Last Y2K Live Looping Festival? was: The Branding of LiveLooping

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

FRO DIDDLY asked about the Y2K-X International Live Looping Festival 
next year.

*"last one? bummer-"*

Yeah, at least for my foreseeable future.   I hope you will plan on coming 
and performing so you don't miss out, Fro.  Your are cordially and 
officially 
invited and I'm taking invitations now from everyone.

I love this festival and it has had a huge impact on my live in the past 
ten years but each year it has taken longer and longer to produce and 
taken 
up more and more of my own artistic energy.    

I've been very ambitious in the past 3-5 years and have tried to do a lot 
of international 
touring, national touring and the festival and I've ended up exhausted and 
not 
finishing projects that I've had in the pipeline for literally years.

Two years ago it took 6 months to do the festival
This past year it took 7 1/2 months.
I've been working a little bit every day less than a month after the 
festival 
this year for next years' festival so that will put it up at 11 months for 
this year.

I just need to have a bit of a life for myself and I need to be a full 
time artist again.
I figure I have worked my butt off to try and serve this community (and 
I've received immeasurable 
awards for doing it so I'm very grateful) so I think I've earned a break 
for a while at least.

Some of this is my own fault as I've tried to make it more and more 
impressive; 
more and more inclusive, but, at the same time,   it has not increased in 
attendance or in it's ability to create income so it has hurt me 
financially 
quite a bit (especially in the past 2 years because of this horrible 
recession 
that Northern California is not nearly out of yet).

I love doing theme-oriented festivals so I'm sure I'll do other things, 
but I just need 
a break.   I'm also curious to see whether this mode is sustainable and 
whether this community will pick up the ball 
in the United States and produce future looping festivals without me 
putting the lions share of energy 
into doing them.

*"do you have dates lined up yet? or a general time frame?"

*Yes, October 13th - October 18th, 2010

 and,  unlike past years,  I think I'm going to make the entire thing be 
in 
Santa Cruz and expand the dates for the festival here.

In past years I've always tried to create an event for traveling artists 
so that they have 
more than one date to come play but it has been tremendously draining for 
me to not only coordinate 
small festivals in other cities but it also consistently drained financial 
resources to do so.

Next year I've decided to really make it a Festival/Convention  and 
include 
multiple venues,  coordinated clinics  and basically turn my traveling 
artists onto 
the potential of producing shows in other cities on their own (or letting 
someone in the community 
step up to produce the shows that have typically been done in SF, San 
Jose, the East Bay, etc. 
in past years).

Lastly,  I'm going to recreate what I think was the first self conscious 
Live Digital Looping monthly gig in 
history at the site where it occurred (MOBO SUSHI) in 1995  and I'm going 
to bring GARY REGINA here from 
Arizona and together, with my brother, BILL WALKER, the three of us will 
celebrate that monthly gig we did for 
almost a year as THIRD WAVE.   That will probably occur on Wednesday, 
October 13th.

By the way,  loop historians,  I have not found anything online that 
indicates that such a thing existed before this 
date.  In the spirit of our dearly departed loop historian,  Dr. Richard 
Zvonar,  I want to make sure that 
my claim about this is accurate.  Please let me know if anyone knows of an 
advertised, regular and ongoing 
live looping performance existed before this time so I know that I'm not 
engaging in historic hyperbole.

Later on, I will post some thoughts about the future as I see it and what 
will happen 
after this large festival stops under my direction.  That's going to be a 
longer post and 
I"m really curious to hear what people think about the future at that 
point.

It's been a true pleasure trying to serve this community and it has 
enriched my life 
immeasurably that this festival has occurred and that so many amazing 
artists have  sacrificed so much 
to come to my home town and play their version of live looping music.