Headstash

Electric Forest 2011 - Photo Credit: Jordan August

Sherwood Forest is undoubtedly a special place.

But the forest’s very existence is serendipitous.

Planted with the intention of being clear-cut, the pine trees, for whatever reason, remain to this day.

Now, years later, the Christmas tree industry’s loss is festivalgoers’ gain as a grid of 50-foot pine trees help to create natural walkways, easy-to-hang hammock spots and the most beautiful festival setting in the country.

[BUY tickets and find more information on Electric Forest 2012 on the festival's official website.]

Of course, music plays an important role in the festival, too. This year, String Cheese Incident will be joined by two nights of STS9’s Great Cycle Spectacle shows, Bassnectar, Thievery Corporation, Girl Talk, Steve Aoki, Ghostland Observatory, Keller Williams, Big Gigantic and many more of the best in electronica, bluegrass and jam.

We caught up with String Cheese’s lighting designer Andy Carroll who is also in charge of the Main Stage, lighting Sherwood Forest and managing the sacred grounds. Carroll, who has worked on both Rothbury festivals and the inaugural Electric Forest last year, talked about the biggest challenges in planning the event, what fans can expect for 2012 and how SCI is going to blow your mind.

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Headstash Magazine: Besides running lights for String Cheese, what are some of your other responsibilities with Electric Forest?

Andy Carroll: I do the lighting and video design for the Main Stage and I’m a part of the team that works on the soft goods – the curtains and signage and the overall Main Stage look. Over in the forest, I’m the lighting designer and a part of the design and management team. I partly manage pretty much everything for Sherwood Forest, but we all have our areas that we focus on. Obviously, lighting is my field of expertise, so I definitely head all that.

HM: Can you talk a little bit about the grounds at Rothbury and what makes them special?

AC: It's a great festival site – the dude ranch setup. There are so many options on the Rothbury site. There’s lots of open spaces as well as treed areas. It's got the lake and a beach. Just the general layout of it seems like it’s made to host a music festival.

HM: What sets Electric Forest apart from other music festivals and even past Rothbury events?

AC: Sherwood Forest itself is just such a unique space and having that as the epicenter of the whole festival – that right there really sets it apart from any other festival.

Electric Forest 2011 - Photo Credit: Jordan August

The thing is you could do next to nothing in the Sherwood Forest in terms of lighting and art and it would still be really sweet and you'd still find people hanging out or just getting out of the sun.

But then the fact that we put in so much art, lighting and hammocks and the whole nine yards – it really takes it over the top.

HM: A lot of festivals boast as being more than just music, but when you talk to people about them, they tend to mention the headliners before anything else. With Electric Forest, people almost always talk about the grounds and the aesthetics and the art before the music. Why has Electric Forest really elevated itself in that regard?

AC: First of all, it's just so unique how it's lined up [in a grid]. Since we've done two Rothbury's and one Electric Forest, it's been really built up. People know about Sherwood Forest and the grounds now.

In the beginning, people would show up for this music festival and couldn’t wait to see these bands on the stages and then they stumbled upon the forest and were like, “oh my gosh.”

[READ Headstash Magazine's interview with Electric Forest's performance art director from last month.]

Now, people are of course excited to see the music, but they're also excited to go to the forest. We're just putting more and more lighting and art and hammocks and really building up the space like the forest as a whole is an attraction much like a stage or the water park.

We're putting so much time and effort and love and energy into just making it super awesome with art and lighting and different kind of hang out zones.

HM: Did you think you’d be at this point when you first started working on the grounds?

AC: I never would have necessarily imagined that it would be as epic as it was. When the producer of the first Rothbury approached me in the summer of 2007 and said we’re working on this festival at this ranch I said I’d love to do some of the lighting. He said we've got this forest space that I think could be pretty cool. I was like, “yeah, that’s cool I guess,” but when I got there I was like, “oh yes, I see it. This has got a lot of potential to be really off the hook.”

