Nile Rodgers shares vision for FreakOut! festival, tickets on sale now

Music legend Nile Rodgers plans to bring a full roster of headliners to Riverhead this summer when he unveils his two-day festival, Freak Out Let’s Dance, on August 4 and 5 at Martha Clara Vineyards.

Co-produced by music industry veteran Michael Ostin and Peter Herman of Nile Rodgers Productions, the FreakOut! Festival will feature some of the biggest names in the industry, including Beck, Pharrell Williams, Keith Urban, Duran Duran, Paloma Faith, Grandmaster Melle Mel ,Chaka Khan, Janelle Monae, and Q-Tip. Nile Rodgers/Pharrell won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2014 and Beck received the same honor in 2015.

Speaking to RiverheadLOCAL Monday, Rodgers described his vision for the festival, which he hopes will become an ongoing event, providing a boon to the local economy and bringing A-list talent to the North Fork.

Rodger’s first event in Riverhead, in 2013, was held to benefit All for the East End, or AFTEE, a group of local not-for-profits. This year’s event will be a for-profit endeavor; however, donations will be made to charities including the Riverhead Police Athletic League and others.

In addition to the concert, Rodgers will conduct recording sessions with featured artists at a private studio outside the festival.

The decision to come back to Riverhead was an easy one, Rodgers said. “The town welcomed us with open arms. It was so wonderful,” he said.

Last year, the plan was to hold another event; when Rodgers sat with the Riverhead town board, they discussed the “one complaint” that had been made by a Southampton Town resident, which Rodgers said turned out not to be true.

But when the town board needed two weeks to vote on the permit, Rodgers said he was faced with timing issues. “I said, ‘Look you don’t understand that talent that I have, million-dollar talent. You can’t leave people hanging.”

Still, Rodgers said he always had a vision of coming back to Riverhead — and said he’s out to set a new standard with this year’s festival. “If you look at the level of talent, it’s absurd,” he said. “It’s just unbelievable.”

The last event, held in 2013, featured Swedish star Avicii and Adam Lambert, as well as Chic and others. Rodgers said he was thrilled, when all was said and done, to receive thanks from town police for the careful planning that had gone into orchestrating parking and other issues.

Rodgers, a songwriter, producer and founder of Chic, the legendary dance band behind megahits including “Le Freak” and “Good Times,” has collaborated with stars including Madonna, David Bowie, Duran Duran, and more recently Daft Punk, with whom he picked up three Grammy Awards in 2014, Pharrell Williams, Aviici and Disclosure.

He said the event has taken a tremendous amount of planning. “People think you just throw these things together, but we don’t.”

Due to the fact that the town was “so happy with the preparatory work,” permits were granted with ease; his hope, Rodgers said, is to “build this out, to be something more robust.”

Riverhead’s locale, he said, is ideal. Rodgers, who has an apartment in New York City and a home in Westport, CT, said he can travel easily to Riverhead by car. “And I have pretty fast boats, so I can get to Riverhead in no time at all,” he said, laughing. “It’s the perfect location.”

For city residents, the Riverhead sign on the LIE is a familiar visual reference point; the town, he said, is easily accessible from New York and offers a perfect place for people to relax, unwind, and enjoy the kind of music festival that Rodgers is trying to revive.

“Americans have lost the festival mentality,” he said. “If our baseball team is losing, we take off before the end of the game, because we want to beat the traffic.” Riverhead, Rodgers said, is a location where visitors won’t have to worry about beating traffic, where they can stay to the end of the show and migrate to downtown Riverhead, where an after-party will be held at the Suffolk Theatre.

The previous event, he said, saw the likes of Avicii and Adam Lambert partying in downtown Riverhead until the early morning hours; the festival will help to bring scores of visitors to local restaurants, hotels and shops.

Logistically, the event has been challenging, Rodgers said, with so many artists scheduled for two nights; a VJ tent will also be available.

Last time, “bigwigs, CEOS of some of the biggest entertainment companies of the world, including CAA and William Morris, said, ‘Wow, this is the best experience we’ve ever had.’ And these are guys who go to every festival, but they thought the food was great, the auction items were great.”

Although the last event was deemed a success, Rodgers wants to raise the bar. “I decided, ‘Let me try and make it better,'” he said.

