Speaker 1: KBLA Talk fifteen eighty and I pose the question what happened,
Speaker 1: what actually happened with the La Jazz Festival and being
Speaker 1: completely transparent. A man in the studio before me this
Speaker 1: morning is one of my closest friends. He is the
Speaker 1: president and CEO of Bridge Street Incorporated. You know him
Speaker 1: to be the former head of the La Federation of Labor,
Speaker 1: a former council member for the tenth District. I worked
Speaker 1: with him on numerous projects, both on stage as well
Speaker 1: as backstage, with the Summer of Success in Baldwin Village
Speaker 1: show when he was over that council district. He is
Speaker 1: the visionary creator founder of the La Jazz Festival. Martin Ludlow, good.
Speaker 2: Morning, Good morning, Dominique. Thanks for having me here. Appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for coming in. I mean in these and
Speaker 1: I've said many times on this show, I am on
Speaker 1: the board of the La Jazz Festival Foundation. I've been
Speaker 1: a big cheerleader and supporter of this project since I
Speaker 1: first heard about it. I think you've been working on
Speaker 1: it for about fifteen years. But these conversations are tough
Speaker 1: because I keep on my professional hat and interview you
Speaker 1: as is my job. But also, you're my friend, so
Speaker 1: and I have a personal stake in this, so I
Speaker 1: do my best to be as transparent about that as
Speaker 1: possible through the conversation. Let's start with the shaker that
Speaker 1: everyone received a little over a week ago that the
Speaker 1: La Jazz Festival, which You've been working on for fifteen
Speaker 1: years and I've been talking about for at least a
Speaker 1: year or two, was canceled at the last minute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so parts of it were being canceled earlier than
Speaker 2: you know, the opening night. And I think as folks
Speaker 2: will remember, you know, first, let me just say heartbroken,
Speaker 2: devastated in many ways. And we've had a lot of wins.
Speaker 2: We've had a lot of wins. We've had a lot
Speaker 2: of incredible productions, and it's it's always difficult to have
Speaker 2: that big loss. And I was doing an interview yesterday
Speaker 2: with La Times, and La Times reporters are sort of
Speaker 2: asking me about, you know, how do you how do
Speaker 2: you recover from this? How does your business recover? And I,
Speaker 2: you know, I said to them, well, it's not easy.
Speaker 2: But I look at a lot of you know, professional
Speaker 2: coaches and folks who got to go out and they're
Speaker 2: going to lose a game. No matter what they did
Speaker 2: last year, what they did the previous seasons, they got
Speaker 2: to come back out. They got to figure it out,
Speaker 2: and they got to come back because I got to
Speaker 2: I got another game coming up in front of them.
Speaker 2: And it's easy, I think sometimes in this different world
Speaker 2: to look at them just as oh, that's just sports,
Speaker 2: that's just you know, sort of a fun game. But
Speaker 2: it really is. Everybody's under a microscope. If you're you know,
Speaker 2: monitoring a team that's you know, sort of beloved in
Speaker 2: that community, and you end up losing a really big game,
Speaker 2: it's really hard for folks to recover. And I'll never
Speaker 2: forget some of the young kids that I coached and
Speaker 2: mentored seeing them go through that tremendous emotional low if
Speaker 2: they missed a pass or missed a touchdown or whatever.
Speaker 2: And so I'm going through that myself right now. The
Speaker 2: punchline is, we were getting very very close. We're about
Speaker 2: thirty days out when we got notified that here's the
Speaker 2: final decision by Public Safety, Law Enforcement, Fire County of LA.
Speaker 2: And the final decision really was, here's what it's going
Speaker 2: to cost. We've been meeting with you for four to
Speaker 2: five months in inner governmental round tables. We've all been
Speaker 2: trying to figure it out. I don't know. We spent
Speaker 2: over a minute and a half on industry professionals, everything
Speaker 2: from transit professionals, parking professionals, what we call people flow professionals,
Speaker 2: how to ensure that a crowd is moving in and
Speaker 2: out safely and quickly and efficiently. The idea of building
Speaker 2: something on Dockwaller Beach, which was really the premiere moment
Speaker 2: of the whole festival, that has never been done before,
Speaker 2: ever in the history of the state of California. And
Speaker 2: when we got right down to it, the numbers that
Speaker 2: we were looking at that they were giving to us
Speaker 2: to pay sort of government was staggering. And when you
Speaker 2: added it all up between their costs and the cost
Speaker 2: to build, what they were telling us we had to
Speaker 2: build on the ground was really out of our reach,
Speaker 2: and so we scrambled. I spent a good week reaching
Speaker 2: out to millionaires, billionaires, just about everybody that I could
Speaker 2: say that, look, this is gonna this is gonna fall
Speaker 2: apart if we don't do something right now. And then
Speaker 2: at the last moment, when I realized that we were
Speaker 2: not going to get that savior, we weren't going to
Speaker 2: get that last big influx of money. I pivoted, went
Speaker 2: to AEG to see if we could get the Peacock
Speaker 2: Theater for our Sunday show. They said yes. Went to
Speaker 2: Greek Theater and see if we could get their facility
Speaker 2: for the Saturday show. They said yes, And so we
Speaker 2: thought at the last minute, let's save the weekend and
Speaker 2: you know, sort of figure out a way to create
Speaker 2: that vibe and still make it fun. But twenty four
Speaker 2: hours before the announcement that we were going to completely postpone,
Speaker 2: I got a call from two of our major headliners
Speaker 2: saying that they were not coming with us over to
Speaker 2: the pivoted location. And with those two exits, we lost
Speaker 2: a major round of funders, two people and two organizations
Speaker 2: in particular, and there was just no way to recover
Speaker 2: at that point. So we had to really make the
Speaker 2: hard decision, and that last weekend was really where all
Speaker 2: of the resources were coming into to cover all of
Speaker 2: the free shows that we were trying to build.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so let's backtrack a little bit for people
Speaker 1: that you know, didn't follow every step of this but
Speaker 1: are now caught up in the social media frenzy around
Speaker 1: it LA Jazz Festival was is your vision to create
Speaker 1: a festival that offered free shows, one free show in
Speaker 1: the park in every council district, Jazz afterne.
