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This is Darren bond.
The fearless leader of our story.
A very adventurous character.
Referred to around these parts as "boombah".
Marlon Perkins was this guy that does these wildlife shows
back in the 70s and 803 and whatever I grew up with.
White-haired, elegant-looking guy, anyway...
He was always standing from a distance,
and he had his trusted companion,
who was this big barrel-chested guy.
He was down there, like, wrestling with a grizzly
while Marlon Perkins was way up somewhere,
"oh, and look at him!
He's wrestling with the grizzly bear!"
That's what it feels like with you guys.
I'm wrestling the grizzly by jumping off of this
while you guys safely stand in the tower.
Darren is often pegged as a workaholic...
Who made a living from building Bridges.
You want it, I hook this big one...
Does this feel about right?
Hey! Did you pay the insurance?
Hey, first time I was up here,
took me 15 minutes and I would refuse to jump.
Look out!
There we go.
It doesn't look like much when you're down here.
My impression of Darren bond is something, uh...
That's really hard to describe with words, um...
Darren was actually kind of a... a nerdy kid.
What it is... is the alien takes over this guy's body,
but he's conscious and is still in his... in his head, right?
But he's trapped.
So he's got this, it's like this room
with all these... this stuff,
and it's all his baggage, and all of his,
you know, everything he's done and everything.
And that's what it feels like when you come in the bunker,
kind of like it's my brain.
He was born an okie
and he still resides in Oklahoma.
Surrounded by cattle, forests,
fields and a fully nuclear bunker
with a hidden library surrounded by an art gallery
attached to a mid-century Italian chapel.
It's Darren's sanctuary.
For philosophy, art...
And life.
I guess to understand Mr. Bond just a little bit better,
I'll need to show you the hidden world
of the esoteric bunker.
[Lively music playing
Hey, I'm not a professional, you know.
I live in the middle of nowhere.
This crazy bunker that Darren has,
that the walls are lined with books,
and it's dark
but it's so unique and so cool.
The bunker blew my mind. I was like, it was insane.
The top side, you know,
in the regular building, there's like,
this church that's in there too,
where I guess people get married.
So much stuff that's artwork in there,
it's like, a lot to absorb, right?
Like, every time you're in there,
you see something new that you didn't see before.
Basically, it's got Satan
chained down in the middle, for the chains,
and then in the middle
the quo represents the serpent.
Each room is like its own unique thing.
It's the idea that we live a physical life
in a material world.
If the rain comes, it makes a mud hole,
and we have to fight through it,
so we have all these things that we're dealing with
in the world that the physical world...
But yet what do we really aspire to?
What are the things that really move us?
And the things that move us are...
Is kind of represented by the term esoteric,
which, it could be anything.
It could be an idea, it could be a religion,
it could be a... A narrative of your history,
or whatever, or it could be art or music.
For this music festival,
that was the esoteric part,
to enjoy this music together as a community.
None of us are getting out of this alive.
So it's how we live that makes a difference.
You gotta take the good with the bad,
and turn what looks bad into something good.
The meaning of the bunker part
is the idea that we pull into ourselves.
I mean, this is a physical representation.
If you think you could be saved by being in a bunker,
you're completely wrong.
Being in the bunker might make you last
a couple extra weeks,
but it's not going to save you,
and you can't be saved by being in a bunker anywhere.
That's probably the realization when it comes to...
I believe in being prepared for anything,
but you're not gonna save yourself inside
if you don't have friends communing around you,
that's what we're creating.
Community is so the bunker mentality
is something that we all embrace at times,
it's my tribe against your tribe,
my country against your country.
And the... That's part of our ego.
Our ego is there for a reason.
It allows us to survive,
but we have to let go of it
and realize that we're all the same.
We're all connected, we are all one.
And if you realize that,
and even apply a little bit of that thinking to your life,
hopefully it will help you help us all.
Darren does some really cool stuff.
His mind never shuts off. I don't see how the guy sleeps.
Hey, you want some razzle-dazzle?
How's that?
Darren's got a mind of his own.
He's got some sort of creativity bug in him
that I can't even put my finger on.
He had started thinking about
having a music festival out here.
It is a form of art,
and it's the one that probably permeates
our daily life more than anything.
Darren came to me about three years ago,
I'd say, wanting to do this thing.
He had an idea for a festival on his property.
A co-worker asked me if I wanted to come out
to this guy's property, about an hour,
hour and a half away from downtown Oklahoma city,
to see if I thought, logistically,
it was something that we could pull off...
Within six to seven months.
A guy by the name of mikael called me
and he said "I'm planning to do a festival.
Do you have time to go look at the property next week?"
It's located in between shawnee and Ada,
a town called Asher.
Just south ofasher, actually.
We get out there,
it's this beautiful 1400-acre ranch.
Down his driveway, it's two miles,
and I'm like "oh my god, I'm in the middle of nowhere."
It's just massive.
I hear about all these buildings
and all these things that this guy's built.
Honestly, I didn't believe him.
His brain thinks so much
and he has all this stuff laying around,
and you're like, "what is all this stuff for?",
and then you'll stumble upon 50 safes
that he's made, like, artwork out of,
and you're like "man, this dude is great."
It's a really cool bar.
I can definitely picture myself sitting in there
and drinking a good old-fashioned
or some bourbon in there, you know?
My mind was blown.
Getting the lay of the land,
going a mile toward the Canadian river,
going a mile to the highway
that's just west of where we're at.
And I... I still haven't seen all the... the whole property.
