INTERVIEW: Shaky Knees Founder Tim Sweetwood Talks the Festival’s Roots

Ever wondered how a festival comes to be? We sat down with the founding father of Shaky Knees, Shaky Beats and all things shaky in Atlanta, C3 Presents’ Tim Sweetwood to talk about how he went from booking bands at the Masquerade to hosting the city’s two best music festivals each year. Check out the interview below.  ~ Adam Kincaid

P.S. Shaky Knees and Shaky Beats are taking over Atlanta’s Central Park the next couple weekends, and you should not wait any more minutes to buy your tickets to one or both. Shaky Knees kicks off this Thursday night with two separate kickoff shows (The Black Angels @ Masquerade and The Whigs @ Terminal West). The festival itself begins Friday at 11:45am with the Songs For Kids Foundation on the Peachtree Stage. See you there!

Adam Kincaid: I haven’t read a lot of articles about how you as a dude came to run Shaky Knees. So how did that happen? How did this all come to be?

Tim Sweetwood: The origins of Shaky Knees came from my being a festival junkie back in the day, going to all the festivals like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza as a kid, and feeling the interaction of the people, the excitement of the bands and discovery aspect too. I couldn’t afford to go hop onto flights all over the country and see shows everywhere. At the end of the day, if you are a true festival junkie and you show up at doors, you get your money’s worth on a festival. There’s no doubt, it’s way more affordable. You buy a $99 ticket to Shaky Knees…that’s less than the ticket prices combined for a Jack White and a David Byrne show.

So it came from some of that, and then it was just right-place right-time too. I was working as a talent buyer and promoter at the Masquerade and operating that as part of a team, and I always wanted to do a festival. When the Old Fourth Ward park came in next door, it was a chance to do a festival on a level but not make it so high risk in year one, because we had the Masquerade and the infrastructure associated with that.

AK: Well that’s cool. How did you even get into working in music at all? Where did you get your start?

TS: I was a double major of marketing and business law at Miami University of Ohio, and I worked a corporate sales job at AT&T that wasn’t really for me. So I turned to friends and they suggested I do music, since I was always turning everyone onto bands and songs. I started doing promotional work at Peachtree Tavern, and worked managing local acts like Bishop Dawn, what became the incarnation of Gringo Star, Cadillac Jones and some other local acts. That helped me get a little more immersed in the industry, and the job at the Masquerade came from that as an opening to book local acts, so I did that a couple days each week and filled in dates, and that quickly transformed into booking national acts.

AK: What kinds of national acts were you booking at the Masquerade at the time (2006-2008)?

TS: I was filling spots they didn’t have. They had a lot of heavy stuff. I put a lot of indie rock and electronic in there, just kind of filling the holes in their calendar by genre. It lead into doing a lion’s share of the national acts, and taking on even more like managing the inventory and sales at the bar and working with sponsorships. That job at the Masquerade definitely became 360 degrees, which helped me learn a lot of different aspects of the business, which in turn translated into running a festival really well.

AK: And so when, in 2012, the 04W Park opened next door to the (former) Masquerade, you saw an opportunity to combo the two properties for a festival?

TS: For sure. I found the right partners, and relied on a lot of the agents and bands I already knew; I had known the overall space of music acts and agents for some time. But it was more of a learning experience that first year than anything else.

AK: It’s a pretty big jump, going from booking bands to play at the Masquerade to building a music festival, huh?

TS: I would say it was more of a natural jump than a big jump. It was a next step. If it was what the festival has become today, doing that in year one? That’s what I’d call a big jump. But those first couple of years, it wasn’t like it is today. It was smaller. A more natural step.

AK: After that first year, where were you at with the festival in the years ahead? It got bigger, and smaller, and bigger again?

TS: It outgrew the Masquerade after the first year. We had some higher expectations, so we were looking for a new place. Unfortunately, Atlanta has a limited offerings on where you can do big staged events like Shaky Knees. Like, Piedmont Park is a great place for a festival but there are already festivals grandfathered in there. So some of the changes you’ll see are related to where we stage the festival.

AK: Once Shaky Knees became such a thing, did it take over everything for you?

TS: Now, I only do festivals. I used to do hard ticket day-to-day shows, 300 a year, but now festivals is all I do. This year, I’m operating five festivals. The two Shaky festivals (Knees and Beats), and three others outside Atlanta.  

AK: Just the two Shaky’s…no more Shaky Boots?

TS: No more Boots. Maybe it will come back some day, but country is a hard market. Country as a genre is pretty big — there’s probably more people listening to country than straight up rock and roll — but there are a limited number of artists compared to other genres.

AK: Is booking bands a bit of a behind the scenes dog fight?

TS: Dog fight is probably a harsh word for it, but it’s definitely competitive. If you are patient and smart about it, you can navigate those waters. So, it’s a little bit less competitive these days, and a little bit more strategic putting things in the right place.

AK: Last year I was fortunate enough to spend the Shaky Knees weekend backstage, and I was so surprised at what a professional environment it is behind the scenes. It ran so opposite to the lore of rock and roll.

TS: We’re in the service industry right? We’re servicing ticket buyers, but we’re also servicing artists. I try to build the golden rule in; I think if you treat artists well they will be professional in the background and they’ll be put on a great show for the audience. I like to keep the golden rule. I want them to come back! They all know each other, and a lot of them have become my friends. That environment you experienced is on purpose.

AK: Maybe things were never that wild in the first place? Is that just rock mythology?

TS: Wild is a perspective; I think there is perception versus reality. Does Led Zeppelin go trash hotel rooms in every city they go to? Absolutely not. Did they trash a couple and some folks write about it? Yeah, it happened. And that’s all it takes to form some mythology about what it might be like, when the reality is that those are rare instances, not the norm.

AK: When looking out at the crowd at one of your festivals, are you thinking about numbers or logistics, or marveling at an accomplishment, or what? How is Tim Sweetwood feeling in the moment when it’s all come together?

TS: There are multiple emotions that exist. You are really proud that you are able to produce something where that many people are showing up and enjoying themselves, right? It’s a proud feeling to put on something that people enjoy. But, the job of putting on that festival is just that: it’s a job. There are certain stresses that I feel related to it, and there are certain quirks you have to deal with every day. So it’s varied emotion.

AK: And isn’t it high pressure, like a pass-fail?

TS: That’s definitely a conscious feeling and a thought all the time. It’s our goal as business people and producers putting on the festival. We can have some ups and downs, but financials are reality in the festival space.

AK: Where do you put your thinking towards the future?

TS: The goal is to do these festivals as long as we can sustain them. Hopefully I’m able to produce them until the day I die!