FloydFest founders finally settling into their groove

Special to the Press
By DON SIMMONS JR/Correspondent

On the day Kris Hodges’ dream of producing a world music festival in Southwest Virginia came true, he found himself head in hands, crying his eyes out in the bathroom of the trailer that served as office for the first Floyd Fest.
Hodges and his life partner Erica Johnson had sold their downtown Floyd restaurant, Odd Fellas, their property, their cars, and leaned heavily on family, friends and well-wishing sponsors to put on that first festival in 2002.
It cost close to $500,000 to bring artists from across the country and world to Floyd County that summer. And the one thing Hodges and Johnson – both barely 30 years old—never considered in their planning was the weather. The leftover from a hurricane left the pasture that hosted the event a mud pit in the classic
last-day-of-Woodstock sense.
About 2,500 people attended that first Floyd Fest. Last year the crowd reached almost 10,000. This year the couple, whose Across The Way Productions organizes the event and puts on or participates in several other festivals across the state, expects to finally break even.
Their signature event, Floyd Fest, boast a team of 86 staffers and about 200 volunteers. More than 70 performers, ranging from old-time mountain music and bluegrass to reggae and African drumming, will entertain a field full of music lovers on seven stages from July 26 to July 29 off mile marker 170.5 off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Seventy or so food and craft vendors will provide nourishment and keepsakes.
Putting on the festival involves intense infrastructure from roads, gates and tents to electricity, mowing and traffic flow.
“Everything is so much more professional now,” said Johnson.
“Now there’s no panic,” added Hodges. “We just swing and adjust as things come up. We have a very dedicated crew of staff and volunteers.”
Hodges, a musician who hails from Atlanta, Ga., moved to Floyd in the early 1990s to study music. He met Johnson 12 years ago and the two saw the “clean canvas and endless possibilities” for music in Floyd County. That led to Odd Fellas, which in turn, via a trip to Africa, led to Floyd Fest.
Hodges said they pulled it off “on charm.”
Johnson said it was “tenacity.”
“When we came back into town after that first year it was surreal,” Johnson recalled. “You felt like everyone was looking at you and we were so broke it wasn’t even funny. It took us five years to break even.”
With ticket prices running from $30 a day to $110 for the entire weekend, a crowd of 10,000 could bring in more than $1 million. That would go a long way toward paying off old debts and keeping these two young entrepreneurs on Virginia “Crooked Road” to success.
“It’s been crazy, but I think we’re finally going to make it,” said Johnson outside their yurt office on the town limits.
A yurt, in case you didn’t know, is a Mongolian inspired tent-like building that might also serve as a mega sweat lodge without the proper insulation and cooling system. It gives the couple that hippified look that matches their free attitude as they discuss ups and downs on a nearby front porch.
“It’s been an adventure,” said Hodges. “I think now we work smarter, not harder.”
In between questions, the couple stops to coordinate with landscaper John Beegle and general manager Chris Bower.
“It never stops, though,” laughed Hodges.

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