It's just, every time you turn a corner,
there's something that you've never seen before.
This is a Jewel that I bought,
that put in our little Halloween...
Haunted forest or whatever.
It's not gonna be, uh,
it's gonna be right over there.
It's just a little area for some of our ghouls
to run around and, uh, chase people.
Kind of reminds me the...
That truck on...
Uh, jeepers creepers, that movie?
Where that guy, that strange creature
has that truck that he drives around and nabs everybody.
We kind of realized early on that he had something cool.
You know, we wanted to be a part, but the, you know,
the overall vision wasn't there yet.
We said go, and then since we're gonna do this,
the question was, could we do something quick enough now
to actually ha... Make it happen this year,
was it gonna just need to flow to next year.
I think we kind of wanted to make it
a little bit smaller at first, than he was trying to go.
But we decided to do a 5000-ish capacity music festival.
If it's a first time for them to throw a music festival,
some of the questions we... we tend to have is, uh...
I hope these people know
what they're getting themselves into.
Hoping they understand the amount of money
they're about to spend to do the show.
We wanted this to be something unique for Oklahoma,
something that hasn't really been here before.
Different sized stages,
where we could put stages, where they would need roads,
where they could utilize some of these giant structures
that Darren already had in place.
Taking an empty field
and turning it into essentially a small city for a weekend,
takes a lot.
He wanted it to be edm.
Why edm?
Well, uh, that's just what we chose.
I hadn't... it's not like that was my genre, preferred genre.
I don't know that much about it.
I know nothing about edm.
I had never heard edm music before in my life until Friday.
I'd heard that this event was gonna be edm music,
and I'd still never heard edm.
It doesn't matter
whether you're a country fan, alternative.
Edm is... those people
are very hardcore about their music,
and I appreciate that because I like my music
and it motivates me and inspires me
and does all those things.
And so I saw that in him too.
I like these festivals, because people come here
because they truly love the music.
It's loud, it's rad.
Well, there's a lot of rhythm and beat to it,
and if you sit there and listen to it long enough,
without ever hearing it before,
you'll find yourself starting to move.
When people say you need to be zigging,
I'm usually zagging, so there... there you go.
Every two weeks, every three weeks,
they'd hit me up and say,
"okay, we've gotten to this point,
can we come chat about this with you now?
Like, we want to put a pad out there in the field
for the stage line to go on.
What size pad do we need
if we want to be doing shows five years from now."
And I'm like, "holy cow."
And, uh, every time we went out there,
we gave the guys advice
and, um, Darren would roll with it.
We knew that we're gonna basically go
from our barns and office here and go... go to the west,
use that space of about 20, 30 acres.
And so what did we need to do?
Well, we needed to change the grass.
We had a kind... type of grass growing in there
that's built for hay, it's not built to get a good,
you know, mat of cool grass underneath your feet.
I gotta run and get some, uh, tools,
I'll be right back. I'll let you help me.
He did it all right.
Whatever advice we gave him,
he'd show up two weeks later, the work was done.
If there anyone interested,
basically, this is a John deere excavator,
and I'm, uh, gonna throw some trees over the fence,
and that'd be an easy cleanup.
We own this, uh, this is part of our, uh,
work tools that we use to clear land
and dig the dirt that we built the roads out of.
I gotta be a little careful here,
because that pipe you see, uh,
by the excavator is actually a well... a well head.
That's our new well that we built, uh,
to provide a... Provide some extra water
for the... for the site.
Uh, we had to put... Install the system
so that we could put in our new grass.
So we got our new grass in and it's... it's in place
and we've been growing on it this season.
It looks pretty good,
but it'll be really good by sometime next year.
This area over to my left is, um,
backstage of the... Our main stage,
uh, still needs to be cleaned up.
You know, once we kind of finally got
the ball rolling with the artists,
everything kind of took off from there.
Landing a headliner like zeds dead and, uh, kayzo,
and some of the other acts that we had, you know,
definitely gave us the momentum to push forward.
All of our possible, you know, uh,
themes or whatever would be some Halloween orientation,
and then edm fit that fairly well.
We were talking about, uh,
where to put some of the zombie props
for these performing artists.
Yeah. Yeah, and we're...
Okay, so... So on the zombie stuff,
I want to... I'll get some meat cleaver-looking things,
and we'll, like, get the bl...
I don't, I know nothing... To buy me fake blood.
But... oh, I'm sorry... But, like, uh...
Yeah, you've gotta deal with the blood.
Oh, okay, so like, you know, packing all over that.
I'll definitely throw some blood all over this stuff.
Okay. Cool.
So this is going to be something
like universal studios fright night,
or whatever they call it,
where they run around with meat cleavers chasing people?
Umnpmn I'm hoping so.
We started designing the daybreak setup,
the stage setup, with the... The masked-out video wall
with the circle truss around it,
the... the fire, and I would say by... by August,
all the final designs were submitted,
and we chose what we were gonna do.
And it was go time.
We just had to wait until October to execute a show.
Today's October 22nd.
As of four hours ago,
we have less than 48 hours until doors.
We got rain within the past 24 hours,
we had a tornado touch down
within two miles of this location.
So we're kind of still dealing with a little bit of issues
in regards to some of, uh,
the infrastructure we have built.
The artists are coming,
and they're going to be here whether we're ready or not,
so it's kind of like, what can you prioritize
and get done in the least amount of time.
You know, there are a couple of places
where we could add a little more surface course,
just in case we get some unexpected weather.
