The vibe and mood at Lightning In A Bottle.
Jamal Eid
This Memorial Day weekend marks the return of the Lightning In A Bottle festival, which will feature John Summit, Underworld, Jamie XX, Four Tet and more.
Born out of a one-off party at the very first Coachella in 1999, LIB has become off of the biggest and most prestigious independent festivals in the world.
I spoke with the three brothers – Dede, Jesse and Josh Fleming – behind LIB about how putting together a world-class music and arts festival has been ingrained in them since a young age.
Steve Baltin: I asked Paul T. once “When do you start playing the next Coachella?” At the time he said, “The day after it ends?” Have you been planning this since last May?
Dede Fleming: Yeah, I think Paul would probably agree that it’s actually before the previous festival even ends like he does the lineup. We’re already working on next year’s lineup. We always have to think more than a year ahead. I think anyone in this industry at this point has to.
Jesse Fleming: Yeah, people always ask that question. Like, “Oh, you’re already started?” It never really stops. Even when we’re here for this year, we’re thinking about the on sale for next year, we’re taking meticulous notes of what’s working, what’s not working and trying to solve problems and make it better for next year, it’s year round, it just never stops.
Baltin: You’re independent and, more importantly, having a 20-year history, you’ve established a loyalty not just with fans, but with bands as well. Because that’s a huge thing. As someone who interviews so many artists in the world, they talk to each other. And if they don’t enjoy it, they’re not coming back.
Jesse: Yeah, we know that. And we take a lot of pride in trying to provide a really amazing artist experience, because we want them to go home and tell their agents and their managers and tell all their friends that are artists like, “Hey, this is a really great experience. You should play this sometime.” In the early days when it was really hard for us to book bigger acts or to get attention from bigger acts we really put a lot of focus on making sure the artists that did come had a great time because we know they’re talking all over the world and we hear it from artists all over the world, especially a lot of European artists. European artists are like, “We heard that Lightning in a Bottle is the coolest festival in the US to come play.” Because we’re independent, that’s part of our currency. We don’t have the big budgets to go out and spend on the artist lineups, or even some of the vendors that we have and some of the artists, like structural artists and whatnot. It’s, I don’t want to say the cool factor, but being independent, we definitely have to rely on the experience we create, not just the money we can throw at things.
Baltin: Do you remember being kids and what it was that you looked for not just in festivals but in overall experiences when you went to concerts or whatever that fostered that brand loyalty?
Dede: It’s interesting that you bring that up because that’s always at the forefront of what we’re doing and why we’re creating what we create. Personally, yeah, I remember some of the earliest festivals I’ve gone to. The three of us are from Pennsylvania. One of the first festivals we ever went to was the Philadelphia Folk Festival in the mid-90s.
Jesse: Maybe even in the 80s, we were kids.
Dede: Yeah, we were kids. Our parents went, some of our aunts and uncles volunteered out there. And we went out to this festival, which is obviously music. But they had vending and there’s one thing we always bring up. They had candle-making workshops. And the three of us would make candles. It was interactive and it was one of our first experiences. So right from the start, for us, it wasn’t about just having music on a stage. It was about being able to run around, have fun, get lost in whatever the experience is.
Jesse: That, and our parents’ friends volunteered, and they worked in the kitchen at the Philadelphia Folk Festival. And all the volunteers would camp out in these clustered campgrounds, all their tents and they’d have makeshift shade and there’s little pathways through there, almost like a little favela village of campers and that, everybody camping together and building shade and doing all these things left a huge impression on us, the community aspect of it. That’s why I think our festival is so community oriented. We have slowly built a very large community over the last 20 years. I think a lot of it comes back to those experiences when we were kids.
Josh Fleming: Yeah, when we started getting a little bit older and we started going to a bunch of concerts in Philadelphia, my brothers and I, our dad had a big van. We would take his van and we’d organize tailgating parties and all these things. We were always the organizers. We would rally our friends, and we would take all the things and have all the supplies and we would just keep doing these tailgating parties. We started entertaining at a really young age. We were just really into hosting, taking care of everybody, trying to check off all the things we need to make it a perfect experience and we’re still doing it today.