Speaker 2: And beyond, all the way out to Marino Valley, Inglewood, Compton.
Speaker 2: We were really bringing it to parks all over southern California.
Speaker 1: And also small restaurants and venues and in addition, convene
Speaker 1: a roundtable of different festival organized nisers, like a panel
Speaker 1: to do tours around the history of the beach and
Speaker 1: access to the beach and you know, jazz itself. All
Speaker 1: of this was part of something that was supposed to
Speaker 1: run from the seventh through the twenty third of August.
Speaker 1: And when you say the first time it's ever been done,
Speaker 1: I hear people say, well, we have the l Park
Speaker 1: Jazz Festival and the Guardina Jazz Festival and the Playboy
Speaker 1: Jazz Festival. And so I think people don't are not understanding.
Speaker 3: What you mean. So let's start there.
Speaker 1: What were you trying to do and what would make
Speaker 1: it should it happen in the future, would make it
Speaker 1: the first because you know.
Speaker 2: I think some people have described it as the first
Speaker 2: jazz festival in LA and that's farthest from the truth.
Speaker 2: In fact, I remember one reporter that says, how does
Speaker 2: it feel to be bringing jazz to LA Jazz has
Speaker 2: been here for over one hundred years. We're not bringing
Speaker 2: jazz to LA. But you know, it's really inspired by
Speaker 2: the incredible international jazz festivals worldwide that really are sort
Speaker 2: of like harvest season within those cities where they're major takeovers.
Speaker 2: If you're in New Orleans for a New Orleans Jazz
Speaker 2: festal for those two iconic weeks, it really is a
Speaker 2: moment where everybody in the city lives and breathes around
Speaker 2: the moment that all of the international tours are coming
Speaker 2: in from around the world, because it is a unique,
Speaker 2: significant city wide experience, the activations and so forth. Montrou
Speaker 2: which is probably one of the most attractive of them,
Speaker 2: very much on the beach, the cove setting. It is
Speaker 2: all the restaurants are activated at night. If you haven't
Speaker 2: had a chance to be there, it's not cheap to
Speaker 2: get there, But if you ever get a chance to
Speaker 2: get to that, you'll see the vision of what it
Speaker 2: means to have a whole city takeover. Montreal, which actually
Speaker 2: in Detroit have gotten over a million people to their
Speaker 2: international jazz festivals. That's very different. You know. I was
Speaker 2: very grateful for the support of a lot of the
Speaker 2: local jazz festivals because the goal of this was to
Speaker 2: try to lift the whole ecosystem and to try to
Speaker 2: really put LA on the map from having a similar
Speaker 2: sized festival that you'll see in other cities like a Newport,
Speaker 2: Rhode Island, like a Cape Town, South Africa, and we
Speaker 2: have not had something of that scale here in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and that was the intent.
Speaker 1: And so and the other you know thing that I've
Speaker 1: heard is why start so huge? You know, it was
Speaker 1: maybe it was too big to stand up that quickly
Speaker 1: that even though you've been working on it for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: but at that scale.
Speaker 2: No. So the original idea was to put this on
Speaker 2: Dargwaller Beach, and that was a very intentional effort to
Speaker 2: really elevate the narrative of the African and African American
Speaker 2: experience here in the United States, given that jazz was
Speaker 2: founded by our ancestors that were brought into this country
Speaker 2: across the ocean. First moment that we experienced it was
Speaker 2: on the beach. We have been denied access to that beach,
Speaker 2: whether it's the ability to purchase properties, whether it's the
Speaker 2: you know, in some cases our properties that we own
Speaker 2: were taken from us Bruce's Beach, Viceroy Hotel, Ebony Beach Club,
Speaker 2: and to do that festival on the beach required a
Speaker 2: vote of the California Coastal Commission. Since nineteen seventies, the
Speaker 2: Coastal Act has essentially said, you can't privatize the beach.
Speaker 2: Most of us think about that through the lens of
Speaker 2: you can't privatize it to build a building. Well, that act,
Speaker 2: that law takes it all the way to any level
Speaker 2: of a privatization, whether it's a long term, permanent structure
Speaker 2: or it's a part time event structure. We fell under
Speaker 2: that category. To address that, we had to agree that
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of our tickets would be free. The
Speaker 2: only way to make the economics work on something that
Speaker 2: was going to truly cost millions was to find a
Speaker 2: path where you could still do paid tickets on the beach.
Speaker 2: So that's when we started to build it out even
Speaker 2: larger than the original vision, so that we were including
Speaker 2: all of these different moments across southern California that would
Speaker 2: essentially go into the formula of a major festival and
Speaker 2: allowing us to keep seventy five percent of those tickets
Speaker 2: for free. If the twenty five percent that you're charging
Speaker 2: for or right there on the beach, the math absolutely works.
