Center of our universe

Our quest to find our summer music festival

The Center of the Universe was once just a circle in the cement somewhere in downtown Tulsa that echoed, a spot where you could go to test the sound of your own voice. 

Last year, it was the name under which a storied 80,000 gathered at the inaugural Center of the Universe Festival, when the latest iteration of Tulsa’s summertime search for its sound flooded downtown Tulsa’s Brady District for two days and nights. 

The second-ever Center of the Universe Festival is slated this year for July 25-26 with headliners AWOLNATION, Young the Giant, Fitz and the Tantrums, Twenty One Pilots, Capital Cities, and Cold War Kids, with over 100 other bands performing. There is a third stage this year, a dedicated showcase of the best that Oklahoma has to offer. “For bands on their way up, this gives them an opportunity to be on the same billing as some of the biggest acts out there, play at the same festival with them, have a big crowd,” said Chris Lieberman, who, with Phillip Kaiser, founded the festival last year. 

Its stated focus as a non-profit music festival is to help the Brady District continue to grow. “Long term and in general, the ideas is to add to the cool stuff that’s happening in Tulsa,” Kaiser said. “We both grew up here, and people were saying the same thing about Tulsa when we were kids as they say now: It’s a great place to raise a family. It’s not going to keep our kids here when they’re in their late teens and twenties, a place that’s cool, has things to do, has an urban environment, things like what cities like Nashville and Portland have. We’re losing our young people to these cities.” 

Organizers donate a portion of festival proceeds to Tulsa Public Schools’ music program and to the district’s trolley service—“It’s our way of waving our lighters in support of a higher cause,” the website says. Last year, it all came free. This year, base price for a one-day ticket for the 2014 festival was $20 (it went up to $25 May 1, and it’ll be $35 starting July 12), with a weekend pass starting at $35 ($40 at press time); VIP packages, which include access to the VIP Lounge in Cain’s where there’s free beer and live video and audio feeds as well as access to the main-stage viewing area just to the side of the stage, will reach $200 by July 12. 

Local and regional festival prices most recently range from free to upwards of $200 for VIP packages and camping excursions. 

Musical experiences with a zero-dollar price tag include Tulsa Roots Music Bash, held at Guthrie Green last month; Hop Jam, set to bring together Tulsa’s craft-beer community and live music with the goal, according to Hanson front man Taylor, of creating an anchor for the city’s downtown renewal, set for May 18 at Guthrie Green and The Tulsa Music Festival on May 24, also at Guthrie Green. 

Others require healthy chunks of change for a full-on, outdoor-camping-and-concert experience, like Rocklahoma (held annually over the Memorial Day weekend in Pryor), Backwoods Bash (also Memorial Day weekend, on Keystone Lake), Wakarusa (June 5-8 on the other side of the Arkansas-Oklahoma state line, in Ozark), and Easter Island Music & Camping Festival (in Keetonville every April). Price tags for those range $50-179. 

Various festival business models abound, and some festivals have tried to move from one to another. Not all have survived. One in particular has stood the test of time.

Tulsa International Mayfest, the annual art and music festival that takes over downtown Tulsa along Main Street every spring, turned 40 years old in 2012, here since before anyone started looking at us like we were the next Austin. It was 1972 when Sammy Davis Jr. was the festival’s very first headliner. Mayfest has helped sustain Tulsa’s appetite for a major arts and music festival over the years, from the rise of Bartlett Square to downtown Tulsa’s Guthrie Green. 

Elsewise downtown, there’s the First Friday Art Crawl, the monthly place-to-be to catch the latest art exhibitions in Tulsa’s arts district that’s a festival all its own, with attendance in the thousands. Day of the Dead continues each October with a slew of Latin music, and Living Arts hosts its OK Electric Festival in the Brady District, now home of Reconciliation Way.

Reaching for the next note

We thought it was the Tulsa incarnation of South by Southwest.

It was Dfest, short for Diversafest. It gathered steam from its start in 2002, when journalists and music mavens began to compare us to Austin in the 70’s. When downtown Tulsa was a ghost town with only a couple of venues for the devoted underground scene, Dfest mixed touring national headliners with our local musicians on its stages; we asked the industry people to host business seminars in hotel banquet rooms, and they did. Dfest built it and they came, some from across the globe.

