Opinion: Why A Ticket To Hulaween Is The Best Value In The Festival Universe
Every Spring for the past FIVE years, fans of Suwannee Hulaween champ at the bit waiting for another epic lineup to drop, and when it does, social media gets all giddy with love for what is arguably one of the best festival experiences on the planet. And soon after that, like clockwork, the grumbling starts about the cost of attending.
Now granted, I get it. The vast majority of us work for a living, and we’ve got to scrimp and save for the festivals we love. Dropping $269 on a GA ticket, which includes primitive camping for a three-day event, ain’t cheap. Add pre-party tickets, car passes, and service charges, and you’re pushing past $400 for four days of fun. That’s not chump change, but neither is it a bank-busting sum when you consider what you get for your hard-earned money.
For comparison’s sake, there are a bunch of music festivals that are much more expensive. Some don’t include camping in the cost of a ticket. Of the 30 priciest festivals in the U.S., Hulaween comes in right around the middle at about $89 per day based on a 3-day pass including camping. #30 is Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis, Tennessee where a three-day pass costs $165, not including camping. That breaks down to $55 per day. Number one on the list is Coachella in Indio, California, which will set you back $429 for a 3-day pass or $143 per day. These prices do not include service fees or incidentals.
Now that you’ve got some perspective, do you still think Hulaween is over-the-top expensive? Well, come closer, children. Let’s talk. I’ve made a list of reasons why this is not only the most other-worldly, mind-bending music and arts experience anywhere, but also why it’s, hands down, the best value of any festival out there. In case you’ve been living under a rock in the music festival universe, Suwannee Hulaween takes place around Halloween at The Spirit of Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Florida, and is set for October 26-29 with the pre-party taking place on October 25.
Full disclosure – I am a Hula-vangelist. My first Hulaween was two years ago, where I had my face melted more than once and was forever hooked. As soon as one Hula ends, I start planning for the next. I adore Hula. It’s my drug of choice. So here’s my list, and while these are just my humble opinions, I dare anyone to prove me wrong.
Music: Simply put, the lineups are just sick. Yes, this is a “Cheese Fest” headed up by The String Cheese Incident, who play seven sets over the course of the weekend. That fact in itself is infinitely satisfying and enough to draw thousands of fans. But throw in Jamiroquai, Janelle Monae, Odesza, Tipper, Tory Lanez, Stephen Marley, Mavis Staples, The Revivalists, Vuflpeck, Trampled by Turtles, STS9, The Wood Brothers and so many more, and you’ve got one of the most eclectic, diverse, goosebump-inducing lineups ever.
Hula casts a wide net over multiple genres, including jam, jamtronica, EDM, reggae, bluegrass, soul, rap, hip hop, R&B, indie pop, rock, blues, funk, and bass. You’ll rack up a marathon’s worth of miles over the weekend trying to get to all five stages plus the impromptu pop-up jams and mobile stage that meanders through the park all weekend.
Past lineups have included My Morning Jacket, Bassnectar, Griz, Big Gigantic, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Ween, Kamasi Washington, Run The Jewels, Bluesky Greengrass, Lettuce, Damian Marley – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every year the bar gets set a little higher, and this year is no exception with eye-popping talents. Among my most anticipated picks are legendary space cowboys Jamiroquai, whose stop at Hula is only one of a handful in the U.S., and Janelle Monae, who has been demolishing stages across the country with fierce performances that have blown away fans and critics alike.
Promoters Silver Wrapper and Purple Hat Productions, along with input from The String Cheese Incident, work their tails off, sometimes for a year or longer, to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of artists who bring their A-game to the festival. The result is mind-blowing and hard to take in completely because there’s so much music to sample. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is palpable here. But I always come away with an education and boatloads of new bands that remind me there is still really good music being made and just waiting to be discovered. Check out the lineup here if you don’t believe me.
Production: I’ll be honest, I have no clue how the promoters pull off the level of production (which is stratospherically high) that they do and turn any kind of a profit. This is not your grandpa’s laser light show with a few pyrotechnics. This is James Cameron does Avatar on psychedelics meets Burning Man in Hogwarts’s Castle kind of shit. There are light shows, lasers, fireworks, gargantuan floats, acrobats, dancers, mist machines, art installations, stage sets to rival anything on Broadway, live painting, performance artists, jet packs, fire, power tools (more on that in a sec), and live sets that yank your inner wild child out to dance like your life depends on it.
