The Do LaB’s Crown Jewel Sets its Sights on a Long-term Future

Note: this article originally appeared—edited with edges sanded down—in Fest300/EverFest, now defunct.

It was Monday evening as the sun began to set on the first day of strike after Lightning in a Bottle 2013. The Do LaB, the event production company behind the enigmatic Southern California festival, already in its 13th year, was wrapping up their first year at an untried venue in the sun-beaten Temecula valley.

The rumbling rumors about a flurry of undercover drug arrests were finally bubbling to the surface. There was an undercurrent of shock and sadness as the scope of a brutal, coordinated sting by the Riverside County Special Investigations Bureau came to light.

I watched as two of the three Flemming brothers — founding members of The Do LaB — scratched their heads in disbelief while standing atop a box truck piled high with stage gear, fabrics and a plethora of leftover bicycles.  

A collective grimace swept through the clean-up efforts that year. With some 60 arrests, the Draconian police presence had not just harshed the vibe, it put the entire festival trajectory into question. Would Lightning in a Bottle have to find a new venue just one year after losing their home in Orange County? Could they regain the trust of a hurt community?

“Last year,” one of the brothers said, “we couldn’t even get the Orange County Sheriff to put a guy in handcuffs that we caught with wallets and passports he had stolen.”

It was the sort of PR nightmare that can take down production companies that are in it for a quick buck. But the brand behind The Do LaB runs deep. For other organizations, the challenges coming out of the 2013 season would be no less than an existential crisis.

And yet, it’s that very operational resiliency that gives the collective of artists, musicians and designers. Having cut their teeth in the grit of early 2000’s Downtown Los Angeles, The Do Lab have built the relationships, business acumen and esprit de corps necessary to flourish in the face of hardship.

In 2014, they came back with something to prove, and they did it with style, despite a grueling production cycle on a new property with plenty of physical and financial challenges.

This is one among myriad storylines within the yet-to-be-written complete history of The Do LaB and Lightning in a Bottle. But what’s important, in this year, in this moment, is the realization that Lightning in a Bottle is standing on the precipice of its most important year-to-date. With an ever-growing partnership with Coachella, with its second year at a new home bordering a drought-stricken Lake San Antonio, with a Transformational Festival scene that is perhaps doubling or tripling in size each year, what happens at Lightning in a Bottle ripples throughout the community.

As The Do LaB goes, so do we all.

Genius Zones: Visionaries and Power Dynamics

The Flemming Brothers get a lot of press. Jesse, Josh and Dede each have an important role in the operational and creative mechanisms of the festival. I’ve heard their Dad speak about the working relationship in the family; part of the secret sauce is that they’ve been arguing, disagreeing, making up, believing in each other and allowing one another to function in their genius zones for their entire lives. They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, can identify problems before they happen and are comfortable allowing one another to function in their genius zones.

The fourth founder and part owner of The Do LaB, the balance to the masculine energy, and an ongoing source for sacred creativity in the project is the incredible Dream Rockwell. In addition to directing the avant-garde circus experience known as Lucent Dossier Experience, she wears the hats of guardian, spiritual watchdog and producer of the many sacred, educational elements of the event. The Lucent Temple of Consciousness, the zone where much of this progressive programming goes down, continues to be the binding force, giving event-goers an alternative to partying for three days straight, destroying one’s body and soul in the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures.

Walking the Balance

Perhaps they’re lucky: right place, right time. Perhaps it was all sweat equity: humbling collaborations at events like Burning Man that displayed a much needed fresh face and earned them their seat at the table. Most likely, a mixture of the two has given The Do LaB one of the biggest platforms imaginable for converting mainstream festival-goers into alternative, counter-culture aficionados: a huge presence at Coachella.

In walking the balance between mainstream and counterculture, Lightning in a Bottle is the next step for many festivalgoers to experience increasingly more intimate festivals, where camping is an opportunity to really meet your neighbors, where art is being made before your eyes, where you can climb and dance and do yoga at three in the morning. The Do LaB dangles the carrot of major bass acts like Rusko or Bassnectar and gives the old bait-n-switch by offering a unique awareness to an entire world that’s missing in mainstream festival culture.

It’s because of this relationship that The Do LaB continues to hold the crown as the biggest opportunity to bring in new people to the Transformational Festival community en masse. That’s why so many people give so much to the project, even with minimal financial payout. Lightning in a Bottle is the biggest recruitment opportunity on the West Coast for a new way of life, a new way to party.