Speaker 2: So that was when it really started to grow tremendously
Speaker 2: to the size. And you know, I'd say it, we
Speaker 2: came very very very close. By the way. We ended
Speaker 2: up spending over a million, almost one point two million
Speaker 2: on musicians, and I just want to put that out there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that part of the number that we spent is making
Speaker 2: sure that both businesses and musicians were covered. There still are,
Speaker 2: there's still work to be done, but just want to
Speaker 2: put that out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to talk more about that when we
Speaker 1: come forward. Martin Ludlow is here. What really happened to
Speaker 1: the La Jazz Festival is our topic and that question
Speaker 1: of you know what happens next? Who's holding the bag?
Speaker 1: All that and your future plans are straight ahead on
Speaker 1: KBLA talk fifteen to eighty and Martin Ludlow is here.
Speaker 1: He was is the creator of the La Jazz Festival.
Speaker 1: And of course when you first told me about it,
Speaker 1: I did see your vision, this giant you know, Party
Speaker 1: on the Beach, but also the socially innovative piece which
Speaker 1: marks all of your work, whether it be in the
Speaker 1: City Council, whether it be you know at the LA FED,
Speaker 1: whether it be with Bridge Street where you produced all
Speaker 1: of those concerts inside the prisons for Common and the
Speaker 1: Labor Day music festivals that we did at Exposition Park,
Speaker 1: and you know the Doc King event, a huge Doctor
Speaker 1: King event in Memphis.
Speaker 3: I mean, you tend.
Speaker 1: To have a socially innovative component even to the entertainment stuff.
Speaker 1: It's your sweet spot. And so I saw the vision.
Speaker 1: I was very excited. I still see the vision and
Speaker 1: also heartbroken that it seems to have crashed and burned.
Speaker 1: You point out that you spent one point two million,
Speaker 1: did you say you have already spent on musicians? Is
Speaker 1: that deposits? That's just what you needed to pay them
Speaker 1: to secure their attendance on those performance states.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that you know, was really the heart of
Speaker 2: the festival. We had I think one hundred and almost
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty artists from eighteen nations that we
Speaker 2: had confirmed, and I will acknowledge that there still are
Speaker 2: a couple whose contracts were going back and forth didn't
Speaker 2: get countersigned. They there's about twenty of them that did
Speaker 2: not get their deposit, but the balance of them did.
Speaker 2: And so I'm working in morning, noon and night to
Speaker 2: you know, with the moment to your point of the
Speaker 2: burn and crash, trying to pull the money together to
Speaker 2: cover those deposits. And I will and that's an absolute
Speaker 2: guarantee if those musicians are listening. But to the other
Speaker 2: one hundred and thirty of them, you know, I've been
Speaker 2: on the phone pretty much daily. I've got more calls
Speaker 2: to make. The calls have been incredible. Almost every artist
Speaker 2: that I've spoken to have said, listen, love the vision.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping you'll allow to keep us, keep the deposit.
Speaker 2: Said absolutely. And then third, can you put us on
Speaker 2: the next show because we love working with you. And
Speaker 2: that's been the majority of the calls, and so you know,
Speaker 2: I'm heartened by that, grateful for it. And I think
Speaker 2: that for hard working musicians who are living their life,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's tough. It is tough, and it's
Speaker 2: you look at your working show to show to show
Speaker 2: you live off of those shows. I think there was
Speaker 2: not just I don't think there was just a passion
Speaker 2: about getting paid. There's a passion to your point, about
Speaker 2: the vision of the festival, and people felt a lot
Speaker 2: of pride in the narrative. And it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 2: just a solo it. I think I heard one musician
Speaker 2: talking about his family remembering the days of the ink
Speaker 2: well and having to be forced to go to the
Speaker 2: ink well just to access the beach safely. And so
Speaker 2: there was all kinds of stories like that that are
Speaker 2: very passionate and made people feel differently about obviously the postponement.
Speaker 1: So and I want to be clear about this because
Speaker 1: I'm seeing so much stuff on social media and even
Speaker 1: some of these articles that are being published in what
Speaker 1: I would call mainstream press that you don't get to
Speaker 1: put those major artists, you don't get to put John
Speaker 1: Lengend's name on a flyer without a deal with him.
Speaker 1: It's not you can't just make that up. You'll be sued,
Speaker 1: you'll be shut.
Speaker 2: Down, right, correct, correct?
Speaker 1: So I mean this idea that it was all just
Speaker 1: a big phony thing that would never was never actually
Speaker 1: going to happen, is to me that's based on a
Speaker 1: lack of understanding of how the entertainment business works.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and I you know, I've sort of been
Speaker 2: avoiding social media because it is brutal. But yeah, you
Speaker 2: those artists were very much looking forward to being there.
Speaker 2: And you know, anything I can say publicly is that
Speaker 2: I apologize to everybody involved that we were not able
Speaker 2: to pull it off. But it was painful down to
Speaker 2: the last, you know, twenty four hours, and a lot
Speaker 2: of those musicians were very much looking forward to being there.
Speaker 2: And like I said, I've been on phones just almost
Speaker 2: every day talking to different artists and and you know,
Speaker 2: the conversations we were having with lapd La Fire, the
Speaker 2: County of La those are very real conversations. And just again,
Speaker 2: we had almost one hundred people working on the festival
Speaker 2: for five months. That's that was a large payroll every
Speaker 2: every month. You know those If anything, those people right
Speaker 2: now are just really saddened because they were looking forward
Speaker 2: to seeing the fruits of their labor finalized. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we met as an executive team every Friday that That
Speaker 2: conference call was massive. Our talent repture on the call.
