Frank Black just bought us two rounds of drinks!

It’s 1:15 a.m. on July 6 and we’re sitting outside at Raccoon River Brewery in downtown Des Moines. We’ve just wrapped up managing a Homer’s booth at Des Moines’ two-day 80/35 Music Festival and myself and a half-dozen of Homers senior staff are enjoying a beer and reviewing the weekend’s activities.

In-between stories of the Drive-by Truckers leaving spliffs in our booth or the four naked but body-painted girls roaming the event, Frank Black and members of his crew and band are sitting near us imbibing and taking a break before they load back into the tour bus for an overnight drive to Red Rocks for the next show. They saw us working our booth and the beers were their way of thanking us for our contribution to the two-day fest.

The first annual 80/35 fest July 4 and 5 was held in a four-block area surrounding Western Gateway Park with three stages and featured performances from the Flaming Lips (Friday headliner), the Roots (Saturday headliner), Drive-by Truckers, Black Francis, Ingrid Michaelson, Yonder Mountain String Band and a couple dozen area and regional acts. A $35 ticket was required to get to the main stage shows but access to the other two smaller stages which were outside the fenced main stage area were free. So while the event sold well over 10,000 tickets there were probably close to 30,000 roaming the free stages and perimeter where food vendors, community groups, radio stations and the Homer’s booth were spread.

We hosted a number of the artists at our booth for meet-and-greets with fans including the Roots (huge turnout), Michaelson, the Truckers, Yonder and more.

A collaborative effort between the city of Des Moines, the Greater Des Moines Music Coalition, Amedeo Rossi (owner of venue Vaudeville Mews) and Iowatix the festival was a smashing success and was beyond anything Omaha has ever attempted. Even though Des Moines law allows people to purchase alcohol on site from booths and roam free without being corralled into “beer gardens” (why do we want all the drunks enclosed in a claustrophobic space anyway?) the event was trouble free and the Des Moines Register reported the police actually sent cops home early because the crowd was so well behaved.

Was that because the line-up of bands didn’t attract the riff-raff likely to cause trouble at public events when alcohol is involved? The body-painted young women were also left free to walk amongst the crowd without the worry of sexist boneheads hassling them or police arrest. Can we say the same for Omaha?

This weekend is the city’s yearly attempt at a free festival geared towards our youth with headliner Feist at Memorial Park, and if it rains again I think the annual festival should be renamed “Rainfest.” What the city of Omaha is trying to do is admirable but when you look at the money spent by Omaha and what we get (one big name act) and the money spent in Des Moines and what they managed to curate (2 days, multiple acts) I can’t but wonder if we could be a little more forward thinking and instead of farming this project out to one event planner who is likely making bank on the job and only delivering one name act, shouldn’t we bring our best together (1% comes to mind) with the city to execute something really special that this city can be as proud of as we are the CWS?

If we allow Playing With Fire to have an alcohol permit for the area of Lewis and Clark Landing why not Memorial Park? Maple Street in Benson?

Not that I need a beer right now because Frank Black just bought me TWO!