Phish's Soggy Fest August 9, 2003 - Pollstar By Staff When it was all said and done, Phish's "It" festival at an Air Force base in Maine was a success with 60,000 fans be-bopping to Trey Anastasio and crew for two days straight. But if it was so great, why did the promoter, Great Northeast Productions' Dave Werlin, tell the Associated Press it was "frustrating and heartbreaking"? "I don't think I said that," Werlin told POLLSTAR. "I think (spokesperson) Adam Lewis said that. Now let's straighten out who said what. Am I attributed to that quote?" The quote is read back to him. "OK, OK, I said it (laughs). Well, it was. It was very frustrating," Werlin said. "I gotta tell you, we made a sincere attempt to create a more comfortable situation for the fans this time around. We wanted to put them on grass strips with their vehicles so they could each have an individual camping area. We almost doubled the number of porta-johns and water facilities. "We did all kinds of things to make it a more pleasant experience, but the weather created difficulty for us to be able to achieve that." Since 1996, Werlin has organized Phish's annual festivals which, along with "It," have included "Clifford Ball," "The Great Went" and "Lemonwheel." Maine saw some of its worst weather in 20 years the week prior to the event, Werlin said, with seven-and-a-half inches of rain falling in three to four days. The event took place at the Loring Air Force Base in Limestone and featured six sets by Phish. The fans' 10-by-40 foot campsites were to be on the strips of land between the base's runways. Instead, the ground was so saturated that cars could have sunk up to their floorboards. "So we had to come up with Plan B," Werlin said. "Unfortunately, in the course of doing that, the collateral effect was a traffic jam while the parking was completely rethought." It caused unprecedented traffic jams along Routes 89 and 1A. Cars were backed up for 12 miles at noon on Saturday, according to the Maine state police. Phish bought air time on a radio station, pleading for people to stay in their cars. Traffic came to a standstill as a LifeFlight helicopter landed on the highway to take away three people who were seriously injured when their car rolled over. People parked in areas where the infrastructure was not in place, Werlin said, which meant utilities now had to be transported around parking lots filled with cars. "The fans had a ball," Werlin said. "I mean, look, there were some inconveniences. I'm more sensitive to this perhaps because, as the producer, I felt a personal obligation to make this something that we (ultimately) couldn't achieve, but you can't fight Mother Nature. "It was very frustrating because we made a promise and we wanted to keep it. But overall, safety was paramount and we had to change the plan in the interest of everybody's safety." Rain was predicted for the weekend, but "It" got a reprieve throughout, beginning that Friday. Werlin said it started to pour on Monday, just in time for load out. Still, it seemed as if the unexpected window of good weather meant somebody Upstairs was looking out for the event. "Maybe it was our fallen comrade," Werlin said. "We had a tragedy two days before the show." Crew member James Willox, 43, who had worked with the festivals since Clifford Ball in '96, died at an intersection in the town when his car hit an embankment. Police said it may have been caused by speed or driver fatigue. "Maybe he's looking out for us," Werlin said. "We've started the Jamie Willox Memorial Foundation for his wife and child." Donations can be made out to the fund and sent to Great Northeast at P.O. Box 1010, Townsend, MA 01469. On the brighter side, the band played a surprise set at 2 a.m. Sunday morning from atop the aviation tower. The sound system was placed on flatbed trucks while lights were taken to the top of the building. Gel lights were used to decorate the tower's windows in various colors. Werlin thought of it as a little slice of rock ‘n' roll history in the making. Load out could take between one and two weeks, he said. Despite the rain, 70 workers from Clean Vibes, an environmentally friendly concert cleanup company, were on time. "The fans were really good; there's just a lot spread out over a large, large area," Werlin explained. "There's a lot of things to do to bring an active runway to FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) standards. You don't want to have anything as small and seemingly innocuous as a flip-top bottlecap because it could potentially damage a jet engine, a multimillion dollar jet engine." Copyright © 2003 Pollstar