven Events have been involved in several lawsuits in previous years already?

The first is Sands vs. Blue Ridge Rock Festival, which involves a group of bartenders and barbacks who worked at the festival in 2021 and 2022. They allege that the owners and operators failed to pay fair wages and tips that federal and state labor laws require.

There was also legal action taken by Atkinson Farm & Events for unpaid bills for lease payments that the festival owed from November and December 2021.

Attendees also speculate whether there will be refunds this year like this post claims:

While Blue Ridge Rock Festival has undoubtedly provided memorable experiences for many, it is essential for us to examine the festival’s darker side. These concerns all deserve attention and action from the festival’s organizers.

It is only by addressing these issues transparently and proactively that the event can truly live up to its reputation as the largest rock fest in North America and provide a safe, enjoyable, and responsible experience for all attendees, staff members, and bands.

Winans, who paid nearly $1k for the weekend between 4-day festival tickets and travel/hotel accommodations, yet wasn’t able to witness more than two bands due to all the festival’s mishaps, has these final words to share: “The sheer lack of safety, facilities, water, and communication might not seem important and take a backseat to the lineup, but you can see great lineups all over the country and actually see what you came to see without putting you or your loved ones at risk for a 30% markdown in ticket cost. Pay the extra money and have a better safer time with the bands you came to see.”

“What I would say to anyone planning on attending Blue Ridge next year,” Cage advises, “is to pick a different festival and never look back. Even if other events are more expensive, they are a better value. I have a hard time believing things will be different if I just give them one more chance. You shouldn’t either.”