Inside: Your guide to the festival — from a printable map and schedule, to driving tips and what you can or can't bring inside the festival.
Damian Marley, Wayne Coyne and Dave Matthews ...on their way to Atlantic City!
Download a printable map of the Dave Matthews Band Caravan Atlantic City festival grounds for June 24-26 by clicking here.
ATLANTIC CITY — Back in 1969, a decade after the launch of the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island (and nearly 15 years after the Newport Jazz Festival was established in 1964) and just a couple weeks before Woodstock took place in upstate New York (Aug. 15-18), Atlantic City had its own big rock and pop festival. Held Aug. 1-3, 1969, at the Atlantic City Race Course, the Atlantic City Pop Festival featured several of the top-name rock and folk-rock acts of the day, many of which would also play Woodstock. More than 100,000 people came from all over the country to see dozens of artists, including the Byrds; Crosby, Stills & Nash; Chicago, Joe Cocker; Dr. John; Jefferson Airplane; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Captain Beefheart; Janis Joplin; Joni Mitchell; Hugh Masekela; B.B. King; Little Richard; Frank Zappa; Santana; the Sir Douglas Quintet — and the list goes on and on.
The extraordinary line-up that it featured aside, the Atlantic City festival has been nearly erased by history, overshadowed by the cultural mile marker that Woodstock would become. (Another interesting similarlity between the two August 1969 festivals: neither took place in the festival’s namesake town. Woodstock was moved from that New York town to Max Yasgur’s 600-acre farm in Bethel, N.Y., and the A.C. Pop Festival was held in Mays Landing, where the A.C. Race Course still stands. Fast forward to 2011 and Atlantic City is about to take back some of the thunder stolen away by that little festival in Bethel, N.Y.
With many state and city officials seeking to enhance the entertainment offerings in Atlantic City, as gaming competition in nearby states has eaten away at the resort’s casino revenues in recent years, and reclaim Atlantic City as the World’s Playground that is was for about a century, up until decline set in during the late 1960s and 1970s, this weekend’s three-day Dave Matthews Band Caravan festival (DMBC) is a welcome breath of fresh air. For area restaurants, hotels and other lodging facilities, shops, campgrounds, and, of course, the casinos (which came to town in 1978 to help save the city from its then state of decline), the DMBC could be a much-needed shot in the arm for the local economy as a whole. It will also surely serve as a cultural boost to the city, one in which there is current plans for an arts district and a state-operated tourism zone. When the festival was officially announced in February, organziers and city officials predicted that about 70,000 people would attend each day of the three-day event, which is being held at Atlantic City’s old airfield Bader Field, the nation’s first “airport.” The hope was that a combined 210,000 visitors in town (less than half of what the annual Atlantic City Air Show draws each August) would bring in an estimated $70 million in revenue.
That was a little optimistic as time would tell, but the ambitious festival (one of four the Dave Matthews Band is holding this year in the U.S.) is something that needed to happen.
Ken MacDonald, director of venue management for the festival’s promoter Red Light Management, told a reporter earlier this week that he expects “the actual daily attendance to be between 25,000 and 30,000 people.”
That’s still roughly 75,000 more people in Atlantic City and its environs this early summer weekend.
Jason Weinstock, of Red Light Management, tells AC Weekly that the city “has done a great job preparing the site for our team. We are looking forward to seeing the fans this weekend. Our team has been on site for the last three weeks getting things ready.”
Along with the Bader Field site being under construction for weeks — even as of Wednesday — the entire area has been in preperation for the festival and all of the people, traffic and credit cards that will be in the area.
Because camping is not permitted at the festival site, area hotels and campgrounds should see a big boost this weekend. Back in February, it was announced that the Atlantic City casinos had blocked off a large amount of rooms for festival goers this weekend. The casinos are also getting in on the action, hosting Dave Matthews Band cover bands (such as Big-Eyed Fish at the Borgata’s Gypsy Bar Sat. & Sun. 3-7pm; Ants Marching at the House of Blues’ Back Stage venue Saturday from 10pm-2am; and a DMBC kick-off party at the Trump Plaza Beach Bar Thursday night at 8:30pm with The Grey Street Band. Also Thursday night, the Flaming Lips and Mariachi El Bronx will officially kick off the DMBC festivities with a concert at the House of the Blues at Showboat’s intimate Music Hall. Both bands play the DMBC on Friday.
