In September the Blue Ridge Rock Fest in Danville, Virginia was abruptly canceled during the middle of the festival by the owners, claiming bad weather was to blame. Shortly after, stagehand workers came forward stating it was because of their strike against terrible work conditions, health hazards, and mismanagement by the owners. The following is an interview with one of the striking workers
The Virginia Worker: Thank you for meeting with us. We saw you were a member of IATSE, were you involved in the prior Blue Ridge Rock Festivals in the past few years?
BRRF: This year’s Blue Ridge Rock Fest was my third. I started at the Blue Ridge Rock Fest in 2021 for that shit show. We called it the dust fest because it was just, I mean, I’ve never dealt with so much dust in my life. I’ve been out in the Mojave desert and I’ve not dealt with dust like that. It’s always been in southern Virginia in Danville near the raceway.
VW: Were the issues that were present at this year’s Blue Ridge Rock Fest issues in past years?
BRRF: Yeah it was in 2021, like I said another shit show. A lot of similar problems in terms of trash collection, hygiene, clean water sources, even when BRRF was at a totally different location. The only thing that kept 2021 from turning into total chaos is our stagehand crew. We kept the music moving and there were no delays, we were able to get the bands on and off on time.
That kept the fans happy, especially for those first two days where there’s overbooking on camping. I was seeing a lot of the same damn problems this year from last year when they moved to the raceway. Alot of strides were made, but then between last year and this year somebody left or something was going on and every possible corner that the heads could cut were cut and squeezed.
VW: So it sounds like there was a lot of the same issues from prior years to this year. What was the tipping point this year that caused stagehands to say “we’re issuing demands and the production company needs to meet these or we are striking”?
BRRF: I landed there on August 29th, part of the first wave that was setting up the floor where the stages would end up being. From day one as soon as we got up there there was nothing ready for us and preparation stuff didn’t start arriving like the shower house and the porta-johns until right as the sun was going down. One shower house for about 150 of us stagehands, men and women, with the promise that another one was coming, and never did.
As soon as I walked in the shower house I was immediately hit in the face with the smell of mold and just stale water. The thing looked and smelled like it had been used at the last event, not cleaned or washed out, thrown in a field or storage all summer, and then pulled into service for us. The thing was dilapidated. It was better destined for the scrap yard at that point because from the get-go it had no water pressure, hardly any hot water. If you had it you’re lucky, then all of a sudden it sometimes was scalding hot. The hot water stopped after two days and then it was just cold water. The entire time we didn’t have a functioning shower, I’ll put it that way.
The breaking point however was probably Thursday when the storm came through. It was essentially like a mini-microburst. There’s a few videos online of the storm itself and I was actually in the staff catering tent when we got hit and it compromised the center straps. The whole structure started swaying, they evacuated that out, but those same wind gusts had smashed the kitchen tent for the catering crew so they were knocked out of service. I was lucky enough to be one of the last people to get a plated dinner before it hit us.
Half of us didn’t get dinner, there was no plan whatsoever, not even for breakfast. So a lot of us were out there in 90-95 degree heat unloading these bands, pulling these road cases across an incline of dirt and on an empty stomach. Most of us didn’t get our first actual meal during “lunchtime” the following day at 4:00 PM. After that about 15 people collectively had written a demand letter out and posted it to management’s office door. Management’s first reaction to it was like “haha, you know we can’t we can’t deal with it”, but they came to our stage to address the letter and they said that they were going to do something about the issues, but were very vague as to how.
A couple of the other stagehands looked to me like “well what are we going to do? A strike?” and I was like “fuck it we’re willing to walk off.” Everybody was ready to walk. We called our management team back, they dropped what they were doing at another stage and came back to address us and on center stage right in front of the crowds, while the band’s tuning up the drums, we all surrounded our management and explained why we’re doing this. “The letter is not a joke, you need to send that in to the heads” and it was right at that moment that our management realized we weren’t blaming them because they kept saying over and over again “we can’t do anything about it” and we all unison just were like “we’re not fucking blaming you, ” and they said “okay, well fine we’re sending this, we’ll show you the emails, it’s a mass text, sending to everybody including the damn owner of the festival”.
A 5PM deadline was set, it was sent with just tone-deaf responses. It goes against the weather argument that the owners are trying to push now. That next morning of Saturday I get woken up by one of my younger colleagues and she’s like you know they’re calling a meeting right now.” I’m like “about what?” Well, I’m guessing it has something to do with the demands. They brought us all out there. Night crew who didn’t get off till 3AM, a lot of them weren’t even aware it was happening. About 15-20 slept right through it because they were either in their car or just heavy sleepers.
And they tried to pretty much change the entire stipulation. They tried to force a vote which was hastily carried out without really clarifying what was being said. It very quickly became apparent to me that they were trying to change the narrative and avert this 5PM deadline because after they attempted to do this vote the head lead went into the office, called the owner of our company, and then came back out of the office not even five minutes later. Completely disregarding what the discussion was.
They tell us at that point and immediately put out a new proposal: we stick it out, but we don’t do loadout – which is where we take all the stages out and all that. At that point it’s just a sea of faces, of confused faces, and he goes “well if we can’t come to agreement I’ll make the decision for you.” We need to call this for what it was and that was a humanitarian disaster they created, a Banana Republic humanitarian disaster in rural Virginia plain and simple.