Speaker 2: I feel bad for those guys because obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of relationships get impacted when a festival doesn't
Speaker 2: go through or a tour doesn't go through. And there's
Speaker 2: been a lot of tours and a lot of festivals
Speaker 2: that canceled just over the last couple of months.
Speaker 1: I mean, the industry, the business is struggling in generals
Speaker 1: that the economy. What do you.
Speaker 3: Attribute that to.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's all of the above. I'm not quite
Speaker 2: sure why the Brooklyn Jazz Festival postponed or canceled. They
Speaker 2: postpone or canceled on the Saturday before we did. There
Speaker 2: have been a number of tours that were announced that
Speaker 2: had postponed. There are some people tracking what they call
Speaker 2: blue Dot fever, where consumers worldwide have been sort of
Speaker 2: pushing back on price points. Consumers have been really reluctant
Speaker 2: to spend very you know, they just economically for a
Speaker 2: household to try to make a decision on how they're
Speaker 2: going to spend that precious, you know, paycheck that they have,
Speaker 2: it's it's a it's a real thing, and so you
Speaker 2: have to be creative. I think what you saw in
Speaker 2: World Cup was just incredible turnout, particularly for the free events.
Speaker 2: Where they were free events, there were just tens of thousands,
Speaker 2: if not millions, of people. So I think people consumers
Speaker 2: worldwide are looking for a really good bargain for what
Speaker 2: they're paying and if they can get really good entertainment,
Speaker 2: really good cultural experiences where it doesn't cost their family anything,
Speaker 2: there's a real interesting.
Speaker 1: And you're right, of course, but yeah, so so okay,
Speaker 1: there's so many things to address here. When you talk
Speaker 1: about we only have three minutes of news, traffic and
Speaker 1: sports will continue on the other side. So let me
Speaker 1: go here. For folks who say, well, this is this
Speaker 1: is like a fire festival, what do you say to
Speaker 1: those people?
Speaker 2: Well, there was one person that was quoted in the
Speaker 2: paper and I really appreciate I don't know who it was,
Speaker 2: and they were like, look, I've been in meetings with
Speaker 2: this guy. I've done tours of sites. This was an
Speaker 2: absolute commitment to creating a cultural moment that's free and open.
Speaker 2: We were talking about opening up public beaches, public parks,
Speaker 2: as you said, community restaurants. This was never about you know,
Speaker 2: having some high end you know, consumers flying to some
Speaker 2: destination location that really hadn't had any of the pre planning.
Speaker 2: In fact, at the end, the ultimate decision of why
Speaker 2: we didn't move forward is we knew we could not
Speaker 2: afford what was being asked of us to ensure that
Speaker 2: it would come off in the way that government was mandated.
Speaker 2: That's when we stopped. We didn't stop when people are
Speaker 2: already on site.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and honestly, you know, that's I want to get
Speaker 1: to that after news, traffic and sports, like, what how
Speaker 1: do we as as a community, as a government, as
Speaker 1: public safety, you know, support entertainment and what's supposed to
Speaker 1: be the entertainment capital or one of the entertainment capitals
Speaker 1: of the world.
Speaker 3: And you know what the breakdown was there.
Speaker 1: But when we talk about the fire festival concept, there's
Speaker 1: also receipts. It's not like you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: am not privy to all of them, but I know
Speaker 1: because I've done business with you. There's contracts for everything,
Speaker 1: there's blueprints for everything. I mean, it's this is not
Speaker 1: a fly by the seat of your pants operation at all.
Speaker 1: There is a paper trail.
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely no. And and to your point, I mean
Speaker 2: we went through you know, Look, I think most folks
Speaker 2: can contact their local council member and the council member
Speaker 2: will tell them no, Look that the team came by,
Speaker 2: they did site visits. We chose the parks in the
Speaker 2: fifteen council districts based on the desires of those council members.
Speaker 2: Those interagency task force meetings that we held out at
Speaker 2: Dockwyler Beach happened every month. There's probably sixty people involved,
Speaker 2: representing everybody from the Coast Guard to lax to a city, fire, county, fire,
Speaker 2: city police, County Sheriff, Caltrant, CHP, City of El Segundo,
Speaker 2: City of Manhattan, Beach County, Department of Beaches and Harbors.
Speaker 2: The roster was extensive, and we were meeting with them
Speaker 2: every month and our blueprints, to your point, we're getting
Speaker 2: more more intense and more significant and more detailed by
Speaker 2: the month. Also, just all of the people that were involved,
Speaker 2: you know, from talent managers to on the ground producers
Speaker 2: to public safety experts. We had the former assistant police
Speaker 2: chief of LAPD that was working with us between the departments,
Speaker 2: and we had the former planning director of the City
Speaker 2: of La working with all the planning departments, I mean,
Speaker 2: the folks that do Coachella traffic. This was a unique
Speaker 2: challenge to pull this off, and we brought in the
Speaker 2: best in the world, and I think we were all
Speaker 2: stunned at what we saw. At the last minute and
Speaker 2: it was just no way to move forward and it
Speaker 2: was it ended up being a postponeman and that's really it.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: I want to find out more about postponed till when
Speaker 1: and you know, pull more receipts. La Jazz Festival is
Speaker 1: our topic. And you're listening to KBLA Talk fifteen eight
Speaker 1: welcome back. Indeed, Martin Ludlow is with me. He's the
Speaker 1: CEO of Bridge Street in cored and the man behind
Speaker 1: the visionary behind the La Jazz Festival, which was abruptly
Speaker 1: canceled right before the opening day here in Lambert Park.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of us are heartbroken. You you
Speaker 1: reference at the beginning of the conversation that shortly before
Speaker 1: opening day, fire and L A. P. D. Come with
Speaker 1: come with numbers. This is what we need and we're
Speaker 1: talking dollar numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's it was not just that, it was
Speaker 2: something that included what's called gross sales receipt tax estimate,
Speaker 2: where you're being taxed on ticket sales, food and beverage,
Speaker 2: expected sales, merchandise, expected sales and sponsorships, which you know,
Speaker 2: to me was a shocker to see all of that
Speaker 2: at that moment being asked to be prepaid.