The House of Blues venue will also feature an after-show with O.A.R. on Friday night as well as another after-show with G. Love & Special Sauce on Saturday night. Doors open at 11pm for both shows.
Weinstock estimates that the first-ever DMBC will bring in “between 30,000 and 35,000 a day.” He also says that tickets are still available ($85 for a single day; $195 for all three days) for the festival and that rooms are still available in town.
“We had over 7,000 rooms blocked specifically for DMBCARAVAN fans,” says Weinstock. “Many of the fans booked rooms directly with their favorite hotels and casinos. The ACCVA [Atlantic City Convention & Visitors Authorty] has told us that rooms are still available for people making plans.”
As for the festival itself, there will be a wealth of local and other vendors (see a list at acweekly.com) on site, in addition to a variety of acts performing on three stages, including Damian Marley, David Gray. Dr. Dog, Amos Lee, Ray LaMontagne, O.A.R, the Flaming Lips and a plethora of lesser-known acts with promising names such as the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dawes, Lotus, Punch Brothers, the Budos Band and the Tangiers Blues Band. The Dave Matthews Band will close each night with a set on the “Boardwalk” stage.
Wayne Coyne, frontman for the Flaming Lips, tells AC Weekly that his band is going to perform Pink Floyd’s classic-rock staple The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety.
“It should be pretty absurd,” says Coyne. “We’ve been sort of negotiating with the Dave Mathews Band people for a while. They’ve wanted us to do stuff with them for a while and we’ve been like trying to find the right way to do something and we don’t expect that the Dave Mathews crowd should know all of our music. And yet, we want to play these things and I think little by little we were arriving at why don’t we do that? Because they will probably know some of our music, but they’ll probably know all of this Dark Side of the Moon [material] and it would just be another absurd show that we can do as opposed to trying to, I don’t know, there’s an element of playing Flaming Lips music to people that are already fans as opposed to people that may not really give a shit. I don’t mean that in a bad way. And that’s exactly why we want to do it, because it’s like we’re playing to new people.” (See interview with Coyne at acweekly.com)
Rain or shine, the three-day festival will go on, say the orgainzers, and the area is prepared for the boost in traffic.
“We have worked closely with the state police, local police departments, public safety and other agencies to plan for this weekend,” says Weinstock. “We have total confidence in the local and state agencies as well as our staff.”
"[Atlantic City's] location was really central. You’ve got good facilities, it’s not, you know, like 39 miles on some two-lane country road — that kind of vibe, you know, so it’s just the fact that it’s practical, there’s a lot of facilities and since we’re not doing like a camping thing we thought it would be good to be close to infrastructure so the fans do have like the backbone of a place like Atlantic City at their disposal."
Twelve days after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took mankind’s initial steps on the moon, Atlantic County braced for another first — the staging of the Atlantic City Pop Festival. The roster of acts spanned the musical spectrum.
There were aerial views, all right, and they showed tens of thousands of people at Bader Field having the times of their lives. With the exception of some brief tie-ups at the Albany Avenue monument — which jams up on a Tuesday night in January — there was no traffic purgatory.
Thousands of people — from all over the region and country, and some from abroad — trickled into Bader Field throughout the day on Friday, from when doors opened at 1pm till close to 9pm.
The food varies from Cajun po’ boys and ice cream to American-Thai and authentic Atlantic City grub. Many of the items for sale include recycled, organic and fair-trade products.
For more about DrewToonz, visit drewtoonzart.com....
Now, due in large measure to the establishment of the Greater Atlantic City GLBT Alliance in 2009, and the foresight and ambitious marketing strategies of Resorts CEO Dennis Gomes (who recently created the first in-casino gay nightclub, Prohibition) and others, the GLBT community is officially back in “flow” mode.
'For the Dave Matthews Band Caravan, we’re doing Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon. It should be pretty absurd.'
We understand that a three-day hullabaloo like the Dave Matthews Band Caravan may bring folks to town who have never been here before, and may not have a clue as to what to do before and after the bands perform — or perhaps may want to take a break from the Bader Field confines to see or do something else.
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1. Jack Parrett said... on Apr 2, 2012 at 08:55AM
“I've loved the DMB for years!! Sadly I had to miss this one which was a shame because my van would have fitted in nicely. Thanks for keeping this information available.
http://www.caravan-insurance-experts.co.uk/”