Lakeland Area Music Festival?

In early February, David Simons posted on Pittsburgh music groups on Facebook looking for music for a festival he was planning at his farm in Linesville, PA in the summer. 

As many others did, I inquired about it. It seemed like a cool intimate event and signed up.

After this initial sign up and conversation, in the next month, things started to get fishy.

Some of the people associated and helping promote the festival started letting their dreams overtake reality. It was decided they were going to break the Guinness Book Record for most bands to play a music festival and were looking for 850 bands to play and were claiming 40,000 people were going to attend over the course of every weekend in July.
They started taking anyone who signed up to be on the lineup. They took to a local podcast and started proclaiming all these big promises and experience putting on festivals, which were just unrealistic. This is where my first red flag went up.

David stated he was going to use the honor system and have bands print and sell their own tickets. Some questions were asked and no real answers were given.

Some people who signed up to play offered to help organize and build a plan. Many of these people having experience putting on and running festivals. 
Their advice was turned away and, in some cases, were insulted by David.

This was the start of people pulling out of the festival. There was a website, but the ones running the website decided they were no longer going to be affiliated. 

This is when questions started getting asked by many people. Even a few people visited the site and their firsthand accounts were concerning. They did not feel comfortable there. They felt it was cult like They were made to wait in a house that was rundown and didn't seem to have running water or electricity. They toured the grounds and said it looked like a junkyard with scrap metal and things everywhere. 
This lead to more questions: What are the stage setups? (They claimed they were going to have 25 stages) Who is running sound? Medical staff? Security? Vendors? Insurance? Porta Potty's? Pay? Are the food vendors licensed? 
It also lead people to look up the property. David and his team claimed it was 88 acres when it was around 55 acres and half of that is wooded and about one third of the open land full of scrap. 

Most of the questions were answered it is taken care of. No need to worry. Trust us. Of course, some of the organizers involved who did answer did so with insults towards the musicians, including a family member of David's telling the musicians to get a real job.

It continued to get worse. There were bands dropping out. The bands still on the lineup not knowing when they were playing. Someone offered to do a TV interview with David and he turned it down. 

There were people involved who dropped off as admins on their Facebook page. New people were added. They would try answering questions but were just relaying 2nd and 3rd hand accounts from David and his members. No one had definite answers to put anyone at ease.

The concern over the festival stirred enough people locally in the township to pass an ordinance to try to reel it in. (https://www.meadvilletribune.com/news/public-entertainment-ordinance-now-in-effect-in-conneaut-township/article_afd08232-07ff-11ef-8d56-d7751b89e108.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR25N0msQZ-S4hlHQL5XncO3Wpmt3HrmMOuM7DNHSC21fd0M-212eAbZKws_aem_AUS6PNRxHI1Q7rf9uvsE4TaH4slj5PYKvt_4Moie9ZemeQA8j1sIrPIcLVzO-eO-HIvba4zz3lXEf5q9grePHuel)

The stage is on the grass. It is made of used logging pads from logging trucks and what looks to be untreated thick floor and door trim and maybe wooden siding. The original plans were nothing like has been delivered.

There have been multiple 'spokespeople' for this festival. None of them on the same page. Currently as it is Jason Delzell is the mouthpiece for this festival. Every time he speaks, he's contradicting himself.

As of Friday 5/17/24, there are still no permits or insurance. It was said that bands would need to bring their own sound and lights, food vendors might not be licensed to sell food, there is supposed to be beer but no one knows who is selling it. Earlier in the day on their original website there was a waiver form for bands and performers basically saying you were playing and attending at your own risk. Their relaunched website is just a jumble of pictures from other national festivals and famous artists' performances. And don't even get me started on the screen shot of a friend of Jason calling him out about telling people they booked Green Day.

There is still no band lineups or vendor lineups. 

I went on Mac's Musings Podcast on 5/17/24 with Dave and Jason. It started off shaky from the start. Supposedly, Mac sent me a text message to give me a 1 hour warning to remind me. She said there was a response back that said 'Mac who?' I never received it. She got her feathers ruffled and messaged me on Facebook to tell me this 15 minutes before the podcast. Obviously, if there was an issue, why not let me know earlier? So, she goes on a rant in Facebook messenger then blocks me right before the podcast. 

I called into the podcast and tried my best to layout the issues with this festival. Dave and Jason didn't do anything to offer answers to these questions.

Then on Saturday 5/18/24, Jason posted a Gofundme account to raise money for the festival after earlier in the week saying they wouldn't ask or accept donations for the festival.

Sometime today 5/19/24 I was banned from their Lakeland Area Music Festival Facebook group.

This is a risk for all bands and musical acts involved and the fans who attend and a huge slap in the face of the Western Pennsylvania music scene. 
I have emailed and messaged numerous regional media groups hoping they will investigate and shine a brighter light on this than I can with a blog on his music webpage and through my social media accounts.

Judge for yourself. One of the podcasts with Jason it sounds like he lost interest in it and starting texting someone, then became very incoherent. What drug was he lighting up while doing an interview?

Lakeland Area Music Festival 2024 (godaddysites.com)

The Lakeland Area Music Festival Promotional Networking 03/30 by Macs Musings | Movies (blogtalkradio.com)

Lamfest, with David Simons 04/07 by Macs Musings | Movies (blogtalkradio.com)

Lakeland Area Music Festival, Linesville, PA 05/03 by Macs Musings | Movies (blogtalkradio.com)

LAMFest Questions 05/17 by Macs Musings | Movies (blogtalkradio.com)