Speaker 1: So you're being asked to prepay taxes on things you
Speaker 1: may or may not sell, and.
Speaker 2: Then the event your estimate is off, we will refund
Speaker 2: you the difference, or if there is a refund, or
Speaker 2: it can go the other way. If we think you underestimated,
Speaker 2: then it's going to go higher. So that was a
Speaker 2: new one for me, and that was a new one
Speaker 2: for our finance team. I think early on there was
Speaker 2: a reference that you may have to pay grocery seat
Speaker 2: sales tax, but it wasn't like there was a real
Speaker 2: clear conversation about it. In fact, I think even in
Speaker 2: the document that we got there, there's just still ambiguities
Speaker 2: as to which agency was that on behalf of Was
Speaker 2: that on behalf of the state, the city, the county,
Speaker 2: So definitely some confusion on that for us. But the
Speaker 2: sticker shock was was, you know, when we did the math,
Speaker 2: when you between the LAPD deployment, which was going to
Speaker 2: be almost eighty eight officers per day to get started
Speaker 2: in the event that they needed to deploy more, that
Speaker 2: would have all been on our tab. We had estimated
Speaker 2: that we knew LAPED was going to have to deploy something,
Speaker 2: but it was far lower than what we had expected.
Speaker 2: And I don't again, I don't sit here blaming the
Speaker 2: individual officers that were at the table working with us
Speaker 2: day in and day out. I think they were earnestly
Speaker 2: trying to figure it out. But I do kind of
Speaker 2: question the environment that we were in. When you just
Speaker 2: looked at a month earlier, there had been the quote
Speaker 2: unquote takeover of Newport Beach and there were horse drawn
Speaker 2: or horseback you know, uh police and you know, chasing
Speaker 2: folks off of the beach. I think there was a
Speaker 2: lot of sort of internal hysterian concern around that.
Speaker 1: The fire, although that wasn't exactly a jazz crowd, not.
Speaker 2: At all, right, right for us, it was just like
Speaker 2: these you know, these are going to be uh just anyway.
Speaker 2: I won't stereotype our crowd, but I know who was
Speaker 2: buying the.
Speaker 3: Ticket and then fire.
Speaker 2: And then you know, for on that it was just
Speaker 2: the escalation of really a couple of things. In LA
Speaker 2: there is eight, uh sort of eight levels of what
Speaker 2: you call medical plan based on the type of incident.
Speaker 2: Eight is the highest. We were assessed a level seven
Speaker 2: medical plan and a level seven seven medical plan not
Speaker 2: only called for ambulances, doctors, nurses, paramedics, EMTs, but we
Speaker 2: were also being required to build unprecedented levels of plastic
Speaker 2: snap on groundcover that you could literally drive a truck on.
Speaker 2: And it was like building a basketball court out on
Speaker 2: the sand for a beach festival. And when you look
Speaker 2: at our blueprints, they were just growing in terms of
Speaker 2: the numbers. Our first estimate from a vendor that was
Speaker 2: committed and had the level of equipment that we were
Speaker 2: going to need and supplies, it was almost nine hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars for that groundcover. We started negotiating and see
Speaker 2: if we could pull it back. By the time we
Speaker 2: got to the final number on that, when you add
Speaker 2: the groundcover, you add all of the personnel and all
Speaker 2: the equipment required for the Level seven, all the LAPD deployment,
Speaker 2: all of the grocery seat sales tax estimates, we were
Speaker 2: looking at one point six million dollars. That was never
Speaker 2: even remove totally thought of in our budget. Did we
Speaker 2: expect to pay for paramedics, Absolutely, we had them in
Speaker 2: our budget. Did we expect that would be LAPD, Absolutely,
Speaker 2: we had that in our budget. We did not expect
Speaker 2: to see anything on.
Speaker 3: The level that we got back one point dollars one
Speaker 3: point when you.
Speaker 2: Added between the public costs and the private costs required
Speaker 2: to build the elements that there.
Speaker 1: How can we have any kind of entertainment event or
Speaker 1: festival or anything a new thing that's not owned by
Speaker 1: massive corporate interests, certainly anything black owned or independently produced
Speaker 1: when you have unknown costs coming in at the final hour.
Speaker 3: Oh, by the way, we need.
Speaker 1: Another one point two to one point six million, How
Speaker 1: how is that feasible if I'm not a giant live
Speaker 1: nation level company.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again I'll i'll, I mean.
Speaker 3: It can can it? Can it?
Speaker 1: Can?
Speaker 2: It?
Speaker 1: Could? It be blamed on you? Should you have no
Speaker 1: own that it was going to be one point too?
Speaker 1: Like what should you have done differently? And what should
Speaker 1: we have done differently? Because to me it sounds like.
Speaker 3: The government.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it sounds like
Speaker 1: people were trying to shut it down. You got to
Speaker 1: pay taxes in advance on merch that you may or
Speaker 1: may not sell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been more than a number of people that
Speaker 2: feel like you. We were stunned. Our whole team was stunned.
Speaker 2: But you know again, just want to say anybody sort
Speaker 2: of tuned in on this. We absolutely had security and
Speaker 2: we had actually put one hundred security officers in our budget.
Speaker 2: We had LAPD. We expected there would be some LAPD
Speaker 2: deployment that we would have to cover. We had paramedics.
Speaker 2: But the escalation to.
Speaker 1: The level seven, we're going to have a bunch of
Speaker 1: dead jazz fans.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is happening like?
Speaker 2: It was an emergency response before there was ever any emergency, right,
Speaker 2: and that's what it hit is like. But anyway, your
Speaker 2: specific question is, you know, could it you know, how
Speaker 2: could it get done? And I think there's going to
Speaker 2: be a post mortem after this. I know a number
Speaker 2: of council members have reached out and they have indicated, Look,
Speaker 2: if a developer was going to build a building, we
Speaker 2: can tell them right now at the very beginning, how
Speaker 2: what size, how many bedrooms? And there are codes, there's
Speaker 2: a formula, and they're going to get you down to, hey,
Speaker 2: three hundred dollars per square foot, four hundred dollars that
Speaker 2: advance before you can get going here. It was a
Speaker 2: complete opposite and that is really I think it's a
Speaker 2: keen insight and I appreciate you even raising it.
Speaker 1: I mean to me, it's like, we are supposed to
Speaker 1: be the entertainment capital of the world. How can we
Speaker 1: have nice things if we don't all cooperate to build
Speaker 1: nice things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, so parts that I'm going to always,
Speaker 2: you know, look back on and just be like, this
Speaker 2: is year one. What did we learned from it? I
Speaker 2: think it is going to take a will of government
Speaker 2: to say this is important and we want to help,
Speaker 2: and we want to figure out a way to do it.
Speaker 2: It's not just about you know, telling us, hey, you
Speaker 2: need this, you need that, you need this, no partner
Speaker 2: with us. And you know, this really was more the
Speaker 2: county driving it. The county Beaches and Harbors were in charge.
Speaker 2: This is the process that they had just set up.
Speaker 2: And ironically, this is a fact if you want to
Speaker 2: do an event on the beach, if you want to
Speaker 2: just rent a spot to do a family event or whatever,
Speaker 2: they don't even allow you to start the process until
Speaker 2: you're ninety days prior to the event. Think about that
Speaker 2: we announced this six months prior to the event, and
Speaker 2: they had to figure out how to change the portal
Speaker 2: just so that we could even you know, begin to
Speaker 2: start to upload some of the forums, and then finally
Speaker 2: there really wasn't like a process. I think people were
Speaker 2: trying to figure it out. And again, so when I
Speaker 2: think about the individual people that were at that table
Speaker 2: with us, I think most of them were seriously trying
Speaker 2: to figure it out. But there wasn't like a manual.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a blueprint. Hey pull out manual on how
Speaker 2: to build a mega event on our coastline. And that
Speaker 2: I think is an honest and I think all of
Speaker 2: them at the table would agree. We were throwing stuff
Speaker 2: out these guys every meeting. That is just like an
Speaker 2: open ad hoc process. Just whatever it was on somebody's
Speaker 2: mind that just fired it off and we would have
Speaker 2: to respond to that, and all of a sudden you'd
Speaker 2: see the price tag go up, and then there'd be
Speaker 2: the next point you have to respond to that price
Speaker 2: tager go up. And it was just like an open
Speaker 2: feeding frenzy. And at some point, you know, whether you're
Speaker 2: a restaurant owner, you're a grocery store owner, you got
Speaker 2: a small shop or gas station or whatever, there's a
Speaker 2: process for how you get permitted, and it's very clear
Speaker 2: in this city county state have those, and I think
Speaker 2: the final point is this was multi jurisdictional, as I
Speaker 2: said at the beginning, So how do we learn from this?
Speaker 2: How do we figure out how do you pull off
Speaker 2: a multi jurisdictional experience that can be affordable to a
Speaker 2: non mega corporation, the state, the county, the cities that
Speaker 2: are involved. There's got to be a way to do it.
Speaker 2: And that doesn't seem like rocket science.
Speaker 1: You said year one, so that means you're planning to
Speaker 1: do it again.
Speaker 3: They're planning to try it again.
Speaker 2: Right now, I'm trying to figure out how do we
Speaker 2: first cover still the debt that's on this one. We
Speaker 2: still have a lot of debt and I'm working on
Speaker 2: it literally every hour, and we have a lot of
Speaker 2: reputational damage to fix. You know this is this has
Speaker 2: been devastating to to everybody involved. It's not just me.
Speaker 2: There are other people who have relationships impacted. And so
Speaker 2: you know, right now, I think the interest by more
Speaker 2: people that I'm hearing from on a daily basis is
Speaker 2: don't let it go, don't let the vision go. And
Speaker 2: that's that's where most of our mindset is. Now, how
Speaker 2: do how do we how do we wrap this one.
Speaker 1: Up professional and when So when you say investment, you're
Speaker 1: talking about all the people, hours of the people that
Speaker 1: were hired, the musicians, deposits, equipment, like what other kinds.
