The walls of Steve Schankman’s office in Clayton are decorated with memorabilia that tell the story of his decades booking concerts in the Midwest.
There are ticket stubs, photos and a typewritten contract for a U2 performance in 1981 that reveals the fee the Irish upstarts commanded for an hourlong set at Washington University: $750.
It’s a long and colorful history. But none of it ensures that his latest venture, this weekend’s Evolution Festival, will succeed.
The Forest Park event features headliners the Black Keys and Brandi Carlile, with an offstage focus on bourbon and barbecue. The Black Crowes, Brittany Howard, Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals, Nikki Lane and Ice Cube also will perform.
Organizers expect upward of 20,000 fans a day on Saturday and Sunday.
“We feel we have one chance to get it right, out of the gates this year,” Joe Litvag, the festival’s co-executive producer. “We’re trying to be creative. We’re trying to be thoughtful. But we’re not planning on going too far down any rabbit holes year one, because then you lose sight of the basics. And we have to nail the basics this year.”
Litvag started in the concert business three decades ago, working for Schankman as an intern at Contemporary Productions. He’s since become a player in the festival industry, founding more than a dozen of them.
Schankman and partner Irv Zuckerman sold their business in 1998 to SFX Entertainment, now part of corporate giant Live Nation Entertainment. Since then, Schankman has continued to produce events, but typically private affairs.
In that world, success is simple: Producers throw a good event and go home with a check.
“When we go out on a festival, that’s millions of dollars of investment. And it’s a lot of risk,” Schankman said, seated recently in their office. “The risk is worth it because the result is, St. Louis is on the map with a major festival. And we have to have that.”
The Evolution Festival will be the first music festival in Forest Park at this scale since LouFest’s organizers abruptly canceled their event in 2018. In the days before the cancellation, some major contractors pulled out of the festival, complaining that its producers had a history of making late or incomplete payments.
Since the demise of LouFest, the Kranzberg Foundation’s Music at the Intersection festival has become an annual force in Grand Center. Its lineups lean toward jazz, R&B and the blues.
Schankman and Litvag plan to make the Evolution Festival an annual institution in St. Louis, but they view this year as crucial.
The musical lineup draws audiences in the first year of a festival, Litvag said.
“Starting with year two, it's the experience that brings people back — and hopefully has them telling 10 of their friends to come with them,” he added.
Music festivals at this scale don’t typically turn a profit their first year. Producers may have to stick it through to a festival’s fifth year before really making any money, said Brian Cohen, a co-founder of LouFest who left it in 2015. He’s since founded Confluence Festival, a Michigan event focusing on the intersection of the arts and technology.
“There’s a lot hinging on the first year. It’s difficult to rebound after giving a bad first impression in this business," Cohen said. “If it’s not a critical success, if people don’t like the experience, if the press finds all sorts of problems with it, it’s very hard to move into the second year. Because you’ve lost some of the goodwill of the people who bought into year one.”
The seemingly abrupt failure of LouFest in 2018 was a jolt to ticket holders, but it followed eight years of annual festivals that made positive impressions on attendees. With good LouFest memories still relatively fresh in the minds of potential ticket buyers, the Evolution Festival could be profitable as soon as its third year, Cohen added.
“I think [the 2018 LouFest cancellation] left people wanting more. So, hopefully this event will fill that void,” he said.
The Evolution Festival is modeled on the Bourbon & Beyond festival in Louisville, produced by one of Litvag’s former partners. Vendors on the Forest Park festival grounds will showcase a variety of bourbons while local barbecue pitmasters show off their creations.
The focus on bourbon and musical artists with decadeslong track records is meant to draw in concertgoers who are over 40 and help drive tourism to St. Louis. Explore St. Louis worked with festival producers to create travel packages for out-of-town festivalgoers.
“That will really help to lure some more visitors to not only attend the festival but stay the entire weekend,” said Cat Neville, the tourism agency’s vice president for communications. “A festival like Evolution — a multi-day, national festival — is huge. It not only boosts civic pride for people in St. Louis, but it brings people into the St. Louis region. It’s a catalyst for positive perceptions of St. Louis.”