I don't know whether it was the right thing to do
or the wrong thing to do.
It was gonna be a huge undertaking,
but with Darren's skillset,
I felt like, and I still feel like it's something
that we're going to be able to manage.
Music industry, when the doors open at four,
the doors open at four.
You can't have, you know,
in this case we'll probably have
at least 3000 people at the gate.
We can't be not opening the doors,
that's just gonna create issues
and, uh, hopefully we...
I know we can tackle those issues if they arise,
but I would rather... rather not have to leap that hurdle.
I... there's a story about buddy.
I got, uh, a lot of the...
A lot of the stuff that I'm incorporating in the buildings
came from a particular junkyard in Ada.
When they sold the property and left,
left their dogs... Left three dogs there,
and even after a year, being abandoned,
buddy was the only one that survived.
So anyway, when I got thejunk I, uh...
I took some dog food and coaxed him
into finally, uh, getting close to me,
then I got to know him a little bit,
and about a week later, I snatched him up,
put him in the pickup and he came back here
and seems to enjoy it.
We're glad to have him.
Right, buddy? Come here!
Come on!
Are you moving slow today? Huh?
Huh?
Stuff that, uh, they use at the, uh,
at the music festivals is three phased.
So we had, uh,
uh, did some kind of... I don't know what it was,
some kind of convertor or something to make it work.
Otherwise they were gonna have to spend 360,000 dollars
to actually bring three bays all the way to here.
But anyway, we got it going,
so hopefully when we plug it in here in a couple of days,
it'll all work.
But that's what I know about electricity.
J“ hey brother, it's time to put your hands on j“
j“ because we're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ oh, we 're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ getting taller and taller j“
Some of the challenges
that we started facing along the way
was getting this venue built up from scratch.
80 building the stages was most priority.
We saw the chances of rain.
They were started looking out 10 days or two weeks,
which didn't mean anything,
but when you get down to the last week,
you can see that we definitely had a day
that we're gonna be impacted,
but I didn't... didn't worry about it really much then,
because I thought our impact was gonna be
on setup day on Thursday, mainly.
About eight o'clock,
you could hear the first raindrops falling,
which we expected, but then it started.
October being the second-wettest month
of the year here in Oklahoma,
and we laughed about it,
we were like "we'll be fine, man, we'll be fine."
And nine inches of rain later...
It was the second-wettest month in Oklahoma.
Wednesday night, the bottom falls out,
and it just pours.
Called battle, and we made the call
to go ahead and set the stage.
Wednesday night at 10:30 with no light,
it started raining.
When it started raining so early,
so hard, that was when I was concerned.
We were literally walking into the perfect storm, essentially.
This is big creek.
It's a little bit bigger than it normally is,
it really is normally not very big at all,
but, uh, got a little... Kind of shows
that we did get a little bit of rain.
Oklahoma weather changes
in a matter of 30 minutes.
I'm sure it does everywhere else,
but in Oklahoma it... it can be heaven or hell
within 30 minutes,
anditcan be unprecedented,
no warning whatsoever.
My guys show up in the bus,
and I show up, and the field is just muddy.
That looks a lot of water, doesn't it?
It looks like, uh, our pipe got broke or something,
probably, out there in the middle of the...
Middle of the sand,
and so the drainage pipe got stuck.
Oh, loo... hey, look, it's bubbling over there!
Well, rain's an issue with any property
because nobody likes to, obviously,
stand in mud or water to do anything.
It makes everything complicated.
We do have certain segments of the ground that we prepared,
that we put new soil on, to grow better grass.
And so those tend to be a little muddier.
And it's just gonna be a long day.
The parking crew are gonna have to work really slow.
Right, what... what... What we need to do is,
we need to make sure that... That... that we're gonna...
We're g... We'll create some exits
and our entrances or whatever off
of... of the areas that we want them to go.
I just made the common... I was like,
"well, you see, this big giant,
like, two-and-a-half-inch, three-inch rock here,
if you could get a lot of that here,
we'd probably be able to at least work back and forth
and... and get stuff to the stage,
and get it installed, and as stuff dries up,
we'll be able to use that element of the show
and in... incorporate it into the stage.
Oh, you know the roads are relatively stable
but, you know, the back stage is a bit, um...
No, it's... you go over there, it's... it's gets messed up,
so we gotta fix it,
so they can do their thing there, and...
I would like all five of 'em,
and then... and then, uh,
depending on our needs we'll probably just turn around
and go do another... Another round or two.
Gonna call my dozer guy and see what kind of rock
he's been getting from one quarry.
We got five more trucks coming from another quarry.
So we've, uh...
Got about twelve trucks making two or three rounds,
so we'll have forty... Four days over
at forty loads of rock to use wherever we need it.
No joke, fifteen, twenty minutes later...
Dump trucks and semi-folds of rock show up.
I'll get out of your way,
and you just bring the lot around there to that dozer,
he's gonna help you dump there in the middle of the road.
Spending all the extra money on, you know...
Whether or not it's my money or not,
just trying to watch out for Darren
and being as up front as possible as, you know,
this is going to cost a lot more money
to keep this thing going.
I'm not that worried about the product
one way or the other, just availability
and get it here so we can put it in the right spot, so...
But anyway, yeah, I'll wait for you
and I'll... I'll...
Uh, it's electronic dance music,
um, got about 75 bands, and we're gonna have
several thousand people for sure,
but, uh, other than that...
It's gonna look... It's gonna be fun,
but it's... it's not...
It's not exactly what you wanted.
