FRIDAY JAM: Early

ALBANY - Some will be tempted to call the Oct. 24-25 Big Pine Music Festival at the Exchange Club Fairgrounds 'Throwdown II' or even 'Throwdown Lite.'

For 340 Creative Group principal and Big Pine planner/promoter Evan Barber, though, the two-day event is more the anti-Throwdown.

'This is kind of what we were planning originally with the Throwdown,' Barber said, indicating the Oct. 12-14, 2012 festival that brought artists like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Big and Rich and Drive-By Truckers to the fairgrounds. 'We were thinking small, looking at local, regional and maybe a few national acts. But once everyone got involved in things and started throwing out ideas - 'We should do this' and We should do that' - it became something else entirely.

'The Big Pine Festival is going to be like the Throwdown, but we're not going to spend a ridiculous amount of money putting it on.'

Music fans willing to 'take a chance and trust us' that the lineup for the two-day event will be worth it can buy a limited number of early-bird Big Pine weekend passes for only $35 starting Monday. Once the early-bird tickets are sold out, the price will increase to $50 for weekend passes. Advance single-day tickets will be available for $30, but those increase to $35 the days of the festival.

Barber promises that the entertainment planned for Big Pine will be well worth the ticket cost. And while organizers can't officially announce the lineup until July 21, he did let slip a few names that will be familiar to music fans.

'This festival will be for people who like music and like to watch live music,' said Barber, whose band the Dead Gamblers will perform. 'It won't be a country festival and it won't be a rock festival. It will be a festival of diversity with some country, some indie rock ... something from all genres for people of all ages.

'There will be some great regional and local artists, some people that everyone's heard of. It will be tough for anyone to put a tag on the festival.'

In addition to early-bird tickets, fans can start reserving a limited number of RV hook-ups Monday as well. Primitive camping will also be available.

'The layout will be similar to the Throwdown, but it will be a little more fan-friendly,' Barber said. 'You won't have to walk a quarter-mile between the stages. We'll have the main stage where the (secondary) Phoebe stage was last year, and we'll have performances at the permanent pavilion stage on the fairgrounds. We'll have a Bud Light Hidden Pine Stage that will feature some scheduled performances and some collaborations by artists from different bands. That should be fun.

'We're going to limit the number of vendors to between 20 and 30 so everyone has a chance to make money. As the Throwdown grew bigger and bigger, it got harder and harder to control. We wanted to do a festival with bands we like that would be easier to control.'

Early-bird tickets, RV hook-ups and information about the Big Pine Music Festival will be available online at threefortycreative.com starting Monday.

Entities 0 Name: Barber Count: 3 1 Name: ALBANY Count: 1 2 Name: Lynyrd Skynyrd Count: 1 3 Name: Evan Barber Count: 1 4 Name: Phoebe Count: 1 5 Name: Rich Count: 1 6 Name: Creative Group Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1xZ5LhB Title: Rock in Rio Sets To Transform The Festival Landscape Through Its Sponsorship Model Description: Roberto Medina thinks big. He is the kind of Frank Sinatra fan who arranges for his idol to perform the biggest concert of his career, in 1980 in Rio de Janeiro, in front of 100,000 fans. For insurance client Bradesco Seguro, Medina conceived of a giant floating Christmas tree on the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon.