Wak Job

Brett Mosiman is remarkably composed for a raving lunatic.

And he has to be crazy. Only someone certifiable would attempt to erect a four-day music festival with 75 bands playing for as many as 30,000 fans. And build it all within six months. In a serene state park. In Kansas.

Mosiman isn’t panicked. He isn’t wild-eyed. He isn’t perched on one of the spires above Bartle Hall shrieking, “Good-bye, cruel world!” Instead, he is so sedate that he barely seems awake. He is leaning back in his chair in the cramped headquarters of Pipeline Productions in downtown Lawrence, absently fiddling with a paper clip and patiently explaining the methods behind his madness.

The epicenter of the most ambitious local concert undertaking in recent memory is small and filled with a handful of desks staffed by a handful of employees who drift into the office at the break of noon. The walls are covered with posters of bands (Weezer, Built to Spill, etc.) and beer companies (Boulevard, Guinness, etc.). The detritus scattered on the flanks of Mt. Paperwork includes family photos, cans of Red Bull, a couple of Split Lip Rayfield albums and a stack of psychedelic concert fliers touting the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival.

“I call it the oncoming tsunami,” Mosiman says calmly. “It’s this huge thing that keeps getting closer and closer. At first, I was just going to dip my toe in the water. The next thing I knew, I was fully immersed.”

He says this with a bemused smirk and a what-can-you-do shrug. When he says it, Wakarusa (which begins Thursday) is still three weeks away. Mosiman is wearing a tattered shirt and a fleece pullover. His silvery-black hair is hidden beneath a floppy fishing hat. He didn’t shave this morning, and it’s not likely he gives a damn. You suspect Mosiman would have trouble stifling a yawn in front of a firing squad.

“I am a stoic,” Mosiman explains, unnecessarily. “You control what you can and don’t worry about what you can’t. If a meteor comes plummeting to Earth … if a tornado blows everything over on Thursday night … it’s out of our control.”

Mosiman has a hell of a poker face. Because even if he is nuts, the owner of the Bottleneck and the president of Pipeline Productions must have cantaloupe-sized cajones to let 20 years in the business ride on a gamble as large as this. And there is no double-or-nothing. If Wakarusa comes up spades, the house wins. Game over.

“In reality, that’s the case,” Mosiman admits, “but we have every intention of making this a long-running festival.”

Six months ago, the festival didn’t really even exist. Mosiman had helped organize Jayhawk Festivals in the mid-’90s; after they faded away, he and others spent years kicking around the idea of hosting a large-scale music festival. But nothing came of it until last fall.

That’s when three silent partners (who, with Mosiman, make up the festival’s board of directors) approached him about organizing a multiday music festival at Clinton Lake State Park.

“I was the last one to sign on,” Mosiman says. “Then I just shut my eyes and jumped off the cliff with them.”

The leap of faith might have seemed ludicrous. But slowly, as Mosiman and a core group of Pipeline employees chipped away at the idea, wheels began to turn. Bands and sponsors signed on. Wakarusa began to snowball.

“On the top side of the mountain, you’re climbing hard and trying to get bands to say yes, because you’ve never had a festival before,” Mosiman says. “But as the word got out, we started to get deluged with bands that were calling us. Suddenly, everybody wanted to be on the bill.”

Apprehension melted away as names such as Robert Randolph and Guided By Voices began showing up alongside newcomers Los Lonely Boys and O.A.R.

“We were a little skeptical,” says Ryan McConeghy of the Denver band Mission 19. “You usually don’t find a festival of this quality in the middle of the country. But because of that, when I heard about it, I was much more excited than I was skeptical. And then we saw the lineup, and we were like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.'”

The Internet spread the word cheaply. Soon, bands and fans began flocking to the festival’s Web site. People in Ohio and West Virginia and Texas began snatching up tickets. Mosiman added a third stage and a fourth day.

“We’ve expanded on the edges throughout,” Mosiman says. “It became apparent early on that we had a very big and cool thing going. Something that people couldn’t find anywhere else.”

Part of the draw was the venue itself. Clinton Lake is a pristine locale compared with the open fields of Bonnaroo and the deserts of Coachella. It was one of the deciding factors for Robert Cowell, a 28-year-old who plans on trekking to Clinton Lake from Tallahassee, Florida.

“It’s a campground, not a farm made into a camp,” Cowell wrote the Pitch in an e-mail. “Farms mean no trees, no shade, no bathrooms, no showers. You should never give hippies or dreadies an excuse not to shower. Don’t get me wrong, I love them all. I just don’t want to be standing next to a guy who hasn’t had a shower in four days.”

But those problems come with a successful festival. Bonnaroo — the grassroots event Wakarusa most closely resembles — has gone from a small music festival in rural Tennessee to a bloated orgy of huge crowds, soaring price tags and arena acts like the Dave Matthews Band.

“We don’t ever envision Wakarusa being Bonnaroo,” Mosiman says. “We don’t want 80,000 people. We have agreed to cap sales at 30,000. If we sell out, we will not let any more people in. You hear horror stories from Bonnaroo that there’s just too many damn people. It gets so big that it’s unmanageable and not fun. We want to stay committed to having a grassroots festival with emerging artists.”

There are just as many ways for an event of this magnitude to bomb. “When you have this many things that you’re in charge of — whether it’s the radio spots or the tickets or the band’s meals or the sound and lights and stages or the hundreds of security people — you wake up with the cold sweats every night,” Mosiman says casually. “Your brain doesn’t shut down for a second.”

Which is part of why Mosiman and his partners are insane. The music industry is mired in a slump. Disposable income has dried up. Big touring festivals such as Lollapalooza and Lilith Fair are dead or dying. Yet Mosiman is calm. He’s confident that traffic won’t be a problem. He’s comfortable that security won’t be an issue. He sees no reason why everything won’t run smoothly at an enormous music festival in eastern Kansas.

“I’ve been in the business for 20 years, and I was frankly surprised how well-received the concept was,” Mosiman says. “I’ve heard very few detractors from any camp. For whatever reason, it seems like the right place and the right time to do this.” Brett Mosiman just might be crazy enough to pull off Wakarusa.