07/18/2022
Camp Euforia: The Last Encore
It's real hard to succinctly describe what this event means to us all. So I won't be succinct at all hahahaha!
Circa 2004 Eufórquestra is looking for a site to host a festival and we found Jerry.
When we began we had a blind faith that this event would be incredible no matter where it landed. (can you believe the Euf crew was about an average of 21 years when it began:)?! We would have no idea at the time just how awesome it was to find Jerry. Our aspirations in the early years of what we wanted Camp Euforia to become were totally out of line with what we became. If you would have asked me the size of the event we were setting out to plan the words "little' or "boutique" would not have come up ever. I often joke that it took us about 10 years to discover ourselves. Conversely if you would have asked us that we would be around for almost two decades I would have answered plainly... yes. I think that our young optimism and blind faith served us well in the end.
Camp was an incredible amount of work. It was tons of organization and labor each year. About 1 out of every two years we had horrible weather, too hot, to much rain, too much wind.... (Shout out to Rexroat Sound RS Companies, LLC for proving his stages are strong and safe) and the massive 10,000 person event we planned in our heads never came to be. So why then did we continue to pursue the event each year?
Simplest answer of my life - All of Us. All Of You.
Jerry - The man the myth the legend. When Euf first started with Jerry we all worked for him to prep the grounds each year. I joke that he was the man that could untie the un-tieable knot, he could swim the furthest sea, and climb the highest mountain. He has a way he wants everything to be and he taught us to execute his plan. Jerry is a farmer but in life he lives more like an engineer meets an artist. So much creativity flows through Camp Euforia each year. Jerry's creative contribution is the ex*****on/production of the event.
Ex. Did you know that over 400 trees get w**d whacked, all the trees get trimmed to remove any safety issues, every flower bed get w**ded before you as an attendee enter the fest? This example is a manifestation of the standard that Jerry set for us all. Jerry made it nice and as a result we all treated Jerry and his land a bit nicer. What an analogy for life eh? Myself and countless others learned so much about leadership, ex*****on, customer care, and more from Jerry. If what Euf wanted was festival that was something other than this I'd say we had a good miss.
Each year Jerry would get more and more people involved in different aspects of the event. This would made me nervous at first because the fear of the unknown via personalities etc. but over time I realized how much this mattered. In life we are in constant pursuit of a sense of meaning and purpose. What Jerry gave us all was just that. If you are reading this right now and did a project with Jerry to prep the event any given year please share! That was the huge gift Jerry gave us all...
Purpose and meaning... if only for a few days a year.
Staff, bands, volunteers, affiliate partners, parents ie all the people that have worked on anything over the years to produce the fest. Working with you has been a privilege of my lifetime. If you have worked closely with me you have heard me say that "the pay is bad and the work is hard". This is a great way to highlight why our staff did what they did. They worked to serve, they worked to make something awesome, they worked because they selfishly cared for you all. We had a central goal with dependable bodies. Not for pay per say but for the pursuit of being a part of something. If you see a staff/volunteer for Camp. Please tell them thank you. They have worked tirelessly for you for years.
Fans - To say thanks is an understatement. You are equal/greater in contribution to this. So often people will ask the staff and I if we will get anytime to relax and enjoy the event. To all of you that ask I want you all to rest easy knowing that us seeing you all enjoy the event we got to help produce is in fact the enjoyment we seek. You showed up year over year. We got to watch our lives grow for almost two decades together. This is something special. Not everyone gets experiences/relationships like this in life.
What did we become? We are community. We are small. We are boutique. We are customized and just how we want it. Our fans know our staff, our staff knows our fans, the bands we brought in each year are personal to us and you. We did not pursue the next shiny object in the end but instead focused on just we have...each other.
This ending is way more emotional than I thought it would be. It's like graduation from highschool. We have spent a lifetime of time together, we have grown, made mistakes, learned from the mistakes and now ending the chapter.
A new chapter is ahead. I look forward to it.
Mark Tallman always told the Euf crew that the key to life is know your are having the good times while you are having them. Mark, I think we all figured out the key to life at least for one weekend a year since 2004.
Et al - "You are what we need"
Eric Quiner
Executive Director Camp Euforia
aka Jerry's main bitch
aka former keyboard player with Euforquestra
