As mentioned in the report, we also made interviews at the Bear Stone Festival, with bands and the main organizer of the festival, who told us a lot of interesting facts about the festival, including that it is named after a real bear, which we were lucky enough to avoid meeting. But not with Marin Lalić, so in the interview he told us about the background, motivations and the main goals of the festival.
Do you have any statistics about how many countries people come from for the festival?
Yes. We’re using a phenomenal ticketing system and it gives us a complete insight into every demographic and other data from our visitors. In the past year, so this is our first official year of the festival. Last one was year zero edition, which was promo edition of the festival. It was a free entry, but a limited attendance to 1,000 people, and it was sold out in about two weeks or something like that. We had 90% people from Croatia and 10% from abroad, from maybe five or six countries from the region. And this year we have 33% visitors from abroad, from 25 countries, which really amazes me. The first ones are Chile, Thailand and Australia. I would really like to paint a picture of a festival that is not only for the region but really for the whole world.
I’ve heard some people were talking a Hungarian language while we came here.
We sold about 40 tickets in Hungary.
You mentioned that this is the officially first year of the festival and the previous year was zero year. When did you start thinking about making this festival?
Well, the basic idea came about at around October 2021. Until February 2022, we were fiddling about with the idea, and then really approached it in February. That’s when we really started picking the bands, approaching everyone. The first idea was to throw a party not a festival, but a party for 100 or 200 people. But the more we went into the planning of this party, we couldn’t figure out what not to include into it, where to draw the line between a party and a festival. And at a certain point I just said we have to do our full festival. This is a phenomenal location and concept. Let’s draw an entire festival and let’s give the people a chance to come here and bring in the entire concept of festival.
Which band was your first choice? When you decided to make this festival, who did you want to call first?
There were two bands. The first one was Vintage Caravan from Iceland. I wanted to book them, but they were already booked as an opener for Opeth, and that show got canceled at least three times and I don’t want to book bands for the festival that have played within a year at least somewhere in Croatia, or in the region. They’re playing Zagreb in November, so I’m going to meet them for sure. And the other one is the Church of the Cosmic Skull, they are a part of the lineup of our first official Bear Stone Festival. They are really incredible. Abba and Black Sabbath mesh together.
I wanted to ask you, which is the concert in these two days that you wait for the most?
When I draw the lineup and the timetable, I really try to disperse it as much as possible. So there are no two similar bands going behind one another. We have Orange Goblin, which is half heavy metal half stoner metal. Similar, but still pretty different. And then Church of the Cosmic Skull, which is kind of the ’70s revival. And then Seven That Spells from Croatia, called a progressive crowd-rock style band. We’re really looking forward to all of those concerts. But they’re the most basic. When you explore the genres, the biggest show is the Monster Magnet.
I’ve heard that Monster Magnet is one of the most popular band in Croatia.
Yes, very much so.
Was it hard to make this deal with these bands to come here?
Surprisingly not so much. When I book a band, I really try to make a contact with the band itself if it’s possible, if not then with their agent. And just explain the entire concept of the festival, what we’re all about, pure nature, psychedelic visuals, various different subgenres. So this entire concept, I want to pitch to the band and if they like it, and enjoy it and they think that they could amplify the entire festival experience with their performance, we can make a deal in two emails, literally. Monster Magnets really blew my mind because they’ve pushed their tour so that they can play here. They had a fixed tour, they didn’t announce it yet. I made contact and we made a deal within a very short time. And they actually extended their tour to play here, which is mesmerizing for me. I’m going to print that email and frame it.
The zero year was an exploration for you to see what is going to be in the future for the festival. How did you experience the zero year?
Phenomenal. I didn’t know what to expect because the only other festival experience that I have really been inside the core of the organization is Modem and that’s 10,000 people and seven days it’s completely hectic. So to be able to experience something like this on a smaller scale, but to take on a professional approach, it’s phenomenal for everyone. We were able to create such a chilled experience and just energy that everybody felt from the crew to the bands, to the audience themselves. And we were hearing about it for months later. That was something truly special, and I hope that we can achieve the same thing if not better this year.
So when the previous festival finished, you started to organize this festival?
Yes. We pretty much had the entire lineup set up by October last year.
Have you ever been involved in something similar, when you were a festival visitor, not an organizer?