Speaker 3: I know, you commissioned artwork.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we commissioned art We didn't We didn't buy really
Speaker 2: much equipment. That mostly was coming through vendors that were
Speaker 2: going to provide the equipment that you know, we were
Speaker 2: working out agreements with. But yeah, it's just it's staff ours,
Speaker 2: it's professional consultants. It's finalizing the remaining artist deposits and
Speaker 2: then preparing for some sponsors who want their money back.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of sponsors that have said, hey,
Speaker 2: you didn't finish, so we need our money back, and
Speaker 2: so we are refunding all ticket buyers, so anybody that
Speaker 2: purchase tickets, all that money goes back. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot to still unpack, clean up, and then I think
Speaker 2: you get to the point of, Okay, now what have
Speaker 2: we learned? Can you pull it off again?
Speaker 1: Can it Can it actually be done if you're not
Speaker 1: a mega corporation and you know, yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: would be a sad commentary on the state of the
Speaker 1: entertainment capital if we cannot support an independent producer in
Speaker 1: you know, in taking a new creating a new institution
Speaker 1: and taking across the finish line.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say this was not easy for anybody.
Speaker 2: Sure wasn't easy for us. It wasn't easy for government.
Speaker 2: I do think, you know, there's some things that I'll
Speaker 2: sort of save because I don't want to put them
Speaker 2: out there just out of respect. But you know, if
Speaker 2: there's a will, there's a way, and I know our
Speaker 2: team had the will and we're looking for just folks
Speaker 2: in power to really support that. The community supported it,
Speaker 2: and you know that's always going to be the most
Speaker 2: painful element of this thinking back to year one. It's
Speaker 2: just the level of disappointment, level of frustration. But you know,
Speaker 2: you have if an individual has an idea, has a vision,
Speaker 2: has a dream, you go for it. It's not always
Speaker 2: going to end pretty. And you got to be ready
Speaker 2: for that side. And I'm obviously taking it, you know,
Speaker 2: every day, but got to keep going.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like you are still considering putting this
Speaker 1: thing on this.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely and you know, even as I said at
Speaker 2: the beginning to interview, the conversations with the musicians first
Speaker 2: and foremost have been the most heartwarming. Folks who live
Speaker 2: here in LA love this idea, want to be involved,
Speaker 2: and are really encouraging us to figure out how to
Speaker 2: do it again next year. It's going to take key investors.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be very hard to get
Speaker 2: corporate LA to come in and support, just given all
Speaker 2: of the backlash that's happened from the postponement. Never saw
Speaker 2: that coming, by the way, you know, it is a postpone,
Speaker 2: and I think there was one TV news story that
Speaker 2: went up immediately. It was very reckless. We were not
Speaker 2: even planning to start building the site until literally tomorrow
Speaker 2: for the big weekend, and they ran this story almost
Speaker 2: a week and a half ago that there's nothing being built.
Speaker 2: We'll take a look at our construction plans and what
Speaker 2: we agreed with the county, the city, and the state.
Speaker 2: We weren't even gonna start building until tomorrow. We by
Speaker 2: the coastal permit. We had approval to be on site
Speaker 2: Wednesday the nineteenth. We were negotiating to get access today
Speaker 2: from Monday, and we still hadn't gotten it all done,
Speaker 2: but we were getting real close.
Speaker 1: Just like like you know, I saw a story from
Speaker 1: a magazine that said, well, we contacted people from jazz
Speaker 1: festivals and they weren't booked for a panel, Like did
Speaker 1: you call all of the artists and see if they
Speaker 1: were booked for shows? And I only point that out
Speaker 1: not just to be defending, but also when I'm encouraging
Speaker 1: our KBLA delegation. When you see these stories, especially internet posts,
Speaker 1: to you know, run it by the sniff test and
Speaker 1: think about in your mind, you know, if this person
Speaker 1: knows what they're talking about or what you know, if
Speaker 1: what they're saying makes sense. Because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really wild stuff right now about the La Jazz Festival
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and I think that we could do
Speaker 1: ourselves a disservice if we just buy into it without
Speaker 1: at least vetting.
Speaker 3: Martin Ludlow is here.
Speaker 1: The La Jazz Festival was is his project, and we
Speaker 1: are telling the story of what really happened. Will continue
Speaker 1: the conversation when we come forward on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Ludlow is my guest. He's a creator of the La
Speaker 1: Jazz Festival, and I'm hearing that maybe it'll happen in
Speaker 1: the future. You know, what would you say, this is
Speaker 1: a loaded question, but you know, well I don't even
Speaker 1: know how to ask it. What would you what would
Speaker 1: you do differently? I mean, some of these things are
Speaker 1: beyond your control. Some you know, maybe there is a
Speaker 1: protective factor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the first one is really really starting early,
Speaker 2: earlier in terms of the formal launch. We you know,
Speaker 2: most people don't know this, but we got very close
Speaker 2: to launching the Ljazz Festival three times over the last
Speaker 2: three years, and each time we got close it was
Speaker 2: because we had a title sponsor that was almost at
Speaker 2: that point of saying yes. And you know, for folks
Speaker 2: out there that have launch festivals that have done big productions,
Speaker 2: I think what I'm about to say will resonate. You
Speaker 2: really can't dive in to the formal planning until you
Speaker 2: have been funded. You know, you really do have to
Speaker 2: have the seed money to start. And everybody starts off
Speaker 2: with the same question in the sponsorship world, Yeah, who's performing?
