Make or Break? Story of Two 1976 Sunday Fests
"Sunday Break" promoters took home $120,000 on the first, and went bankrupt on the second, just four months later
On May 2, 1976, a 28-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 “Sunday Break” festival in an Austin field near the intersection of Hwy 290 and I-35. The lineup was America, Santana, Peter Frampton, Gary Wright and Cecilio & Kapono. Booking Frampton for middle act money, then watching his Frampton Comes Alive album become a sensation as the festival neared, 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 for 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, Firefall and England Dan and John Ford Coley. Tickets were only $10 in advance and $12.50 at the gate for that lineup, but with only one two-lane road leading to the site, traffic backed up for over 10 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. It’s hard to fully enjoy “Landslide” and “The Joker” with a tow truck on your mind.
It’s was even harder for Mayday to enjoy the festival when they paid the bands over $400,000 (Chicago got $210,000), with total ticket sales at around $350,000. The Band made $50,000, but they had to cancel the next week’s show in Baton Rouge because keyboardist Richard Manuel suffered a neck injury the next day on Lake Austin when a speedboat he was riding in hit a wave.
Promoters lost nearly half a million dollars, and stiffed day workers who were making just $3 an hour.
For those who did get in, and were made immune from the 95-degree heat by attending the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic in Gonzales, it was one helluva festival! Great performances from everyone, top flight production, plenty of water and room to breathe. Sometimes the best shows are when the promoter loses his ass!
Five lawsuits were filed, including from the Houston bank that lent Mayday $415,000. Landowner Tommy Steiner received $10,000 upfront to rent his ranch, but not the promised 10% of the gross.
As if it made a difference, Mayday blamed the financial fiasco on counterfeit tickets- 70,000 in all! But these dummies didn’t even keep ticket stubs. Going through the trash that hadn’t been hauled away, Texas consumer affairs officials found about 3% of the tickets- not 70%- 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. Win Anderson passed away in Tennessee in 2017 at age 69.
Covering the messy aftermath for Texas Monthly, Richard West found a curious incident in Anderson’s background. In 1973 he plead nolo contendere to the charge of setting fire to the Texas School Book Depository building. Anderson worked for the building’s owner Aubrey Mayhew, a record producer and songwriter who discovered country singer Donny Lytle, changed his name to Johnny Paycheck, and started Little Darlin’ Records in 1966. He was also a Kennedy fanatic with dreams of turning the tragic building into a memorial. For whatever reason- and I have a hunch- Anderson and accomplices poured gasoline and lit matches on five floors of the building in July 1972, but the sprinkler system and nearby firemen put out the fire in 24 minutes. Damages were only $5,000. 1% of what Anderson lost at Sunday Break II, or 24% of what he made at SB I. Mayhew was never charged in the arson, but the building’s ownership reverted to D. H. Brand.
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 only 6,000 showed up.
Promoter Les Leverett blamed the bad publicity from Sunday Break II, with the Statesman headline a few days before the show predicting a gridlock repeat. Nobody wants to spend a Sunday stuck in traffic, missing the show. But the Outlaw fest had no such problems. Again, everybody had a great time, except the folks wearing barrels with suspenders at the end.
BONUS! My Personal Thoughts on Big Outdoor Concerts
We have a couple Scott Nelson photos of The Band at the SB2 show on our walls, including one of them leaving the stage and you can just see the eventual end of them as a band in their eyes.
Great article! Been seeing the zFleetwood Mac Sunday Break pics for years but never even knew what it was. One thing to note - in 2022 dollars, tickets cost $50 and workers’ hourly rate was $15. So writing “only $10” and “only $3” seems somewhat misleading.