Now, we start really dialing it out to kind of become this otherworldly space that would be impossible to reproduce anywhere else.

HM: What do you guys have planned for this year’s festival? Do you come in with an overarching goal or theme with the layout, design and art of the festival?

AC: A little bit of both. We're trying to come in this year with some art installations that we hope will be be here year after year. So they're going to become a part of the overall aesthetic as if we're building a little town or town square.

Electric Forest 2011 - Photo Credit: Jordan August

It will be really striking pieces that are not just colorful, hippie art – fun stuff that's not put up and then taken down. It's going to be really large pieces that you want to keep building upon. We'll start to mold the vibe and feel of the forest, but I’m not supposed to totally go into it.

HM: What are some of the biggest challenges in designing the forest?

AC: It's such a large space. When you do lighting and set design on a stage, you have a 40 ft. x 50 ft. space and you don’t really extend that much. This is more like a 600 ft. x 600 ft. and we're not going to fill every square inch, but part of the challenge is making sure that there's a fine balance between amazing stuff all over the place.

We want to draw people off of the walkways and into certain zones. We also need little zones that someone can go in where there's really nothing going on so it's kind of quiet and someone can chill out.

[FOLLOW Electric Forest on Facebook.]

We have to find the balance between this array of needs – ways to engage people without it just being too over-the-top. It's a challenge but it's a fun challenge.

We put so much lighting and electrical in there but we bury pretty much every cable in the ground so that it's safe and so people aren't walking around in the dark tripping off cables and stuff. It's a pretty massive feat to wire the forest with as much electricity as we do and trench all of the cabling. It's a big undertaking but it makes it pretty clean and really tight.

Coordinating and bringing back some of the art that we really love and trying to build upon previous stuff and bringing in fresh stuff is tough, too. Of course, just dynamics of personalities and getting everybody to work together is a challenge, but that's just the nature of working with people.

HM: I also have to ask you about what String Cheese’s lights are going to look like for the festival. Have anything new or exciting planned?

AC: We've got a new design for our summer run of which Electric Forest is the first stop. Just a new integration of lighting and video and control that should be pretty tight. We’ll have some new lighting and video elements to the rig that I haven’t used much before but I've always wanted to. Getting those in the rig is going to be really sweet. I'm excited.

HM: I watched the stream from The Hangout and heard a lot of rave reviews of the show, so how do you think they’re playing right now and what can fans expect from the upcoming tour?

AC: The Hangout with a blast. We had so much fun and it really showed me that this upcoming tour is going to be killer because the band is super on fire and just our whole team just really worked wonderfully at Hangout to put on a killer show.

[FIND complete lineups, ticketing information and analysis of all your favorite festivals via our 2012 Festival Guide.]

Electric Forest 2011 - Photo Credit: Jordan August

And that was at a festival which is always a challenge because you roll in, start your thing, play and split. I just know that if we could do that in the intense one-off festival environment that the rest of this tour is going to be amazing. We’ll have much more time and energy to really get stuff dialed in. It's going to be a great run.

HM: I’ll get you out on this one, what are you most excited about for Electric Forest 2012?

AC: I'm really excited to bring Sherwood Forest back to life again. I've done it each year and it's just really rewarding. It's really challenging and we've been working on it since November.

Once we start loading in and getting set up, it's really intense. But once we're in show mode and I can walk around just listening to people's comments, it's really rewarding to hear how much people absolutely love it and how much they're affected by the space. People will comment how it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever seen and all that. It's a really special thing to be a part of.

HM: I appreciate the time, Andy. Really looking forward to the festival.

AC: Yes, definitely. See you there.

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Electric Forest takes place June 28 to July 1 in Rothbury, Michigan with String Cheese Incident, STS9, Girl Talk, Santigold, Thievery Corporation, Ghostland Observatory, Bassnectar, Keller Williams and many more scheduled to appear. For more information and ticketing prices, check out the festival's official website or our 2012 Festival Guide.

Who are you most excited to see at Electric Forest 2012 and why? Let us know in the comments below.