You don't want the flood the day before,
but I mean, all things considered,
I'm... we're in... We're in decent shape.
It's been better.
I got... we got, like,
trucks out the wazoo now.
I don't know how many we need, but I'll probably get us
at least four loads of, uh... of mulch,
that way we can put it
in different places for foot traffic.
Hey guys! On that... is that y'all's?
Are you all driving this?
Y'all driving that? Okay. Thank you.
I'm enjoying interacting with the... the people
that are coming here, you know, uh, once we kind of
get out of the crisis mode, hopefully.
Uh, but we've got everything stabilized right now
fairly well, I think, for what we're doing here,
with our vendors and getting our artists in,
and getting production stuff going,
so I'm comfortable with that,
but then the... The challenge will be...
Uh...
This thing's, uh...
When... when everybody gets here.
When you get, you know, hundreds of cars here,
and they start pulling them in,
then it'll be... they'll be different challenges.
So we have nine, ten, eleven, twelve...
We have 14 trucks running.
Who's in my spot?
Yes, that's your spot?
- That's my spot, man! - Oh, you want it back?
Who are you? Come on!
- Tell me who you are! - Skyler.
Skyler, nice to meet you, Skyler.
I'm a merchandise vendor; I'm with deval Chicago.
If you need it, you can have it.
We're temporarily sitting here. I'm trying to figure out...
Stay there, I'll go some place else.
Typically if we do, like, an arena show,
you can flip 30 trucks in five or six hours.
Out there, 'cause of the elements,
everything was coming off the truck by what...
What we call an "off-road," "forklift," or a "lull."
Each semi was about three to four hours
at a time to offload it.
You're only able to do two cases at a time,
and then get it over to the stage,
cause the... the semis were stuck in mud.
Uh, so we were unable to back 'em up to the stage
like we typically would to offload them.
It really slowed down the loading time,
and it made it, uh just like a fourteen-hour day.
And we still didn't get everything done,
in that first day.
There was no way for us to prepare
what we were getting ourselves into.
Daybreak? Oh, man.
It's been a wild ride, I'll be honest,
like, get here, you know?
It's raining, pouring down.
We roll up, this guy named Paul picked us up
in a pickup truck lift.
I've never been
in a truck lift in my life, by the way.
But... so we roll up through the mud, you know,
trucking through, four...
Like, four wheel drive, getting here.
Pull up, hop out the car, he says "welcome to Oklahoma."
Whenever you have thousands of pounds of gear,
coming out of semis, it's hard to get
across a muddy field to deliver the product
that you're trying to to those stages,
and make it flow the way it should.
I... I drove around
with a couple people in the truck...
Uh, assessed what was happening and what was about to happen,
and, I just, physically and financially
thought it was gonna be really difficult
to make the show go on.
We couldn't even get the semis to the loading dock,
'cause the semis were getting stuck in the mud.
The off-road forklifts were getting stuck.
And they were having to pull them out with bulldozers.
The only thing that we didn't foresee
was the... the weather.
After doing it for twelve years,
I've never seen a festival ground so wet.
Knowing how long it had taken on the build,
just to build one stage, the main stage,
and, like, all the things that weren't going to, like,
be able to fire off that night, like,
I just did not see it all working out.
I've seen festivals shut down because they weren't prepared
for this type of stuff.
This is a classic three-act play, whatever.
- Exactly, exactly, go. - Setup, conflict, resolution.
Sure, no problem there.
All right.
80 this is the climax right now?
- This is the conflict. - Ooh.
One, one after the other,
it's roads, and then it's fire marshal,
and then it's lasers, and then it's pyro.
I was completely determined to see it through,
because the biggest fail that I could have
as the guy running it was to cancel it.
We couldn't do that, and we didn't want to do that,
because these people were here to see the music.
I felt like we need to shut it down,
it felt like, um...
Ours getting, like, blasted with people,
like, you know, like,
hit me up, "what's going on?
I'm trying to get in,
I can't, 'cause people are getting stuck."
You need to think about this, you know, you didn't...
You need to think about cancelling, potentially.
I don't know what your cancellation insurance is like,
but you need to look into it.
And Darren's response was "cancel what?"
I never had any thoughts of giving up,
but I'm... some of the troops,
asked that question at a point in time,
a couple of times, but I think we made that clear
that that wasn't gonna happen.
He was looking kind of different stuff,
but mentally, I was just in this state
where I... I couldn't see the end.
Sometimes when you get in a bad place in your mind,
even when you realize what the problems are,
and you start fixing them, some people,
they just... they want to dwell on the problems
like from the beginning,
even though you're solving them as you go.
It wasn't perfect.
There were gonna be people get stuck.
I was watching it along on Facebook,
and seeing where the rain... And people were getting stuck,
and Darren was hauling in rock,
and just wood chips, you know,
all around the margins, and, uh, told my wife,
I was like "I think Darren's in trouble."
We... we had a four-wheel drive pickup,
and we had a tow strap, you know, which I brought in,
'cause it's, you know, from what I'd seen
on Facebook, so, uh... yeah, I was just,
they'd hook it up, and I'd pull.
They didn't worry about it.
Some of them just got stuck,
and went about their business,
and... some of them moved a little bit,
or whatever, but, you know?
We're all in it together.
You don't really trust Oklahoma weather,
I figured out.
It might just shut down.
They mightjust call it at this point.
There was the first night,
it was just raining in sheets
as the main acts were going on.