Keeping the Inner Circle Small

If I may, for a moment, venture into the category of Things-Many-People-Know But-Few-People-Talk-About, The Do LaB is a tight-knit bunch. There are other words you could use to describe it: preferential, insular, cautious. Consider the Board for the Do Art Foundation, which is 60% Flemming.

And though there are advantages and disadvantages to their internal culture, it seems to work for them. In keeping a small year-round staff, the company, with the help of their PR agency, is able to expertly manage their brand. In ballooning during production cycles, they are able to maintain a nimble, dynamic and competitive marketplace for talent and dedication to shine through.

But, like so many other festival productions, it’s on the back of volunteers, many at otherwise managerial levels that would love more than anything to be able to do what they do full-time. It’s all a trade-off between internal costs and external expectations.

No doubt, much of the money goes to booking the big artists, which in turn bring more attention to the scene and brings in new money from fans.

While transparency is not a strong point for The Do LaB as a production, it is a strategy that allows the producers to take risks, save some surprises and go after bigger fish while operating in bigger financial pools and connecting major puzzle pieces in the meta-narrative around the Transformational Festival scene.

Without a doubt, it’s hard to not have an opinion about the production. But it’s just too big of an opportunity, and if it takes spending a lot of money on headliners to bring people in to see another way to experience festivals, then it’s the price we have to pay. But it would be nice to get an idea of how the event operates, even if it’s just in percentages.

What I’m Looking Forward To: Great Collaborative Environments

Perhaps the biggest draw of Lightning in a Bottle is the ongoing collaborations and environments that provide distinct programming. From the Lucent Temple of Consciousness and The Village, which are expanding to offer more ancestral knowledge, food and cooking to the yoga and tea spaces, the thing that keeps me coming back is the opportunity to see so many friends, meet first-timers, re-visit old memories and re-live dreams of strange and silly times.

The Woogie Stage, the House of House, the Godfather of Funk, the Holy Grail of Four on the Floor… And home to the weekend’s biggest gathering of all the people from all the corners of the event (Pumpkin. Be there. Obviously.)

Amori’s Casino & Burlesque, where you can’t help but cry out: “if this is wrong, I don’t want to be right.” Where the condoms are free, the love reigns supreme and the women are smarter than your bad pick-up lines. (P.S. They’re fundraising right now on Indiegogo)

Whatever Shrine might be bringing this year. I’m told it will be epic. The installation artist is famous for his use of repurposed materials to create space that surprises and delights, transforming trash into treasure. Last year, Shrine got placed in an awkward spot, kind of out of the way and not quite utilized except for an occasional avant-garde stage act or memorable gathering point.

Whatever the hell the tricksters and troublemakers will be getting up to at The Grand Artique, Frontierville, The Jive Joint, and the evolution of Imagine Nation’s offerings wrapped up in their major collaborations with Insomniac at Beyond Wonderland and Electric Forest.

Can They Do It Again?

It would seem that Lightning in a Bottle 2015 could be The Do LaB’s biggest opportunity to date. They’re finally returning to a venue, they had their biggest year ever at Coachella. They have another strong line-up.

So, it would seem like a perfect storm. I think we’re all starting to feel the tingles, the momentum, the pure bottled electricity from which the festival takes its name.

Will they succeed in educating and inspiring a huge swath of people to wake up and try something different in their life? It’s a great opportunity to bring a parent (I did) or a sibling or a friend who’s tried other events and is just looking for more from their universe.

Seeing experienced festival-goers with full theme camps, domes, sound systems, coordinated events and kitchens… is a hell of a wake-up call for those who have only experienced the Outside Landses of the universe. So is seeing live art, fire spinning, and being greeted with much-needed hugs and eye contact.

A Toast to The Wild

So, as you prepare, or pack, or consider buying a ticket, I offer a toast to Lightning in a Bottle 2015:

May we learn to take care of ourselves and each other. May we discover the inner animal and nurture the human soul.

May we discover the joys of meditation and the release of silly debauchery. May we be open to the occasional opportunity for prayer and humility, to enable the channels for synchronicity and magic, to turn from a consumer into a creator, to try new ideas on, or try a dress on, or just to try to get out of your comfort zone and get out of your own damn head for a weekend…  

May we let our hair down and have our souls lifted. And may we come out of it changed from the person we came in as.

Transformation is an awful lot to expect, but it’s not such a big word after all.