How To Run A Music Festival
It’s not every day you get to start your own music festival with your friends, but that’s exactly what Erik Lamir did 15 years ago. What started with a few mates dancing out in the bushland of NSW has become one of the biggest bush festivals in the country: Rabbits Eat Lettuce.
Junkee spoke to Rabbits Eat Lettuce founder Erik Lamir about what drove him to create the popular festival and the role it plays in the push for social and cultural change.
Junkee: So take me back 15 years… what inspired you to start Rabbits Eat Lettuce?
Erik: Growing up in the small country town of Bellingen, it was a pretty vibrant melting pot of different cultures because the hippies had moved in and they brought with them a lot of different music from other cultures. There was a World Music Festival that would happen every year called the Bellingen Global Carnival and the same guy that was running that was also running these UK-rave-scene-style parties out in the local valley, these 24-hour dance parties, so I was exposed to all that music and culture as a young person. I remember going out to a psychedelic music festival when I was 17 out west of Byron Bay called Exodus and had an excellent time.
I was like, ‘I think we should do something like this back home’. So then a few months later or so, we dragged a sound system and a generator out into the bush next to the river and we had a bit of a party with a bunch of mates. This was back in the days before social media so we ended up putting a post on a doof party forum on the internet. We ended up getting like a carload of trippers rock up at 2am and give us a gold coin donation. For the next one I was like, ‘Okay, well I’m gonna spend a bit more money and make the production a bit more sexy and advertise it and charge tickets’. I ended up putting posters around at my local high school and we ended up getting like 600 people to that one.
It just snowballed from there. We kept upping the ante with the production level and what we were trying to do creatively and then I think it was in 2008, that there was like a psych-trance doof up the coast that stopped running. They used to happen every Easter so we jumped onto the date and by that stage we were doing bush doofs every three months but we decided to do one big Easter party.
Where did the name come from?
We were spitballing names and it was around the time South Park had come out and there was a line where they’re riding on the bus and they’re like, ‘Oh no, we can’t do that, the stupid bitch won’t let us’ and the bus driver said ‘What did you say?’ ‘We said rabbits eat lettuce’. So we just thought it was funny. We didn’t expect it to turn into a multi-day, multi-stage, multifaceted, transformational festival but here we are.
What do you hope Rabbits Eat Lettuce achieves?
The main intention is for people to come and just really sink into who they truly are and express themselves without judgement, have a good time, be inspired, meet and connect with new people, and open their hearts up to realise that we’re all pretty similar. [We want to] get people to feel that sense of community and take that inspiration back into the real world and apply it to their life wherever that may be.
It seems like there’s a natural element that’s important to the festival too.
Yeah, I’ve tried to do a couple of indoor events in the past and every time I’ve regretted it. I went camping a lot as a kid and I love being out in the bush. I love how nature makes you feel quite primitive and brings you back to that natural feeling of being human and getting outside the concrete jungle and man-made world.
How do you ensure that Aussie acts and up and coming artists are featured?
What we do, which I think is quite different to a lot of other festivals, is we have artist applications that we open up on our website. Up and coming artists can apply and submit an application to perform at the festival. We get a lot more applicants than we have room for. I think this year we had 360. There’s no no way that we have space for all of them but if they stand out and we like what they’re doing and the sound then we’re totally happy to give someone a chance that we’ve never heard of before.
It’s great to book international guest artists that don’t get to perform here very often too. It’s kind of exciting for the audience, but the vast majority of our lineups are Australian so we handpick artists from all around the country from all different niche genre bases to curate a really eclectic mix of dance music.
We did a customer survey to ask why people come to the festival. Most of the people are coming to Rabbits Eat Lettuce for the vibe and for the outdoor experience. I think about 15 or 20 percent said they come specifically for the artists that we’ve booked. So people are exposed to other artists that they don’t know, which is a really cool thing.
Speaking of the vibe, how do you think that festivals can be a catalyst for self development, healing and social change?
When you dive down the rabbit hole you enter a different world. You have the setting for people to express themselves freely without judgement and be exposed to new things. You might be cruising along intending to go down to the dance floor and you might walk past the yoga space and see some people doing yoga and be pulled into that intuitively or pulled into a different workshop about different things. It just provides such a multifaceted experience that allows people to dive deep within themselves. We get countless messages from people saying that going to the festival changed their life and sent their life on a new positive trajectory. We’ve had people get married, people meet their future partners, and all sorts of things. So it’s definitely had a positive impact on people’s lives. I’d say that’s why people keep coming back.
What do you think younger people who may be going to their first festival like Rabbits Eat Lettuce can learn from being there?
Before they come they might feel like they’ve got this whole life plan mapped out because that’s what society told them they need to do. Then they come to the festival and just have some eye and mind opening experiences and go ‘Hang on, why do I have to follow this path that society has set out for me? Why can’t I just follow my dreams?’ We’re trying to instil in people that they can follow their dreams and if you really put in the hard yards, you can make your dreams a reality.
How has the festival’s relationship with police developed over the years?
The police is a funny one. We’ve always tried to have a very positive relationship with the police and for the vast majority it has been a positive relationship. When we’ve had user pays police on the ground they’ve always been great to deal with. They’ve never come to [Rabbits Eat Lettuce] with the intention to intimidate and they’re coming just to create a police presence. It’s very important for us to keep a positive relationship with the police and all the emergency services.
We’re actually looking at having the first pill testing trial in Queensland at the festival this year, which is pretty exciting. We’ve already been talking to local police who are supportive of that exercise. We’ve been talking to Pill Testing Australia, who might be taking that on.
How do you think pill testing can benefit festivals like Rabbits Eat Lettuce?
Obviously, especially at a music festival, there’s going to be young people that are going to experiment with drugs. That’s undeniable. So I think having the option of pill testing or drug checking services just makes people think a bit about what they’re putting in their body before they do it rather than just taking something blindly. People want to make informed decisions if they’re given the choice. You need to give them the credit if they’ve got an option there to be safe, they’re probably going to take it.
I just saw a report that a study found that pill testing could have prevented 64 music festival-related drug deaths. So it’s just a no brainer. If someone’s going to take drugs and they’ve got the ability to get them tested, they’re likely to use the service and then if it determines that drug has a harmful additive I’d imagine nine times out of 10 they wouldn’t take it.
I remember going to Shambhala festival [in Canada], probably close to 10 years ago or something, and they had a drug testing service there. I just thought that was amazing and progressive. Every afternoon when you’d be going into the festival, you’d see a line of people at the front just waiting to test what they were going to possibly take. It’s good to be informed.
It’s the 15th year anniversary of Rabbits Eat Lettuce this year. What does it mean to you that it’s gone for as long as it has?
It’s quite an impressive feat. When I think about all the challenges that we’ve faced throughout the years, it’s not been an easy road. It’s been quite an adventure along the way. I’ve had so many good memories and worked with so many good people. Yeah, I’m pretty stoked that we’re able to do our 15-year anniversary this year. We’re in a position where we can learn from 15 years and nail this year and work on doing another amazing 10 years or so. I haven’t gotten sick of it yet. The fun parts of it still outweigh the stressful parts.
Image: Rabbits Eat Lettuce