Life Is Good Festival, taking place this weekend in the Blue Hills of Canton, MA, is about two things – helping children who live in the worst conditions in the country, and enjoying high-quality live music. The line-up includes: Ben Harper & Relentless 7, Guster, Mavis Staples, Jason Mraz, Corinne Bailey Rae, Ziggy Marley, Galactic, Ozomatli, Sierra Leone Refugee Allstars, Brett Dennen, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Donavon Frankenreiter, Dr. Dog, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue and Toubab Krewe are all on the bill. In addition, the Laurie Berkner Band, Dan Zanes and Friends, They Might Be Giants and The Sippy Cups will perform on the “Good Kids” Stage. We had a chance to speak with Bert Jacobs, one of the two brothers who started Life Is Good clothing company back in 1989. Bert seemed to embody his company’s name as he spoke passionately about his work with children, told us about breaking Guinness world records and chimed in on Joe Pisapia’s departure from Guster following this weekend’s performance at Life Is Good.
You guys started making T-shirts back in ’89 and now you’re running a two day festival featuring some of the top acts. Can you talk about how the idea for the festival started and how it became a reality?
Well we’ve been running Life is Good Festivals since 2003 and music has always been a component, but not the centerpiece. We made a decision two years ago that we were going to invest much more heavily in music. I guess we feel as though it’s probably the best vehicle for building community. And, the cause of our kids foundation (Life is Good Kids Foundation) is helping children overcome life-threatening conditions. Looking at the landscape of fundraisers we felt as though the majority was all about the long difficult walks or marathons etc. and we felt it might be a little more brand appropriate for us if our event was really fun and enjoyable and involved live music, but was also a fundraiser. We didn’t see anything happening nationally in that area so [we] thought that was open space. We also felt that the place that was open in the area of live music or festivals was that it was an either or, with being kid-friendly or having killer music. It was kind of like you can do something family friendly, with families with young kids, but as soon as you do the music’s kind of a drag. So the theory was, hey just because someone has a kid doesn’t mean they don’t love great music now. So a lot of people in the industry told us “hey dude, you got to go one way or the other, you can’t do both because as soon as you got those kids there it’s about them.” So, we’re attempting to do both and we think that it’s going to be just fine. We’ve chosen artists from all different genres and feel like we’ll get music fans that are not family centric and we feel like we’ll get music fans that are totally focused on the family.
How did you guys become involved with Superfly, who are widely-known for putting on the Bonnaroo festival?
My brother and I got wound up on this idea about two years ago and we spent that time travelling around to all the major music festivals and kind of had some fun. It’s good work if you can get it, you know, and we hung out and enjoyed the music and knocked some beers along the way. But we really focused on kind of trying to decide whether we could get in this business or not. And so, what happened along the way sort of is the type of thing that’s happened to us all along the way. We’re not really the smartest guys in the world, we don’t really have everything figured out, but we’re pretty good at making friends. And, before we talked to any business we kind of just hit it off with the Superfly guys and we were intrigued by their business and everything they’d done, and we got talking and they got interested in our business and everything we’d done, and sort of coming at it from different angles. So first we just kind of hung out and there was good chemistry and we got to be friends and after hanging out a few times finally those guys invited us to Manhattan and we sat down and kicked it around, and you know, after one day we said “OK, let’s try one together.” You know, they liked the concept of the open space where no one is doing kids and adults for music fans and families, and also liked the idea that it was a hundred percent for charity. So, they’re really helping us to take a big step with that once they gave us – tremendous access to artists that we probably wouldn’t have had for our first major festival and they’re also giving us a huge amount of expertise in logistics. You know, with this into that I think there’s a lot of cache that comes with the Superfly name which gives us more credibility in the music industry.
Oh, I’m sure. How were you involved with festivals before? You mentioned that you’ve been involved with festivals since 2003, but outside the music scene. What was it that you were doing?
Well, we did a lot of bizarre things. In 2006 we broke the Guinness world book of records for the most lit pumpkins at one time.
Wow. [Laughs]. We had 31,000 lit pumpkins on the Boston Common and they were carved by Boston citizens and we raised over half-a-million dollars for our kids foundation. So that was a big one. Another year we rented Fenway Park and we had something, a competition called “The World’s Greatest Backyard Athlete”. And, it was kind of a joke, I mean most of the world’s greatest backyard athletes had big fat guts [laughs], you know but they were good people and they entered contests to spit watermelon seeds and eat pie and play wiffleball out in the outfield and you know they raised a lot of money. They had to raise five thousand dollars each to compete in the competition, but the hook was that they got to compete on the hallowed grounds of Fenway [Park]. So, they were out in the outfield playing Bocce, or one of the events was they had to whip Frisbees off the green monster and see who could come closest to second base.