J“ day is breaking j“
j“ we're gonna start a fire j“
j“ long time waiting j“
j“ flames keep getting higher j“
It was just like a monsoon soaking,
and it just kept raining and raining and raining.
J“ we're gonna start a fire j“
j“ hell or heaven j“
everything was under a hydraulic structure,
we had the walls up on it,
uh, problem was the rain was coming in sideways.
For about 12 to 16 hours,
and it got the lighting system completely soaked.
The soak hold, the consoles were shutting off.
We had to find jet heaters to keep them going.
Not really sure if you're going
to make it through the weekend because
the conditions are so terrible,
you're not really sure if somebody's going to cancel,
or one of the headliners is gonna decide
he doesn't want to play because
his special effects aren't working.
When people were coming in,
they were committed to being there.
And so we were equally committed to doing what it took
to assist them to get there and stay there.
Didn't matter how much it was gonna rain,
once the place was super soaked,
it was super soaked.
The rain and all the mud and everything, you know,
the situation gets in the way,
and people don't want to go through that.
And I feel that.
And so you get this idea in your head,
like "oh, it might be the same situation for me.
Maybe no one's gonna come out because it's still muddy.
Maybe no one's gonna do this," you know?
Where's mikael, do you know?
Mikael, he just went up front.
He just went up to the box.
- The box up... - That way. Okay.
I swear, I thought they said mikael was up here.
Two-wheel drive Honda civics just blast
through the mud and semis getting stuck,
and forklifts getting stuck,
and people getting stuck.
Tents getting stuck.
Everything getting stuck.
Oh, just didn't ever see that.
That was crazy.
It looked like a war zone.
You know, people are getting stuck
in the mud right and left.
As an event producer, you know, you have to start
thinking about "is this... Are these conditions safe?"
In my mind, like, I could just see
people, like, not making it,
like, sleeping in their tents, and like, the water filling up,
and... drowning, like, it was scaring me.
I just couldn't see the... I couldn't see it
at the end of it.
You know, okay... We... we gotta do
what we gotta do.
We... we can't do it, and basically,
this is when we, need you to use your social media
to explain to people what we're up against,
but we're going on anyway.
And it may not be to the highest quality,
but what else are you gonna do?
We're gonna shut down and go home?
I don't think so.
So, why can't we communicate to that, to these kids?
These kids will do it, and they'll say,
"hey! This is a... this..."
I know. I know.
But I want you to... I want you to explain to 'em,
because you're always worried what they're thinking.
Well, fine, tell 'em what we're thinking,
tell 'em what we're up against.
Ten am. On Friday, and we just finished
installing the, uh... The waterproof lighting system.
Mikael was really concerned with the amount
of water that the grounds were holding.
He had been, uh, doing some laps
around in the truck, and checking stuff out.
You know, it wasn't going my way.
You know, the way that I had an...
Kind of envisioned it, uh, fall into play.
We're kind of, uh,
assessing the current situation.
At one point...
We're like "should we do this?
Should we not?" And Darren looks at us.
And he's like "we've come this far,
we're doing a show.
What do we need to make it happen?"
It's been raining now for... I don't know how long,
but it's been raining for a day, day and a half,
it's supposed to rain all day today,
it's supposed to, uh... Maybe kind of stop
sometime in the morning, I think.
So, hopefully we'll have...
The final day will be, uh...
Have some sunshine for the...
For the... the final big day.
Oh, there's nothing you can do about it.
What, cancel it?
I surrender, but never give up,
and that surrendering, the fact
that you're not in control is...
It's critical to being happy and content.
He's a go-getter, you know?
You can't tell him "no," and he'll be like "okay."
He... you tell him "no," he'll show you how it's done.
All I can say is that approaching problems
with daylight is much easier
than trying to contend with them in the dark.
Anyway, we're heading south on our road,
and it is a muddy mess, but it is... it is stable,
it's just... it's got a lot of skim on it, so...
It just gotta go slow and...
Uh, take it easy.
Then once we get past here, we'll go down the road,
you'll... it gets, it's... it's all right.
It's passable.
The weather isn't gonna stop me.
Like, nobody can control that.
That's what they call an "act of god," right there.
You know what I mean?
Well, I'll just dump 'em some place else.
What you're telling me, right?
The more I watched Darren
fight to see this show through...
My mind kept bringing up the same question.
"Why is this boomer from Oklahoma so gung-ho
to shell out millions of dollars on a festival
filled with music he doesn't even listen to?"
Yeah, are there people waiting to get in?
Ah, okay. All right.
This question was driving me crazy
so I sat down with the only person
willing to give me a straight answer.
We actually had a class together.
I was a sophomore.
He was a junior, and we had speech and drama.
And so we met.
Darren's always been really directed.
He has a goal, he sets a goal, and he gets to that goal.
But now he's much more mellow about it.
I wanted a baby,
so I was like, "we could go somewhere,
we could adopt one, we could get a little girl,"
because we had three sons,
and he was like "uh, I don't..." You know,
"I don't want to be responsible for another life,
I don't want to do it."
And he was like, "get a dog.
Go get that dog you want."
So we got biscuit in 2003.
Darren doesn't sit.
Probably the hardest-working person I know,
but he always has to be doing something.
And with biscuit, he could just sit.
It was for me...
But the dog did so much more for Darren.
He was getting older, he was ten.
He had really slowed down.
But I hadn't really noticed him being sick.
Inoflced that he slept a lot more.
He was in bed with us, and I kind of picked him up
and brought him over to me, and his belly was swollen.
I was like, "what is up?"
