Utopiafest organizers seek peace from protestors, Permit hangs in the balance

Lew K. Cohn
Managing Editor •

Utopiafest founder Travis Sutherland told more than 100 concerned Burnet County residents his festival is about “family, connection and community” during a public meeting Wednesday evening at the Burnet County AgriLife Extension building.

A public hearing on the permit is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, during a regular commissioners court meeting at the Burnet County Courthouse in Burnet.

However, many of those in attendance at Wednesday night’s meeting voiced their displeasure with organizers’ failure to notify them about the venue change to property off Shady Grove Road (County Road 200), as one local attorney even accused them of violating state law by promoting the now 10-year-old festival without a mass gathering permit.

“A person may not promote a mass gathering without a permit issued and is there a permit issued at this time?” attorney Eddie Shell asked. “It is a criminal offense, a class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. The definition of promote is merely that, promoting an event and there have been posters, websites and other literature which touts you are hoping for as many as 6,000 people.

“You cannot come before the county to ask for relief with dirty hands. You are violating criminal law before the horse is even out of the gate.”

Bruce Clark, a Spicewood resident and an Austin attorney representing the festival, took umbrage to Shell’s accusation.

“I spent considerable time in my office meeting with Mr. Shell to discuss easements and roadway issues and I thought we made considerable progress,” Clark said. “We did not get to the point where we could discuss the issue he is raising and I have not had the opportunity to speak to my clients about that as I have only been retained for the past two weeks. I will not comment on that or let them comment about that until I have a chance to look into it.

“We are not going to discuss any legal technicalities here tonight because this is not an appropriate venue to do that and it is not fair to my clients. I request that you respect my clients’ need and right for council before they answer any more questions on that issue.”

Scott Davidson, owner of Code 4, a company hired to be in charge of safety and logistics for the festival, said it is customary for events to not seek a mass gathering permit until 60 days or so before the event and that “most of the information that would be shared with local officials would not be available before then due to the nature of the planning process.”

“We are just now really in the window where we get geared up (to get the permit),” Davidson said. “I am not going to get into the legal and technical issues of the statute itself, but I have done more of these permits than anyone else in the state and it is logistically infeasible to get the permit before you start promoting and planning the festival. Resources we need and provide are scaled to attendance, plus contracts with artists have to be signed. You can’t get a permit before the festival is conceived and announced.”

Davidson apologized for the event being scheduled on the opening weekend of deer and turkey hunting season, saying “I can assure you they (festival organizers) were not aware of it being hunting season, and if they were, they would not have scheduled the event for then.”

“We cannot move the date to another date because contracts have been signed with artists,” Davidson added. “However, we are working with Texas Parks and Wildlife to notify hunters and to put up signs to let people know so we can assure awareness on both sides and we do not anticipate there being an impact. We definitely are committed to making sure if we hold the festival next year, this will not happen again.”

Travis Sutherland, who founded the festival on family property in Utopia in Uvalde County in 2009, asked community members to give he and his partners – including brothers Patrick and Brandon Harrison, who own the property where the festival would be held – the chance to prove they will be good neighbors.

“When we decided to put on the festival in Utopia, people didn’t know what to expect and they thought a ‘hoard of Austin hippies’ were coming to wreak havoc on their Hill Country home,” Sutherland said. “After each year, we saw fewer and fewer law enforcement needed and the reason is I would not tolerate anyone disrespecting my mom or my stepdad.

The festival is scheduled for Nov. 2-4 at 1301 Hidden Ranch Road, located between County Road 200 and Ranch to Market Road 963, on a private 105-acre ranch outside Burnet near the Russell Fork of the San Gabriel River. Organizers just applied for a mass gathering permit on Aug. 28, though the festival was initially announced in the Austin Chronicle in April. Campgrounds are expected to open on Halloween, Wednesday, Oct. 31.

Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, Patty Griffin, STS9 and Medeski's Mad Skillet are among the announced festival headliners as 36 acts are expected to perform during the three-day festival, which also will have a preview performance Thursday, Nov. 1, headlined by hip-hop icon Grandmaster Flash and Keller Williams . . .

Read more on this story in the Friday, Sept. 21 issue of The Highlander.