One-night rock band leads to four-day festival
Tom Green and his wife, Angie DeVore Green, stand near the Williams Center green. The two started the Dfest music festival and have watched it grow into a major rock event. TOM GILBERT / Tulsa World
By MICHAEL OVERALL World Staff Writer
Published: 7/20/2009 2:23 AM
Last Modified: 7/20/2009 3:33 AM
Get more information on Dfest, read Q&as with some of the bands and listen to their music and find out how to participate in the Tulsa World’s Dfest Photo Hunt. Early one afternoon last week, Tom Green was standing at the head of a long table, 14 chairs on either side of it stretching down the middle of a hotel conference room.
Dressed in gray slacks and a striped golf shirt, he was the epitome of business casual, except for his shoulder-length hair. In the middle of thanking his corporate sponsors, singling out each one by name, he suddenly stopped in mid-sentence and looked up at the ceiling.
"Wow," he said to no one in particular, "Sometimes, I still can't believe I'm standing here."
He's probably not the only one.
Eight years ago, Tom and his wife, Angie, were in a Tulsa rock band called Ultrafix, trying to round up votes to win a national contest, with the top prize including an article in ''Rolling Stone.''
Their plan was to get 10 or 12 local bands together for an outdoor festival, then encourage everyone to vote online for Ultrafix.
"It rained us out, we lost money and the whole thing pretty much seemed like a disaster," Tom remembers.
"But," Angie chimes in, "we won the contest."
And that was that.
Or so they thought.
'Looking at Tulsa'
Tom was going to sitThat leaves Angie, more than three months pregnant with their first child, to explain how a one-off concert has turned into one of the biggest rock festivals in the country, expected to bring more than 60,000 fans to downtown Tulsa this week.
"After the first year," she says, "people kept asking us if we were going to do it again, and we thought, 'why not?' "
The festival seemed to grow almost exponentially, from 12 bands the first year to 23 the next, then to 40, and 60.
By 2007, more than 100 bands a year were coming from all across the country to play at Dfest.
Tom keeps an office year-round at the Tulsa Metro Chamber, and national corporate sponsors include State Farm, U.S. Cellular and Red Bull energy drinks.
"It's about as mainstream as you can get," Angie agrees.
More important, she says, Dfest is attracting national attention from the entertainment business.
Five years ago, when the festival first added a trade conference for bands to learn how to develop their careers, panelists crowded together around bar tables and passed microphones back and forth.
Traveling around the country to other music industry conferences, Angie would ask promoters and agents to come to Tulsa.
"And they would laugh at me," she says. "They would say, 'We live in L.A., why would we care about Oklahoma?' "
Now, the talent scouts and agents are calling her, asking if she could find room for them. Even without the outdoor festival, the conference side of Dfest alone would be enough to sell out every hotel room in downtown, Angie says.
Talent scouts from Hollywood, Nashville and New York will be watching the performances this year.
"The industry is looking at Tulsa for talent now," Angie says. "I'm not saying that's all because of us, but it's partly because of us, and we're proud of it."
But the talent scouts won't be seeing Angie herself on stage.
'How cool'
In 2006, Ultrafix played a grand total of two gigs. Planning Dfest had become a full-time job for Angie and Tom, leaving little time to rehearse with the band.Eventually, their producer confronted Angie.
"You need pick one or the other," he demanded. "Are you going to play in a band or are you going to run a festival?"
Ultrafix may or may not have ever taken off nationally. But Dfest already had.
"I'll put it this way," Angie says. "I had a lot more people telling me how cool Dfest is than I ever had telling me how cool Ultrafix was."
Michael Overall 581-8383
michael.overall@tulsaworld.com
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