And then the next day, he was super, super skinny.
And so I took him to the vet that day,
and, um, she did an ultrasound,
and she said, "I just am not seeing
even that much of a liver left.
He probably, maybe could live another 30 days
to three months, if we did a feeding tube."
So I did that.
Our daughter-in-law, Becca, bless her heart, she was,
you know, in the living room, and I'm just boo-hooing,
and she's texting Darren and her husband, Jake,
and it was like, "biscuit's really, really sick.
You get Linda's, you know, beside herself, you can..."
And I mean, Darren was just as...
He was like, "what do we have to do?"
A day or so later, I got to bring him home,
and our whole family was mourning
this little 17-pound dog.
Darren went out and found a spot
where, you know, we wanted him buried,
and... so, you know, he got that all fixed up,
and he got built this little rock bench out there.
So that last day, we were gonna have the vet
come that day, and he... he didn't need
the vet, cause, you know, we were all there
in our... our bedroom, and it was like, two of my sons
were there and my wife and I, and we... you know,
he was just lying there in our bed, and you know,
he has that raspy kind of sound that people make
when they're breathing as they're...
As they're winding down.
And we just told him to, you know,
to... to let go, it... he was... he was okay.
So anyway, he... he passed away and we buried him.
Biscuit was the catalyst.
That's why I think he wants to do the festivals.
Biscuit thought he was bigger than he was.
He liked to chase butterflies.
He would just go nuts over a butterfly,
and he would run, and he would jump,
and he would just do this all the time.
And so while he was dying,
you know, and I was loving on him
and petting on him, and you know, I say,
you know, "baby boy, you can just go.
And then you can chase all the butterflies...
You want to chase."
This, uh... it made me cry and it will sound silly
all at the same time, but, um... so I told him,
I said, "but let me know that you're okay.
Let me know that you're chasing those butterflies."
We Bury him,
and I kind of hang back a little bit.
And this little white butterfly
just started flying all around me.
This... this is my dog telling me,
"it's cool, I'm good. Look, I'm happy, I'm free.
I don't hurt anymore."
And it stayed with me
the whole time I was walking back to the house,
and I got just past the tree line
and it went back towards, um,
where we had buried him.
But after that,
just about every time I went out there,
there would be a white butterfly.
Whether it's Darren's artwork, or if you just see
a little white butterfly attached to something,
well, you have butterflies kind of scattered throughout,
all of that is tribute to biscuit.
The hand statue, you know, and some of this stuff
is kind of evolved with its own meanings as well,
but the butterfly and the hand was originally for biscuit.
I don't think he thought he could be
that connected to something that wasn't human,
and biscuit let him...
Let him experience that.
Made him a better person, made him a better father,
made him a better husband.
Saw that he could be something other than this guy
that his goal was to make money.
There's a lot to be taken from the hand,
with the butterfly, you know,
it... the... The bottom of it, you know,
there's the barbed wire and all that, so the struggle
and all of that, and then the hand rising up.
And the butterfly, and I think
whether it was conscious or whether it was unconscious,
and he wanted biscuit to be a part of it,
I... the hand is opening up,
and this butterfly is there,
and so for me, symbolically, sometimes I think,
"that's Darren opening up, and it's biscuit...
That, you know, brought him to that."
The dog had a profound impact on Darren
that led to him wanting for other people,
I think, to feel...
That connection with life.
That... that living things,
that we're all connected, we're all in this together.
We're... you know, we're one.
It helps you see the importance
of relationships, and, you know,
that hasn't always been my main goal.
Frankly, it wasn't.
It was to succeed and all that stuff,
all those trappings and when you see
how really unimportant they really are,
that, you know, we're here today and gone tomorrow.
You... you never know, you know?
You need to... you need to live... live each day,
because it's... it's gonna end,
and that you gotta find the joy in living.
As bad as it got,
it was just, like, "okay, well, this is just
something new we have to deal with."
You know, it's... It's just another element
in this show that we're... We're gonna have to overcome.
Because we've had such a non-stop rain event,
and it keeps going, that, uh...
State fire marshal said that we can't use the cryo
or the pyro for now, until it dries up.
So that's... that's one thing.
The other thing is the lights, because on the mainstage or so,
uh, the... you know, they're kind of subject
to the elements, I can't really keep
the... the water out of it, uh,
they can't be turned on or else they'll fry.
So we're gonna have to go heavier on lasers,
and do some waterproof lights, so...
It's not gonna necessarily be up completely,
the standards everybody wanted to do for today,
but you know, uh, that's on the mainstage.
Pyramid stage, uh, third stage
and second stage are all good to go fine.
I felt like it would work, and then it wouldn't,
then it would work, and it wouldn't.
The... the loads that I'm getting next,
Tony doesn't want 'em.
He's gonna keep his trucks running,
so he'll keep coming out there with you.
And I'm just gonna take... Go up to there in a minute,
and then we'll dump, uh, when they get here.
And you tell me where to... Where to go with them.
- Cool. - All right, thank you.
J“ I guess you're just broken j“
j“ I guess you're just hopin' for more j“
j“ I guess you're just reachin' j“
j“ I guess you're just in need of love j“
j“ but you're not alone j“
j“ you're not alone j“
j“ in this j“
J“ I guess I'm just broken j“
ten minutes! And we'll have some more rock.
J“ I guess I'm just hopin' for more j“
where do I want to put the rock?
You want the rock to just keep coming up here?
Well, we're gonna... okay.
Invested a lot of money in infrastructure, which...
