Feast to Fiasco: Sunday Breaks make money, then lose it all (and more)
In honor of Stevie Nicks' 76th birthday, let's revisit a pair of fests that bookended the summer of '76
After ZZ Top’s “First Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barn Dance and Bar B.Q.,” featuring Santana, Joe Cocker and Bad Company, practically destroyed the football field at Memorial Stadium two weeks before the home opener, the big rock festivals moved to where there was not much to damage. On May 2, 1976, a twenty-eight-year-old first-time promoter from Dallas named Win Anderson and financial backer Jack Cooper, who owned Houston tire stores, drew a crowd of 56,000 to a big field near the intersection of Hwy 290 and I-35 for a “Sunday Break” concert with America, Santana, Peter Frampton, Gary Wright, and Cecilio & Kapono. Booking Frampton for middle act money, then watching his Frampton Comes Alive album become a monster as the festival approached, was a grand slam for Anderson’s Mayday Productions, which split a profit of $120,000 with Cooper.
That was easy, let’s do it again!
Scheduled just four months later, on the Sunday before Labor Day ’76, “Sunday Break II” hoped to attract 100,000 fans to the much-bigger Steiner Ranch near Lake Austin, with a bill of Chicago, Fleetwood Mac, the Band, Steve Miller Band, England Dan and John Ford Coley, and Firefall. Tickets were $10 in advance and $12.50 at the gate ($50 and $60 in today’s money) for that lineup, but with only one two-lane road leading to the site, traffic backed up for over ten miles and only 6,000 tickets were sold at the gate. Total paid attendance was just 28,000, but many of those never made it. The only option was to ditch your car and walk several miles, but it’s hard to fully appreciate “Landslide” and “The Joker” with a tow truck on your mind.
It was even harder for Anderson and Cooper to enjoy the festival when they paid the bands over $400,000 (Chicago got $210,000), against total ticket sales at around $350,000. The Band made $50,000, but they had to cancel the next week’s shows because keyboardist Richard Manuel suffered a neck injury on Lake Austin when a speedboat he was riding in hit a wave.
Promoters lost nearly half a million dollars, and stiffed day workers on their three dollars an hour wage.
For those who did get in, and acquired some immunity from the ninety-five-degree heat by having attended that year’s Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic in Gonzales, it was one helluva festival! Great performances from everyone, topflight production, plenty of room. Who cared that promoters were losing their asses?
Five lawsuits were eventually filed, including from the Houston bank that lent Mayday $415,000. Landowner Tommy Steiner received $10,000 upfront to rent his ranch, but was stiffed on the promised 10 percent of the gross.
As if it made a difference, Mayday blamed the financial fiasco on counterfeit tickets—70,000 in all! But those upstarts didn’t even keep ticket stubs. Going through the trash that hadn’t been hauled away, Texas consumer affairs officials found about 3 percent of the tickets—not 70 percent—were fake.
DPS officials had put the crowd estimate at 100,000, but they always pad those numbers to make themselves look more heroic in controlling the masses. An aerial photograph was examined by crowd-counting experts who estimated 24,000 were in attendance.
Mayday Productions filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was never heard from again. Their only concerts were the two that bookended the summer of ’76.
Covering the messy aftermath for Texas Monthly, Richard West found a curious incident in Win Anderson’s past. In 1973 he pleaded nolo contendere to the charge of setting fire to the Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas. He was a patsy, working for the building’s owner Aubrey Mayhew, a record producer and songwriter who discovered Johnny Paycheck, and started Little Darlin’ Records in 1966. Mayhew was also a Kennedy fanatic with dreams of turning the tragic building into a memorial. He was facing foreclosure when Anderson and accomplices poured gasoline and lit matches on five floors of the building in July 1972. The sprinkler system and nearby firemen put out the fire in twenty-four minutes, with damages of only $5,000. Mayhew was never charged in the arson, Anderson did only a few months in jail, and the building’s ownership reverted to D. H. Byrd.
There was one more music festival at Steiner Ranch, two weeks after SB II. The Bicentennial Outlaw Concert, starring Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tracy Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, David Allan Coe, and Marcia Ball, needed to sell 25,000 tickets to break even, but after the Sunday Break fiasco only 6,000 showed up. And that was it for concerts at Steiner.
I hitchhiked to Sunday Break 2 from College Station. Think I was 17? On 2222 me and a buddy were riding on the sideboards of a VW Bug which would swing from the ditch to the other lane to keep moving ahead. The finally came upon cops ahead and had to pull into the stopped traffic.
Me and my bud jumped off and “cut the corner” of 2222 and 620. It was rough going but we finally made it to the venue. Once we got there we discovered folks were using a colored marks a lot to mimic the dye the promoters were using to allow in and outs. That was the true counterfeit ticket. I bet I personally saw 50 people use it for entry!
Bicentennial Outlaw Concert is the one I attended. Since I was in radio at the time I got delivered by boat. Marcia was good.