I walked through the happy, trash filled streets of the ’07 Dfest, the year The Flaming Lips headlined, music from one stage echoing off the buildings and overlapping the faint echoes of the next stage. They were from this place, and you could tell. Tulsa filled up all the streets, from North Tulsa to South Tulsa, east to west. It was really just one big parking lot with a stage and confetti, but it seemed like more.

Music, people, food smells and excitement dribbled from next-door-neighbor venues and street stages. There were huge audiences watching local bands and making golden memories. Musicians felt proud to be from Tulsa and play in Tulsa. People in the audience gorged on the celebration of youth and creativity. Everyone was there, from the soundphiles to the hipsters to the curious to those simply interested in enjoying their city for one evening. Two years later, the festival lured a reported 70,000 ticketholders to the city’s center for a weekend of music, bringing what was said to be nearly $13 million in revenue. Festival organizers couldn’t have known that, the following spring, they would cast a powerful specter over the city when they announced the festival’s indefinite hiatus. DFest founder Tom Green told Tulsa World, “Tough economy, rising production costs and a decline in lower-level corporate sponsorships and support,” were among the reasons for the demise.

Next summer rolled in and the audience came back to treat Free Tulsa like D-Fest with another name. But this time, Free Tulsa asked bands to play on different terms. “Here’s what selected artists get,” The Free Tulsa band submission website read in 2011. “Artists can sell their merchandise and keep 100% of the profits. Snacks and VIP Artist tent will be provided day of show for artists. A sound system and a sound engineer will be provided at the venue, but artists are responsible for bringing their own instruments, amps and any additional equipment.” Basically, musicians were paid with anything except money.

In the end, it all went down, 160 bands strong. On July 29, 2012, the night of the last day of Free Tulsa as the crowd was still dispersing, organizers wrote on the festival Facebook: “Well folks. It was a heck of a time. See you next year?”

Musical Sustainability

In between and after the fall of two major downtown Tulsa music festivals since the revitalization of the area, our ambitious local music scene has continued to develop. It creates its own tracks in the historical path left by the momentum of those giant parties in our streets and by musicians of Tulsa’s past. A new local bar scene feeds the sound, a smattering of venues with modest-capacity rooms and stages, from Fassler Hall and The Colony to Soundpony, Creative Room, and The Fur Shop. The audience may be whoever happened to be having a drink that night, or it could be the members of a band in town because Tulsa is a new stop on the invisible highway that tracks north to Kansas City and down to Dallas, east to St. Louis and west to Oklahoma City. Bands make $50 to $100 per man per night to play, whether it’s to anyone paying attention or to an audience socializing over the music. 

“I think it’s necessary for local bands to venture out from their hometown to throw their music against other audiences,” Andrew Bones, a Tulsa drummer, explained. “The current doesn’t always blow through Tulsa, so sometimes you have to leave to spread your seed. But after the tour, you’ve played some shows, made some new friends and connections, and a little bit of money, you can come back to Tulsa where it’s calm and easy to live. That’s what’s worked for me anyways.”

Travis Hall is the Managing Director of the Tulsa Music Festival, free and open to the public and set for Memorial Day Weekend at Guthrie Green. “I’m not sure we have a mission statement,” he told me. “We just want to have a great show that families can come to for free. Enjoy some great food, great music and maybe create a memorial weekend tradition for everyone.” 

“All performers are compensated for playing,” Hall said. “Because it’s a free event, it’s hard to say how much the festival brings to the area.” 

With all the growth, there may be a need to look for ways to ensure the success of the community is trickling down to the local musicians feeding the scene. 

Bones shared what may be his personal vision of a Tulsa musical mission statement. 

“One thing I would like to see more of around here is a willingness from the musicians to offer more experimental ideas, to take more risks, and to challenge their audiences,” he said. “For that to happen, we need audiences that want to be challenged with new ideas and audiences that crave invention. There’s so much talent here waiting to burst.”

More on festivals

Rounding up this summer's best local fests

Festivals around the state worthy of a road trip

A look at the evolution (and demise) of historic Tulsa fests

Artists ante up for festival season