You know, you weren't gonna get that back, but...
You know, operationally, you wanted to try
to get close to breaking even, or not be too far in the hole.
I mean, this is a tremendous... It was a big hole.
You just want it in here, then?
All the way over there?
J“ I'm not alone j“
j“ I'm not alone
j“ in this j“
so once it's wet, it's wet, right?
- Just deal with it, it's... - That's right.
We'll have more people to deal with here shortly.
J“ I guess I'm just broken j“
j“ I guess I'm just hopin' for more j“
the performers, that they will, like, bail,
or they'll say it's too wet, or whatever,
or is that not even really an issue?
J“ I guess I'm just in need of love j“
j“ I'm not alone j“
we saw no one all day,
the people were in their tents all day,
and... and I can remember
having the conversation with the gentlemen,
and I was, like, "here in a little bit."
Whenever it gets bright lights,
and lasers start going off,
and pyro starts going off,
people are gonna be dancing
in this knee-deep water.
Y'all plan that weather? Did you book that weather?
Luckily, my shoes are the same color as the mud,
so, the weather didn't stop me.
You see nothing when you come through the gate up there.
But on top of the hill it was, uh...
You seen all the tents, and, you know, all the people
and, uh, it was overwhelming,
how many people were here in the middle of the storm.
It's raining.
You got staff frantic, running around
trying to figure everything out, you know?
Stage sound cuts out.
They're going out, they're fixing it.
It's not... There's no hesitation,
they're just on top of it, the whole time.
They're figuring out what the problem is
and they're fixing it.
Well, putting out fires, you know,
trying to get the road stabilized,
trying to get people unstuck.
And you know, there's always a thousand things
that can be done, need to be done.
And... uh, I did wander around
and... uh, uh, I had a good experience
in the... in the other barn,
when we had some of the artists in there
with their lights, and the... Their music going inside.
And I thought that was a special time, too.
I... it was really something I really enjoyed.
The feeling of walking around and seeing
the whole thing put together was... was amazing.
I love this place.
I've never played on a stage that big, regardless,
but I'm honored to be here and I'm not expecting
anything other than to have a good time.
It's not always fun to work in the rain,
but sometimes you have to do what you don't want to do.
It was good to see people that were willing
to still be out there enjoying their music.
We all have dull parts of our life,
you know, work that we have to do every week.
But it's always nice to have something that's important,
that's outside of our normal context,
that allows you to pull that familiar person that you are,
put that... that outer skin off, and, you know,
kind of try to be something a little different.
Or... or... it's not... That's not correct.
It's not you trying to be different,
it's just you trying to be who you are.
They were dancing in water knee-deep,
and going hard at it,
and enjoying the time and they were ready to rock.
They'd been cooped up.
I don't think I looked in one spot in that field
that was covered in knee-deep water
that people weren'tjumping around,
and mud wasn't flying six foot in the air.
Whenever I'd be able to find the time,
I'd turn around and look at the audience.
That's really the one that you're here for.
To make them happy.
The weather ain't stopping me, come on.
Some rain? I didn't shower.
Chilled in the rain.
It's like people were picking up mud and flinging it,
but it was just them jumping up and down.
The people out there, those are the real legends.
I thought we were gonna see an exodus,
but it wasn't.
You know, the bizarre devotion to, uh...
Staying and... what, seeing the show
was overwhelming to us.
People were staying for sure.
But we had the hope that, you know,
at least for the last day,
that... that maybe the sun would come out.
So it was Saturday when it finally broke apart,
the storms, and allowed us to do a show.
That was, like, the saving grace of everything.
You go through all the rain, the whole time we've been here,
and then, sure enough, Saturday shows up, clear skies.
Sunny
now that they experienced that,
it's just gonna be a whole different vibe.
People are gonna be out in it, getting crazy... you know,
they don't care about the mud anymore, it's just sunny.
Everyone's gonna have a good time.
Despite adversity, humanity goes on, people go on,
but the human spirit survives
and it overcomes everything it needs to overcome,
and we go on.
The artists loved the experience,
for the most part.
They like the eclectic nature of the buildings,
and how they were treated.
And we want to treat them right.
We want to treat them like we want to be treated,
and I think they appreciated that.
But we don't want to... We don't... we don't...
I... they're... They're not idols to us.
We try to treat our guests the same way,
our vip, whatever... whatever group is we're talking about
needs to be treated respectfully.
Best part about the festival...
I would say, is how hospitable they are.
They are so accommodating to everyone. Everyone.
Artists, staff, people that are actually here,
you know, the consumers, the people that come,
miles away, fly here, you know.
They came here, it's raining. Like, how would that feel?
"I spent a hundred, two hundred bucks
to get into this festival and it's raining," you know?
And they're still out there, like I said,
they're still out there, fixing it,
doing everything they can
to make it a good time for everyone.
And I think that's the best thing,
is that they care so much.
The hospitality. Everyone here cares.
Everyone's working so hard. They're actually on top of it.
They don't care that there's not 7000 people out there,
you know what I mean?
Like, I've played festivals before
where I didn't get a meal ticket because
I'm not playing mainstage, you know?
And here, they... They're straight
taking care of me, like, hardcore.
80... and not just me, everyone.
And, like, everyone from the staff,
to the stage, to the sound, to the location.
Everything is ten out of ten.
If you've never been to a music festival,
you're missing one of the most impactful moments of your life.
There's so much opportunity out there,
more than just hearing the music.
It's... it's building the camaraderie.