So, for us it was like a life-long dream ‘cause we’re Boston guys and we’ve always had the fantasy of Fenway so we got to take over for a day and, you know, we raised a heck of a lot of money that day too. But, most of these things were sort of, as you can imagine, not really sustainable. I mean, after you break the world record for pumpkins what are you gonna do, light 32,000 the next year? So, we didn’t think through it that well we were just sort of winging and now, one of the things we really like about getting involved in music is that we’ve started building relationships with all these artists. I don’t think involvement in the music industry has to stop with a live festival. We want to do that as an annual, and maybe have several, but there’s a lot of other things I think we can do to promote those artists and, you know, have those artists promote Life Is Good to their fan base too and sort of continue to make friends with these guys.
When you chose to go into the music side of the business, did you have a specific genre you were going after? It seems quite a few of the bands you guys have at the festival are geared more towards the college crowd like Ben Harper, Ziggy Marley, OK Go and Guster. Was that a direction you were trying to take or is that something that just came about on its own?
Well, I think your points are certainly honest there, but we’ve got Mavis Staples which doesn’t really fall in the same genre. I would say Galactic is a different genre altogether. You know, it’s New Orleans funk and I think it attracts an older crowd. I think Grace Potter and the Nocturnals is slightly different. The target is much more of a psychographic than a demographic – it’s really inclusive, rather than exclusive. So, yes we want the college crowd and there’s no question we want them, but we want them side-by-side with soccer moms and that may not be a space that they think they’re used to. But I think we can make it cool for everybody, you know. I think we can have great music and cold beer and still not be offensive, and have an active life style too. We’re going to have a BMX stunt show, we’re going to have football, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, street hockey, wiffleball; you know, we’ve got the Big Apple Circus there for kids. So, we’re not going after one demographic or another. One of the biggest points we’re trying to make is that it takes all kinds, it takes all kinds to do things. And, we welcome everybody. We’re about optimism and seeing the glass half-full. Even the surf and skate market is real important to us and we do a lot of business there.
Seeing as how Boston is not exactly known for its “festival scene,” do you think Life Is Good will attract a unique crowd, or do you feel it will be similar to some of the other festivals that you’ve been to?
I think it’s going to be extremely unique. I think Boston is starving for an event like this. I mean, we’ll certainly find out this weekend but ticket sales are very good right now so that tells us something… I think in general within the music industry you get a fan base of a type of music, and if its jambands you get a crunchy jamband crowd, you know what I mean?
Uh-huh.
And if it’s metal, you get a metal crowd. And I think if you look across the genres of music, there’s seven or eight tremendously different types of music there and they bring different crowds and I’ve watched what Facebook fans have said since we’ve launched the lineup and it’s really interesting – there’s really rich dialogue – because it’s sort of like what do these bands have in common, and they kick around different ideas, but somebody hits on it, someone eventually [hits on it]. This guy last week was a BC student it was his first day back in Boston, he’s a sophomore, and they were going back about their reasons why these bands were selected and he said “No man, it’s because everyone of these guys celebrates life” and he nailed it, he absolutely nailed it. And you know, I know he’s just a young guy, but to me I was like wow, I sent it out to a bunch of different people and said “See what this kid said? It’s right on the money.”
So is that sort of the motto for the festival: a celebration of life?
Yeah! Absolutely it is. You know, our whole theory with the clothing line from the beginning and the same with the kids foundation, and again, it’s kids that have faced the worst shit you can imagine, our whole theory is that whatever you focus on will grow. So you can focus on the trauma, and the violence and the poverty and the illness like cancer, or you can focus on the bright side and it can really help these kids. And so, putting money into play therapy, and building their confidence, and getting them outdoors. A lot of these kids are from the worst neighborhoods in the country, you know. And, that’s the same with the festival. It’s like all of these bands focus on what’s right with the world, rather than what’s wrong as oppose to say the six o’clock news. You know, there’s no such thing as the six o’clock news anymore it’s the six o’clock violent murder report. And we’re also not saying those things don’t happen, they do happen, but good things happen too. Good is not only more healthy and enjoyable to focus on, it’s empowering.
One hundred percent of the festival’s profits will be donated toward the Life Is Good Kids Foundation. You’ve touched on it a bit, but can you elaborate as to what exactly it is that the organization does?
Sure. This is exactly what we do: we develop training programs for childcare providers who deal with children in life-threatening situations. So, you might have poverty and violence on one hand, or you might have oncology departments. But you’ve got people who are dealing with these kids on the front lines everyday; we develop training programs for those people so that they can give those kids a better chance in life.
So you essentially enable the people who have the ability to enable the kids?
Exactly. It started a non-profit…a non-profit called Project Joy started a long time ago focusing directly on the kids and that non-profit has now merged with our kids foundation and it’s been renamed as the Life Is Good Playmakers and we’re scaling that organization reaching more kids by focusing on the childcare providers.
Well I can imagine taking the charity angle could prove to be difficult considering how many of the for-profit festivals that were around are now defunct. Have Life is Good and Superfly worked out a long-term plan to overcome some of the obstacles and difficulties those festivals have experienced?
