Hi everyone. Just thought I would chime in here real quick and give a quick update.
We are in the process of figuring out if we can do another Heathen Crusade. Yes, I lost a lot of money on the first 2 fests. More on the second one than the first one.
For the first two Fests the buck stopped with me. I was the one responsible for making up any loss. Me alone. I went into both fests knowing that. And if I had only lost a few thousand on each show I would not have cared. But the losses far exceeded that and I cannot afford to do it myself again. To give you an idea, ticket sales for HC2 did not even cover the cost of the flights for the bands that we bought flights for. Much less any other expenses (hotel, visas, shirts, crew, etc...).
We are trying to find investors/sponsors, getting record labels to help, but it is not as easy as it sounds. It took Glenn awhile before he got his system working the way it does. So it reasons that it'll be the same with us, maybe even longer. Hopefully we will know in the next few weeks if we can do it again.
A point of clarification regarding a previous post, we did not pay any "unsigned/unknown" bands $500 (that I remember anyway). Don't know where that came from. Bands such as those paid their own way to the fest and their payment was being on the lineup. They were cool with that and we appreciated it. But we did cover some costs for the "non-headliner" bands, bands like Slough Feg, Mael Mordha, Novembers Doom, The Chasm, etc. There is a big gap between "headliner" and "unsigned/unknown" bands. Just because you are not "headliner" status does not mean you should not get paid something, in my opinion anyway. You will not get everything paid for, but you might get something. It is a case by case basis.
I won't go into too much detail of what we paid for who, but as an example, in the case of HC2, of the 8 foreign bands we had, 4 of them paid for their own flights over. We put them up in a hotel and fed them and gave them drink, but that was it. My philosophy is if a band is willing to pay several thousand dollars to fly to my fest from another country, the least I can do is put them up in a hotel and feed them.
As far as the changes from HC1 to HC2. We wanted to get some bigger names for HC2, but unfortunately it never worked out. Mainly due to other commitments by band members. Hell I even met with band members in Norway and Germany while I was traveling to talk with them about playing the Fest. The other stumbling block was the cost of flying some bands over. We had to put a limit on it somewhere. Cost varies from country to country. For instance, a flight from Sweden might cost $700 while a flight from Finland can cost $950. Multiply that by 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 band members/crew and it makes quite a difference when deciding where to spend money.
So that is where we stand. We are looking for investors/sponsors. We are talking with some bands/record labels. At this point I cannot say for sure if it will happen or not. I hope you understand.