That’s what happened to me at my first Hula in 2016. The inner child in me busted out, and I haven’t been able to wrestle her back in since. The String Cheese Incident’s theme that year for Saturday night’s festivities was “Stringer Things,” a play on the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things,” which is set in the Eighties. Cheese covered some of their favorite songs from the era, and the production crew pulled out all the stops earning their pay that night.
The band opened up hard with The Eurythmics “Would I Lie To You” and proceeded to lay waste to the crowd with “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” by The Clash, Thomas Dolby’s “Blinded Me With Science,” and Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove Tonight” among a medley of covers. Somewhere in there, giant, inflatable Rubik’s Cubes were released over a deliriously happy crowd and acrobats dressed liked Axl Rose doused in glitter suddenly appeared high atop 50-foot poles swaying to Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
And how could anyone forget the women dancing on stage with the sparking electric grinders between their legs. Can’t recall when the giant Evil StayPuft Man from Ghostbusters was turned loose in the sky, but by the time the band hit us full force with the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down The House” and the fireworks went off behind the stage, I was a goner. I knew I’d never miss another Hula again.
Spirit Lake: There’s something mystical about this place, even if the interactive art installations that go up here during Hulaween did not exist. The lake serves as the heart of the 800-acre The Spirit Of Suwannee Music Park, where towering oak trees dripping with Spanish moss surround the lake. Each year, the grounds around the lake fill up with dozens of dreamlike art installations, most of which beckon attendees to experience them though play, touch, sight and sound.
There’s a fiery DJ booth called Incendia that pumps late into the night and ginormous living sculptures made of wood and metal that are big enough to crawl into. There are glowing aliens, laser and mist installations, performance artists, fire twirlers and aerialists. Last year, there was an airborne performer in a glowing jetpack doing acrobatics over the lake.
The lake itself is magically lit up with a three-dimensional laser show that runs as long as there is darkness. My days of chemically-induced mind-altering experiences are long gone, but just five minutes in Spirit Lake teleports me into another dimension. This place alone is worth the price of admission.
The Vibe: I’m going to get a little hippie-dippie on you now, so bear with me. Hulaween is about as perfect a communal joyride as there ever was or ever will be. It’s about love and feeling free to be who you are in a judgment-free zone. It’s about total strangers grabbing you up in a spontaneous bear hug for no particular reason. For many of us, it’s our happy place where the outside world and its petty squabbles find no quarter. It’s how life should be everyday.
No doubt, whenever you get 20,000 people together there’s bound to be a small amount of douche-baggery going on. But, that’s only a tiny fraction of folks. Yes there’s a minor amount of petty theft and general wookery occurring. But for the most part, people look out for each other and form new friendships and renew old ones. Even the cops and security are pretty chill. They are not there to hassle people – just contain the stupid ones.
Case in point: last year I watched a group of people trying to contain an extremely large, half-naked bear of a man who was clearly having a very bad acid trip. He was crying about God and his sister, among other things, and shaking his friends off like they were gnats. This could have ended really badly, had it not been for five police officers and security personal who calmly talked him down and sat with him (and on him) long enough to get him strapped to a gurney and taken to a hospital. These are good people who are there to keep us safe and keep the assholes at bay. So, thank them when you see them.
The Park: Last but not least, there is The Spirit of Suwannee Music Park, which is one of the most unusual and gorgeous settings for a music festival or camping anywhere. The park sits on the banks of The Suwannee River and is a beautiful recreational paradise used year-round for music events and for folks looking for a pristine site to camp. It’s thickly wooded and boasts an amphitheater under the oaks and a wide meadow for bigger crowds and main stage acts.
It has a large fully-stocked general store, restaurant, indoor concert hall, bathhouses, horseback riding stables, a beach, walking trails, cabin rentals and well-appointed campsites. Unlike many festivals sites where you’re crammed with thousands of other campers into an open field to bake in the sun, The Spirit of Suwannee Music Park offers shaded campsites, most of which are in the woods.
There are also lots of tolerant and helpful park employees and volunteers who are just plain nice. The park staff is professional and pretty pleasant to deal with. Yeah, mayhem happens, but they put up with thousands of music- besotted weirdos all year long and do it with a smile on their face.
Trust me. Hulaween needs to be on your festival bucket list. I haven’t met anyone who attended and had a crappy time that wasn’t self-induced. So, if you haven’t bought your tickets yet, get them quick. The festival sold out last year and may well again this year. Click on the links below for more information and how to purchase tickets.
See you at Hula, you beautiful animals. I’ll be the one dressed as a sparkling, turquoise alien raging on the rail for Jamiroquai. What will you be?