You know, our stage of development right now is sort of when I said “we need to try one and see what happens”, we really just need to get through the first one together and see what happens. How much did we raise for kids? Was the event profitable itself and if not what do we do to make it profitable? In terms of sustainability that would probably be getting out over our skis right now. I’m confident that we can do it, but we don’t have all the answers yet. I think we need one prototype under our belt. I could talk smoke about it right now, but it’s all speculation. Seven days after this event, we’ll have some real numbers, real feedback; social media is so important right now, through websites like yours that enable people to talk that stuff is really important we’ll have a lot of eyes and ears on it to try and dissect and cut up what happened and then figure out how to get faster, stronger and better. But we don’t have the answers to that.
It seems festival promotion has largely switched over to the digital world. Has that been a large focus of your promotional strategy and how the festival is being run?
I would say it’s been ninety percent. Ninety per-cent of all the action from communication, whether it’s buying or selling tickets, promoting the event. I would say it’s by far been the dominant factor.
So a bit about the music now. There is quite a buzz surrounding the news that following this weekend’s performance at Life is Good, Guster guitarist Joe Pisapia will be leaving the band to go write with K.D. Lang and replacement Luke Reynolds will be taking the stage for the first time in an official switch-off. This is a big moment for Guster fans. Do you count yourself among them?
I am a Guster fan, yah I like these guys.
Can you talk about some of the other bands that you’re excited to see this weekend?
One of my favorite bands in the whole thing is Galactic. I’m a huge Ben Harper fan. I think Jason Mraz is our biggest draw and I think he’s tremendously talented and I like his music too. But, Ben Harper has been more up my ally through the years. I’m a Guster fan as we mentioned. I think Ozomatli brings some kind of fun edge to our festival. Brett Dennen we’ve had a partnership [with] for a couple years and, you know, he’s a great guy and a great singer/songwriter. I mentioned Mavis Staples is a classic, I mean, she goes way back to playin’ with The Band, and walking for the rights with M.L.K. and, you know, she’s a legend.
Yeah, and she has a brand new album out with Jeff Tweedy from Wilco.
Yeah! How cool is that for someone at her stage of the game? She rips it and since I was a kid I’ve had a crush on her, you know, Staples sisters! Look, every one of these bands…Trombone Shorty, Toubab Krewe…every single one of these guys we hand-picked. I mean we suffered over it, we suffered over it and then we went after them really hard and I think we put together a killer line-up. I really do and I think word’s on the street and people are going to come together and we’re going to put together a real unique show. I think what I’m most proud of right now is that in talking to the ticket purchasers they’re well aware of the cause. And while raising the money is important, raising awareness is even more important. So, I’m pretty thrilled with the customer base right now and I’m not kidding myself, I know that they love the artists and, you know, we got their attention. The artists are the hook, but I think that music fans are really open and really authentic about the social causes that they believe in. And you know, you can tell when somebody’s blowing smoke and when they’re not and I think that people are going to listen and learn a lot about what we’re up to. And I think they’re happy that by buying a ticket, or a hamburger or a T-shirt they’re helping somebody who needs it. You know, it’s as simple as that.
I noticed you have a stage specifically for kids’ acts. Can you talk about some of the artists performing on that stage?
Yeah, we’ve got Dan Zanes and Friends, we’ve got the Laurie Berkner Band and we’ve got They Might Be Giants. We’ve also got a San Francisco band that’s like psychedelic rock for kids. They’re really great and we had them at our festival in San Fran last year, they’re called the Sippy Cups. And, one of the things that struck me last year with the Sippy Cups was that I’d say twenty percent of the people dancing when they were playing didn’t have kids and might not have known who they were. But they were digging the music and they went over that way, they probably came for a different band. Yeah and, the Laurie Berkner Band and Dan Zanes and are probably two of the hottest children’s acts in the country. We’re also bringing the Big Apple Circus for kids and so, there’s plenty of star power on that side.
We carefully selected music that wouldn’t only appeal to a six year old. You know, listen to any of these bands. Ok, you know on your own you might not go out and buy Dan Zanes and Friends. But if you were here to see an artist in an hour and he’s playing, it’s more than tolerable, it’s cool music. So, we’re trying to blend these two things and not offend each other. So if a Ben Harper and Relentless Seven fan comes and all they hear is music that sounds like Barney, I don’t know, that’s not going to click. But the Laurie Berkner Band, that’s not going to bum out the Ben Harper fans, it’s good music.
So it sounds like finally there’s a music festival that caters to the large number of kids that often seem out-of-place at other festivals.
BJ: Yeah and we’re getting great letters and mail about it. You know, like I said I think a lot of the music industry throws in the towel on people because they have kids and that’s not cool. These people still have great tastes, they’re still young and they still want to hang out and dance. It’s going to be fun.