It's seeing things you normally wouldn't see,
and it's... it's a feeling of gratification inside,
of doing something that is just...
It's phenomenal.
It's life-changing.
Darren's persistence on basically every Avenue
is the reason why it worked, you know.
He pushed us to the limits
to make sure that it was gonna happen.
I think the... overall, the success of the festival,
it... you know, financially, it's not gonna be a success,
but ultimately, financially, I think it will work out,
because it lays the groundwork for the next steps.
And you have to go through that process
to get credibility to go to the next step.
Ekali finished his set.
The crowd grew silent
as we stood in the mud at the mainstage.
And I started thinking...
Darren built Bridges for a living,
allowing people to get from one place to another.
And the last few days,
I think he provided a way for us
to get to where we needed to be.
Together.
So the show must go on.
It's a term you hear, day in and day out, in our industry.
Everyone kind of showed up and made it happen.
It's the end of the world,
and everything is kind of falling apart around it, and...
You kind of push through it, and make it happen.
It's always frustrating,
but you can't allow it to get the best of you.
You just have to figure it out and keep moving forward.
Oh, it was overwhelming.
The turnout. With the weather.
Just can't imagine
many other venues that would have stayed.
It was awesome.
Seeing 2000 people there,
just having the time of their lives,
despite the worst possible conditions.
It's what gives you life.
For the most part, I think everything was perfect.
I think it was a great venue,
and I think a lot of people were happy
with the way the venue turned out.
I think the biggest thing was having
the owner of the property and investor being so involved,
being all hands on deck
whenever he was asked and needed,
or even whenever he wasn't.
I mean, the guy worked night and day months,
preparing for just those three days that we had
out at his property.
Darren wasn't gonna allow the show not to happen.
You know, Darren's the whole reason
that that still happened.
On that Sunday, when I drive up,
it wasn't any big deal, but the people were happy.
But they weren't complaining,
and we were all in it together.
And they saw that we were in it together,
because they saw that we were trying to do
what we could to... to try to get them in there.
Live music in a festival scene is amazing.
And it... it'll change you. It really will.
You make connections, lifelong connections.
There's people that I worked with,
that are now lifelong friends, because
a music festival allowed us to... to cross paths.
Building the relationships with people,
that's what I was most excited about.
We essentially gave a free concert.
If I'd charged them what it costs, maybe... you know,
we probably wouldn't have sold many tickets.
I'm really just excited for the future.
I think that we've got something here.
We all have struggles in life.
It can be the end all, be all, or you can overcome adversity.
You can take the struggle that you're having
and figure out a solution for it,
and run with it and get a lesson out of life.
It makes us who we are.
It's what defines our character.
We are much easier to conquer when we're divided.
You can have a much better society
with just a pledge to try to get along,
and not have wars and try to be fair-minded.
We learn a lot more from our failures
than we do from our successes.
We just gotta let go of our egos and quitjudging.
We judge everybody so harshly.
Don't prevent me from dancing
because you can't hear the music.
I think there's a lot of truth to that.
A lot of us are actually dancing to the music,
and the other people can't hear it.
As they worked together, under horrible circumstances...
It was nine inches of rain
and the Sandy soil.
That, to him, I think,
solidified what he's thinking,
trying to get people to listen to one another.
When people sacrifice together,
for whatever the cause is,
I mean... It's easier to get things done.
The hardship, the struggle and the suffering
actually makes the experience grander.
We have to resolve the spiritual crisis.
Whether we want to call it that or not,
because it... who are we and why are we here?
It's been over a year since daybreak.
We've had to weather a lot of storms since then.
With COVID-19...
Riots and the nation fighting for political power.
I take hope, though, when I think about daybreak.
Watching people charge into the storm in the mud
to take care of each other.
I like to believe there was a force of life
behind that event.
A small dog dies.
A little farmer's enlightened.
And 2000 people at daybreak learn
what it means to be human.
It really puts things into perspective.
How a little consideration and love
make a huge difference.
Darren knows that.
And that's why he's dedicated his ranch
to creating events that bring people together.
Darren...
Well, he's fighting for a better tomorrow.
He's fighting for the daybreak.
J“ daybreak's in a single man j“
j“ with one hammer and two hands j“
j“ he begins with a nail and plank j“
j“ steel pushing through the wood grain j“
j“ all the racket he makes from his one-man crew j“
j“ that draws another man seeking to build, too j“
j“ now with four strong arms and one desire j“
j“ now it's moving along in double time j“
j“ hey brother, it's time to put your hands on j“
j“ cause we 're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ oh, we're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ getting taller and taller j“
j“ from the ground it began on j“
j“ and we're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ oh, we're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ when the day breaks again j“
j“ the two men return to where they've been j“
j“ to see the crowd of people gathered j“
j“ with their saws ropes and ladders j“
j“ the cast of workers hoist and heave j“
j“ and their labor sounds much like a symphony j“
j“ so many hands and heads composing it j“
j“ the last dance closer, closing in j“
j“ hey brother, it's time to put your hands on j“
j“ cause we 're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ oh, we're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ getting taller and taller j“
j“ from the ground it began on j“
j“ and we're building a stage to stand on j“
j“ oh, we 're a building a stage to stand on j“
J“ and we're building a stage to stand on j“
J“ and it happens j“
j“ the pounding ceases j“
j“ and on the land the structure stands j“
j“ made from thousands of pieces j“
j“ illuminated j“
j“ standing strong j“
j“ the stage is finished now j“
j“ built for all to stand on j“
j“ whoo j“