VW: You’re saying there’s 125-150 workers on board for this whole thing, running the backstage. How many of them were IATSE union members and how many were non-union members?
BRRF: Several, including myself. There are plenty of us that are card holders and several more that have done a lot of work with their locals. They’re not members, but they’re big advocates for it, especially for the benefits and things that are lacking on this side of the industry. The point we’ve been making is that we’ve always been referred to as “the help”.
Coming from the kitchen industry we’re looked at the same way some snod chefs will look at dishwashers as peons. “Anybody can do it”, you know, “unskilled”, but if those dishwashers leave in the middle of a Friday night you’ve shat bed and now you’re in the weeds because are you going to be washing those dishes, scrubbing those pots and pans you just made an alfredo in? It’s a similar situation to that.
BRRF was also kind of a tipping point on the heels of the Burning Man fiasco. We’re just a few years out from AstroWorld. A lot of us that were at BRRF were at AstroWorld. One of our crew members was actually pinned at one point in a golf cart during the whole AstroWorld disaster, a lot of them still remember the haunting sounds above that crowd.
BRRF was like the cherry on the cake of gross negligence and zero accountability from the people that are putting these things on, essentially creating small cities and not taking any regard for the actual humanity that’s there.
VW: In terms of the call for stagehands to take some sort of an action, was that being driven by union members or was it just spontaneous, regardless of union status?
BRRF: This instance was a spontaneous, but it’s been brewing for quite a while. Myself and three others were kind of acting as the de facto go-between, press the union and all that and then we’re relating to the larger group that we’ve got assembled that was there for this. But its long-standing issues in the industry. It all birthed out of just years of all of us watching patrons getting nickeled and dimed for every damn thing and then they’re turning around and telling us it’s not in the budget for shower houses for 150 stagehands.
VW: It seems like the main issue was safety, stagehands acting on the interests of not just their safety, but safety in general for this festival
BRRF: Yeah it was. The other thing we noticed there was no evacuation procedures, no emergency plans, nothing of that nature posted anywhere. We’ve worked plenty of events where you walk on stage right or stage left right there on the column in laminate is the evacuation procedures for everything, every situation, from inclement weather to active shooter. There was zero of that. One band that I went to see from front house, we went to take the emergency access route which ran parallel on the outside perimeter of the festival grounds between the main stage. It should have been just production crew and emergency medical as the only people that should have gone there. I get walking about 30-40 feet we realized the route was full of people. Just regular fans, attendees just walking up. There were golf carts. EMTs were having trouble getting through. I know that there were a couple medical incidents. I can’t speak with certainty that there were deaths, but I’ve heard rumors there were two. One was an overdose, one was a seizure from an underlying health condition. I’ve heard that both of them died because emergency crews couldn’t get to them for 30-45 minutes. When the storms hit we’re not supposed to be under these stages during that kind of wind either. People were told to take shelter, but there was never anywhere to go. It’s amazing nobody was seriously injured.
Back to the original point, one of the reasons that we did take action and put the demands out there is we go out there and we spend sometimes weeks putting the stuff up. It’s hot, risky, and dangerous, but the reward for us at the end of it is literally sitting behind the video walls in the dark watching the sea of people just enjoying themselves.
That was what was infuriating for us. We could see how badly people were being treated. These people were paying to be here. We really started seeing how much the fans were dealing with, like similar unsanitary situations. There’s several people who’ve been diagnosed with Giardia. There’s been stories going around about people with scabies coming from this. It was a shit show, the best way to describe it. It’s overused, but I mean there’s no more accurate way to explain it.
VW: How much do you feel like what happened here in terms of workers response is kind of reflective of the general mood of workers willing to fight back? There’s UAW on strike now, SAG-AFTRA. WGA, do you feel like this is in continuity with the moment?
BRRF: I’ve definitely been following the SAG-AFTRA-WGA strikes and I knew that the UAW was pending, but with everything that was going on in that moment all that was out of my mind. It wasn’t until after the fact, until after I got back into town and out of that shit show, and showered and sat there and I turned on the news and I realized UAW struck.
I was like holy crap this is right in tandem with everything else and we’re part of the entertainment industry. I mean a lot of people – the actors and actresses that are on strike – I am kind of hoping that they also catch wind of BRRF too because it is the same industry. Our union also encompasses film and everything with entertainment so they’re already there . I’ve gotten messages from a worker at a Kellogg union plant expressing solidarity and support for what we did. I’ve got messages from several other union members expressing the same support.
VW: If you were to speak to other workers in other industries outside of yours what would you advocate to them and want them to learn from all this?
BRRF: People have that expendable attitude about our jobs that so many other people in every other industry get told as well, but the thing that we found out is that without us they collapse. John Deere went on strike a few years back and we saw hilarious stories of scabs driving into things and because none of them knew how to do the work, none of the people that were supposed to be in charge had any idea how to operate the damn machines and quickly realized they need workers more than workers need them.
It’s the same attitude that I had working the restaurant industry – “anybody can cook” – well we all know that isn’t true and it’s the same thing with this. “Anybody can go out there and throw scaffolding and put up stages” – not everybody can do that right and it takes a certain level of crazy to do that kind of thing, but it’s got to be done and every job out there has that same underlying thing. It has to be done, somebody’s going to have to do it and just because you’re the one doing it does not entitle anybody to disrespect you or dehumanize you in the least.
The Virginia Worker 
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