By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — As the clock inched closer to 5 pm on the third day of the four-and-a-half-day Blue Ridge Rock Festival, Murfreesboro concertgoer Muffin checked her phone waiting to see if the weekend she had paid slightly under $400 for was canceled for good. Her concert expenses included the full four-and-a-half day general access, as well as one night of the “Club Experience” excluding expenses such as her $300 Airbnb and $150 in gas it took to get to the Virginia International Speedway where the music would be held. She watched as the clock ticked past the deadline allegedly given to Blue Ridge organizers by the stagehands who began striking that morning and received a notification on Facebook. Blue Ridge Rock Festival would be closing for 2023 citing bad weather, and Muffin never even got to set foot inside the campgrounds.
Muffin at the time was unaware of the workers’ strike, though rumors alleging workers’ rights violations at the hands of the event’s organizers were widespread among attendees. After all, they had plenty of time to talk while they waited an alleged two to four hours for sporadic shuttles to take them between the concert grounds and to where their cars were parked, rumored anywhere between six to ten miles away. What wasn’t a rumor was the lack of resources made available to the festival-goers with several passing out due to the heat with a lack of shade and water and tents and canopies being blown away by sudden severe weather, not to mention the lack of cleaning for provided porta-johns.
“They lied and said there were going to be like 12 or 14 water stations,” said Muffin. “There were two water stations that had fixed spigots on them. One was for VIP, and one was for everybody else, general admission. Like, how do you have one? The stadium I think held like 40,000 people. When I Googled it, it said 90,000 people were expected to show. Or maybe that was how many tickets they sold. So how do you expect 90,000 people to be okay with just that little bit of water, and your employees, and vendors.”
In fact, Muffin would go on to detail how she heard the Fire Marshal told festival organizers that the number of attendees greatly exceeded code and that if this didn’t change the concert would have to be shut down.
Muffin then mentioned the wristbands that festival goers had the choice to wear and use to purchase goods while walking around.
“But what they didn’t tell you is every time you used your wristband it would charge a surcharge, on top of the surcharge the vendor was already using. So, people were essentially paying maybe eight dollars for something, but it was coming out to like 13 dollars with all the fees.”
Muffin further detailed that she heard of at least one food vendor taking to Facebook to explain the situation when they received criticism of their prices.
Muffin said that she is going to submit a refund for the tickets she bought for Blue Ridge, especially since she said the organizers have previously stated several times that severe weather would be covered in their refund policy. She said that much of the nervousness stems from the fact that many former attendees were still waiting on the refunds from the 2021 hosting of the festival, many testimonies of which are being shared on the Facebook group Screwed by Blue Ridge Rock Festival.