Baltin: As a music fan what was the most formative show for each of you guys as a kid?
Jesse: For me it was my sophomore year in high school. Josh and I went to Lollapalooza. I think it was the second year of Lollapalooza when it was a touring festival, and it came to Philly. It’s like the Beastie Boys and L7, Smashing Pumpkins and we were pretty young. I remember smelling pot for the first time and we’re like, “Oh, what is that?”
Josh: I thought somebody was smoking a cigar. I didn’t even know.
Jesse: But it left a really cool impression on us.
Josh: For me, we went to a lot of Dave Matthews shows, growing up as East Coast kids. And there was one year when, you know, I think we’re tripping on mushrooms and Jesse and I snuck in the front of house with the lighting guy and we’re standing there and we’re just looking at each other and we’re like, “This is what we want to do with our lives.“ We had that moment.
Dede: I remember being at, it was called the Jambalaya Jam. It was Memorial Day weekend in 1994, right on the river in Philadelphia. I remember seeing the Neville Brothers and Randy Newman, yeah. Andy Newman. This was probably the first time I ever saw big names live. Coincidentally, it’s the first time I smelled pot too. My godmother was like, “You smell that? That’s what weed smells like.” Because I was just a kid and I remember the same thing that Jesse and Josh felt, like the energy of a live show, of seeing the crowd interact with this kind of performance. I felt like this is something that really intrigued me and I think that scene was planted early for all of us.
Baltin: When you look back on it was there a moment when you started Lightning or when you realize that this was ingrained in you from a young age?
Josh: Yeah, we were definitely pretty young. We were all on stage crew in middle school, then throughout high school. As president of stage crew, we were always doing the lighting in all the assemblies and plays and whatever. But the three of us started a DJ company when we were in middle school, like sixth grade or something. We couldn’t even drive but we bought like a little PV mixer, and we got a couple of tape players and CD players and we just got as many CDs and tapes as we could and we would DJ our friend’s birthday party for like 25 bucks. And our dad would drop us off with all our gear. We had built our own speakers, we had a teacher who taught us how to build all these sound systems and amplifiers. Then the middle school is like, “Hey, can you guys DJ the middle school dance?” And then one year when we were still in middle school, we got a call, our DJ broke down or canceled. Can you guys show up last minute? We’re at our house with our friends hanging out. I’m like, “Hell yeah.” We gathered all our gear and we DJed a high school prom.
Jesse: When we threw the first Lighting in a Bottle in 1999 it was actually our birthday party, and it was just a one-night rave. But it was called Lighting in a Bottle and that was the birth of what has now become a big festival. At the time we never thought it would be a festival; that was never the goal. It was just that we were just throwing parties but years later we really realized how many moments throughout our life actually led us to where we are today, how many of those accumulated experiences. We all worked in different parts of production like audio engineering and lighting and we worked on commercials and TV shows. All this experience that we slowly gathered over time we’ve been able to apply all of it to what we do today and it’s cool how the accumulation of all of our experiences have now made us the Do Lab.
Baltin: Do you think the brand loyalty you have fostered comes from the fact the kids coming feel like you are still the same as them?
Dede: A hundred percent. At the end of the day, we’re almost building the show that we want to go to, not building the show that people have an expectation to come to. The stuff that we do out here is very analog, like we’re kids of the 80s. We have an area called “The Mixed Tape.” If you look at our marketing campaign, you see this ‘80s vibe coming and we’re just having fun with that. We’re just being goofy, and we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Most of the things we come up with are sitting around a table just shooting the s**t. If you look at photos of last year on our main stage, which is like stacked shipping containers, we have these giant googly eyes that are on top of the main stage for the festival. That was because Jesse and Josh were sitting around and thought it would be funny to put googly eyes on the top of the stage. And we just did it because we can. But now it became part of the story. It gave the stage a whole personality. We are just trying to create the world that we want to live in temporarily. And we are physically doing it ourselves. We’re all dirty, we just came in from the field, we work in the trenches with everybody else and it’s not just brand loyalty or attendee loyalty. Our team is very loyal as well. We’ve attracted a massive team of people that will just go around the clock with us because we have an idea and we want to bring it to life.