At the same time, Rodgers wanted to keep prices reasonable; festival goers will pay one price and not have to pay extra for parking or shuttles. Nowhere else will guests be able to see such a star-studded lineup for such a low price, he said.

The event is funded with Rodgers’ own backing and does not include any concert promoters. “The first time we did it, was proof that this works. Now we can take it and make it bigger and keep scaling it.”

The FreakOut! Festival, he said, was modeled after England’s Glastonbury Festival, where he played and later, learned “the secret” of how to organize a similar event in Riverhead. “I have a plan,” he said. “I have a blueprint.”

In England, he said, organizer went to surrounding farmers and formed a partnership, so that locals have a vested interest in the event and look forward to it each year.

“My dream, and I’ve been honest with people, is to get the big contiguous farms to start opening parking concessions,’ Rodgers said.

He added, “I’m trying to do everything I can think of to make this a local, community thing, so Riverhead winds up being cool in our minds. How do you make someplace cool? By bringing cool people, like I did last time.”

The aim, he said, is for the event to gain momentum and grow. “If you have music, which is the easiest consumable form of art — it’s everywhere; it’s the wallpaper to your life — if the music starts to grow and develop, everything else will follow.”

Riverhead will be on the map, he said, with others bringing new vision and ideas to the table. “I’m not a big developer, I’m trying to stimulate the artistic economy.”

One idea might be to have artists spending time on farms to paint, he said, infusing new life into farms struggling to survive.

“It always takes some pioneer to say ‘what if?'” he said. “I’ve had a million ideas in my life and sometimes, they work.”

Despite being faced by challenges, including a childhood marked by his mother and stepfather’s crippling heroin addiction, and most recently, a cancer battle — he is still going for checkups but says he’s “okay today”— Rodgers focuses on a can-do approach. “I’m a very optimistic person by nature,” he said.

There will be an expected daily attendance of 10,500 people, with all ages welcome and something for everyone.

Rodgers has spent a lifetime not only rising to international stardom but also dedicating himself to giving back, creating the We Are Family Foundation to help bring people together, with an eye toward peace.

Ticket and event details

Riverhead will receive a special allotment of Festival tickets at a special local price of $95. Beginning this Friday, “local” tickets can be purchased with Riverhead Town issued ID, such as a driver’s license or birth certificate, at the Martha Clara Vineyard box office , 6025 Sound Avenue, or the Suffolk Theatre box office, located at 118 E. Main St. Riverhead.

All other FreakOut! Festival tickets may be purchased by going to ticketfly.com and searching “FOLD” festival; tickets are onsale now.

Tickets come in three tiers: General admission, $137, includes free parking and shuttles from the Riverhead train station or the Suffolk Theatre; VIP, $399, which includes access to the “VIP Garden,” featuring a shaded VIP relaxation area, complimentary VIP appetizers and dinner with two drink tickets and a cash bar; and a Ultra VIP ticket, for $999, which includes access to the private VIP viewing area at the main stage, and artist compound, complimentary cuisine with top shelf open bar, massages, and bag check; access to the wine tent with tastings, private golf cart transport throughout the festival, access to the VIP Garden, private VIP rest rooms, VIP entrance and exit re-entry, dedicated concierge, and parking or transportation shuttle.

Of the event, Rodgers said, “It’s a bunch of good friends doing something together that we love to do.”

The schedule is as follows:

Tuesday, Aug. 4

Parking opens at 4 p.m. (both days)

Doors open at 5 p.m. (both days)

Show starts at 6 p.m. and ends at 11 p.m. (both days)

Beck

Pharrell Williams

Keith Urban

Chuck D

Eric B.

Thomas Gold

Paloma Faith

The Martinez Brothers

Hosted by Nile Rodgers and Chic

Emcee: Grandmaster Melle Mel

Additional artists to be announced.

Wed., Aug. 5

Duran Duran

Chaka Khan

Janelle Monae

Grandmaster Melle Mel

Q-Tip

Slander

GTA

Snoh Aalegra

Nile Rodgers and Chic

Emcee: Grandmaster Melle Mel

Suffolk Theatre after party from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. Free shuttles will run from 3 p.m. to midnight from the Riverhead railroad station and the Suffolk Theatre. Parking is also available downtown and at the railroad station.

For additional information, go to foldfestival.com.