Take a step back to 2012. Paul Levine, the current executive producer of Suwannee Hulaween, attended Warren Haynes Christmas Jam in Asheville, South Carolina and had a conversation that would drastically change the month of October at the Spirit of Suwannee Music Park. Jam band The String Cheese Incident had previously been holding an annual "Hulaween," basically an ultra heady Halloween festival, in various locations across the country. It was that winter that Paul spoke with Mike Luga, a member of the band's management team, and the two decided to expand on that idea for the following year. What it turned into, they could have never imagined.
This year’s Suwannee Hulaween takes place on October 27-29 at the Spirit of Suwannee Music Park. Besides String Cheese, this year's lineup includes a variety of genres across its stacked lineup, with names like Bassnectar, Damian Marley, Vince Staples, and even the funk-filled band, Dumpstaphunk. And Paul says Hula won’t be holding back at all this year.
“Y’know the first year, if you looked back at our first lineup, there was probably about 30 bands. This year, I haven’t counted, but it’s probably 100 bands. We started off with just three stages, now we have 5. What’s known as Spirit Lake, which is kind of our enchanted forest full of art displays of all sorts and music and light, that’s expanded every year. Each year, we’re always trying to improve from what we did the year before, making the production better, but also hopefully paying attention to our fans and what their concerns and needs are to try to improve the experience for them every year. We always feel like if we’re not improving Hulaween then we’re not living up to our fans expectations of us,” Levine said during an interview over the phone last week. “They want us to keep going forward with trying to blow their minds every year.”
At this years Hulaween, you’ll see changes made to provide reduced congestion, better paths for shorter walking times, and a various number of surprises that the team has included to make Hulaween that much better.
“We’re going to make Spirit Lake even more impactful this year,” Paul told us on the phone. “Andy Carroll and his team out there have done an incredible job. We’ve really bumped up things in Spirit Lake this year. Our production will get better, our lighting displays will become much more awesome. We introduced the Patch Stage last year and it was a big success. But we feel that it wasn’t put in the right place so we’ve relocated it this year to make for better sightlines, to relieve congestion, and to improve the flow of traffic around the venue.”
Along with an impressive lineup, Hulaween promises a truly unique art experience.
“Some of the old favorite artists are coming back with some new things. The gentleman who does all the wonderful giant metal sculptures with fire in them and Incendia will be back and a lot of other favorites will be back, but there will be a lot of new art installations. Thomas Danbo is coming back and doing another creature in the forest, the ones made out of the wooden pallets. There’s a lot of surprises. We give them a lot of flexibility to be creative and I personally like being involved in a lot of it but I also like some of the surprises,” Paul laughed. As always, art installations will be plentiful at Hulaween this year and are sure to include an array of mediums and colors to satisfy your wandering eyes.
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Tickets are 90-percent sold out and car camping passes are long gone. Hula is slowly approaching with fans getting more eager as time goes by.
“It’s pretty remarkable how things came together through all these years,” said Paul. “At the end of the day there’s a lot of people who are very passionate about this festival and we couldn’t be anymore thankful. “
This article appears in Oct 5-12, 2017.