I have been to the similar festivals of the genre, but they were all indoor festivals, for instance, Desertfest, Up In Smoke Festival. Stoned From The Underground was one of the outdoor festivals that I attended, and they’re all amazing. I always say that the location is the main headliner and then come the rest of the bands. So it’s more of a concept festival than just a lineup festival.
How did the idea came to make a festival?
I think it was covid and just a bunch of free time and exploring various musical genres. I was into Metallica, Slayer and in classic metal bands such as these for a very long time and it kind of got a little bit repetitive for me, so I wanted to explore something else. This entire spectrum of different bands and different subgenres, for me at least, they still have a similar ground zero, if I can put it that way. They’re all connected somehow. But if you listen a song from this band and a song from that band, it seems completely opposite. But if you put it nicely together, especially with the press location of this and the psychedelic visuals and other stuff that we do here, you can connect them and build up a much better experience than just to put 12 of very similar sounding bands.
This festival is about to be connected to the nature. Do you have any special activities that makes this festival more green?
Absolutely. We have our own compost toilets. We built them ourselves, and these do not use chemicals. We do have some chemical toilets because we can’t build them all at once. We have to go step by step, but that’s definitely our plan in the future to have all compost toilet festival. We build our own showers and we have a sponsorship for a very young Croatian company, which we sponsored us with water for the bands and they have recyclable. It’s not a plastic bottle, but it’s a carton, which is 80% recyclable and the cork is made from sugar cane, and it’s much more better for the environment. So we try to push everything in that direction, including the cutlery that we give out for the bands and everything. That’s definitely something that we are looking for in the future, so that everything else is made from wood or cardboard. And another thing that’s not directly ecological, but I think it brings us more in terms of nature is this offline thing. We have no internet here and I think that’s something really special. I was a little bit concerned about it for the year zero edition. I didn’t know how people were going to react. We’re all very dependent on the Internet and our cell phones. „Okay, let’s see what happens.” Every single person told, that: ,,This is phenomenal, nobody can contact me. There are no emails that I have to go to. When I’m here, I’m here. I’m at the festival, which I think is something very nice.”
Sometimes I watch memes, with titles: ,,There is no internet connection, talk to each other like in the 80’s”. Do you feel any negatives of being without internet connection, and the opportunity to make calls?
A little bit, we handle that with our radios. We have our own antennas here, so we have our own network with the radio, so we can contact each other from the organization. We have an office upstairs, so we have Internet over there, which makes the festival production possible. If the entire area was without internet, it would be an enormous challenge. But for our visitors, I think it’s so good. If you need someone, you actually have to find him. You actually have to go out and search for someone and you’re going to run into a bunch of other people, rather than just have a call or a text, „okay, meet me there.” It’s more interesting.
Sometimes I feel the importance of the internet, but sometimes I rather feel the pressure. This is the perfect area to make it happen. How many members are in the crew?
Around 20 the core crew of Bearstone.
Are there any volunteers?
We have 15 or 16 volunteers. What I really want to have from the volunteers is to see who is really passionate about this, who clicks with the festival. And I would like to have them as a job for next year. We have to grow our team before we plan to expand.
Why is the name Bear Stone?
I wanted an animal because of the location, and bear is an amazing animal. It’s strong, and powerful. It’s here somewhere, when we come after the winter, you can see bear marks on the floor, but once we start working, there’s no wildlife approaching us. But we are in the middle of nowhere, so there are things in these woods. However bear is powerful animal, it’s also nice and fuzzy, just like the genre. And the stone is that cliff right over there, overlooking the main stage. So it’s a cliff, it’s a stone, it’s a bear. Bear Stone.
You mentioned that for the following years you would like to keep the volunteers. Do you have any other ideas which you would like to make, or change something for the future?
Absolutely. We plan to push it up every year a little better, give our visitors a chance to see something brand new here. For the next year I’m hoping of a second stage. I’m really not sure should we tie it to a specific genre or to a specific type of bands. Right here where we’re standing, I think that this would be a very nice path for a small day stage, overlooking the entire island. But I mean, we really have a lot of plans. For far future, once we reach a certain number of people, 5,000 visitors or something like that, that’s the cap that I would limit the festival to. Then we can approach it in various different directions. Graphic designers could do phenomenal artworks for many bands. I would like to give them an opportunity to showcase their work here. And what I would really like, is to have some proper music business deals done, at Bear Stone Festival. To have a young band approach, a graphic designer and over a beer, they make a deal together for their next album, that would really make me happy.