Speaker 2: They want to know who's performing, so and I think
Speaker 2: most of the folks on who are listening, who are
Speaker 2: in the entertainment or music world know that to be
Speaker 2: pretty much a fact. If you're going to do a concert,
Speaker 2: you're going to do a tour. You're gonna do a festival,
Speaker 2: they always want you to start off with the talent.
Speaker 2: We have the venue in terms of agreement by the state.
Speaker 2: We've had that since twenty twenty one, but even in
Speaker 2: that permit, it still requires that you have to start
Speaker 2: working with all the local agencies. So there's all those
Speaker 2: elements we couldn't get. We didn't get our title sponsor
Speaker 2: confirmed until January and that was a moment of truth
Speaker 2: where it was like should we go, should we pause?
Speaker 2: Well we ever get this moment again, and you know,
Speaker 2: I remember it was a gut check, you know, to
Speaker 2: your point after fifteen years of trying to get this
Speaker 2: going and then really getting hit with the pandemic which
Speaker 2: set us back, and then coming out of the pandemic,
Speaker 2: trying to get large brands like Coca Cola, Butdweiser and
Speaker 2: some of the other big ones that traditionally get behind
Speaker 2: big music festivals. Could you give them the confidence that
Speaker 2: you were, you know, at that moment you could launch.
Speaker 2: And we were blessed to have Airbnb come on. They
Speaker 2: were a perfect match for us. Their whole mission is
Speaker 2: trying to create those unique destination opportunities for people that
Speaker 2: traditionally can't afford those. There are a lot of people
Speaker 2: in the community that actually make money by putting their
Speaker 2: home up on Airbnb. So for us, it was just
Speaker 2: a perfect partnership. And when they said we're in, we
Speaker 2: immediately launched because that was the seed money we needed
Speaker 2: to start pulling in the artists, paying the deposits, and
Speaker 2: actually starting to get all of the professionals that we
Speaker 2: needed to begin meeting with the government. And we everybody
Speaker 2: moved fast. And I think that's probably the biggest the
Speaker 2: you know, the biggest reflection in terms of should we
Speaker 2: have just held off and try to pull it another year.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, thank you for coming in and talking.
Speaker 1: I know, you know, initially there was you know, you've
Speaker 1: got a balance between what the lawyers say and what
Speaker 1: and what the comms people say, and I think the
Speaker 1: public wanted to hear from you so far.
Speaker 2: I'm anxious to talk, I you know, I for anybody
Speaker 2: that wants to interview, I'm just you know, I'm anxious
Speaker 2: to talk because this this this vision. Maybe somebody else
Speaker 2: will pull it off. Maybe it won't be me. I
Speaker 2: don't know what the future has for me. I know,
Speaker 2: we gotta we gotta finish up what we started. We
Speaker 2: still got a lot of fees that we've got to cover.
Speaker 2: That's gonna be me personally, and I am gonna do
Speaker 2: everything I can to make that happen and then we
Speaker 2: can talk about moving forward.
Speaker 1: So and anyone who bought a ticket getting refunded, they
Speaker 1: should just go to the La Jazz Festival website.
Speaker 2: No through the process that they purchase it, that that
Speaker 2: system will automatically start kicking it out. And yeah, but
Speaker 2: they you know, people can go to the website or
Speaker 2: go back to the platform where they purchase it and
Speaker 2: start the refund. But even if you don't get the time,
Speaker 2: if you don't have the time, it's gonna happen. And uh,
Speaker 2: we're you know, our team is making sure that those
Speaker 2: are the first things to get handled.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we just have a minute left here
Speaker 1: and I still have a lot of things I would
Speaker 1: ask you, but I'm going to hand you the mic
Speaker 1: and ask you what you want to leave folks with.
Speaker 1: It's certainly a huge burden for you your company. I
Speaker 1: hope that you know you the company and the vision survive.
Speaker 1: What would you leave us with this morning?
Speaker 2: You know you don't often see the ramifications of a
Speaker 2: vision that doesn't work. This didn't work this year, and
Speaker 2: the ramifications have been substantial. You know, I've really been
Speaker 2: blown away by the level of media coverage, and I
Speaker 2: know that when we were just a few weeks out
Speaker 2: trying to figure out where we're going to get these
Speaker 2: you know, final final approvals to dive in, we looked
Speaker 2: at a report that showed our global media impressions and
Speaker 2: it wasn't just social media, it was all media. We
Speaker 2: were at five hundred million impressions and projected to hit
Speaker 2: eight hundred million projections impressions by the weekend. And no
Speaker 2: matter what happens in the future, that is something that
Speaker 2: everybody that was involved, all the artists, all the professionals,
Speaker 2: the event producers, everybody involved, the funders, the sponsors, take
Speaker 2: a lot of pride in that because that is just
Speaker 2: a statement that was you just can't you just don't
Speaker 2: see that every day.
Speaker 1: Martin Ludlow, thank you. It's also a statement that there's
Speaker 1: a desire for this thing to happen. We got to
Speaker 1: leave it there. It is time to pass the mic.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming in and sharing your story with
Speaker 1: me this morning. You can find me at the Premium
Speaker 1: Radio dp RI I m A and then radio and
Speaker 1: of course you can go to the La Jazz Festival website.
Speaker 3: It's still functioning.
Speaker 1: Like my dad, the late Great and Mary Baraka used
Speaker 1: to say, a person is either free or they are
Speaker 1: not free. There can be no apprenticeship for freedom until tomorrow,
Speaker 1: my kbl A delegation One Love