Setup begins for BamaJam

COFFEE COUNTY — Infrastructure is quietly getting installed – signs painted, water pipes laid and covered, limbs trimmed, and electrical lines hooked up.

Less than 24 hours before the first band kicks off Thursday afternoon, hundreds of laborers, vendors and technicians go about their jobs at a steady rate, working quickly at a determined pace.

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Their task is a heavy one: to prepare a 1,200-acre site for potentially 150,000 or more music fans who started arriving before mid-day Wednesday for the second annual BamaJam Music and Arts Festival in rural Coffee County.

There is controlled urgency and no one is looking to the skies, even though there is a good chance of rain Thursday.

“We are working right up to finish time,” said Billy Graham, vice president at Ronnie Gilley Enterprises.

A quick walk around the hub of operations between the BamaJam Saloon and the Main Stage reveals this is a bigger and better BamaJam. There are more vendors, more sponsors, more music, more stages, more camping and just as many more good times to be had.

“There is no question it is bigger and better,” said BamaJam founder Ronnie Gilley. “Last year was great and we will continue to expand each year. The excitement is absolutely in the air. You can feel it on the premises.”

As workers continue to set up the huge main stage, Gilley calls this year’s line-up of entertainers “amazing.” Attendance should be high with Taylor Swift, the Black Crowes, Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn and Kid Rock on the lineup, even in these tough economic times, Gilley said.

“It will be a spectacular event … and considering the economic circumstances, it just drives home the fact that entertainment can refresh the mind, body, spirit and soul,” he said.

As he looks over the activity, Gilley notes this event is putting people to work, and is expected to generate more than $300,000 in public tax dollars.

“We are excited there are people out here working today who didn’t have a job two weeks ago,” he said. He estimates 300 to 500 workers are involved in setting up and putting on the event.

In a year’s time, festival organizers have better planned for the ‘what ifs.’

Glitches from last year, like dwindling water supplies, have been resolved, perhaps in two ways. The forecast for the weekend is for highs in the mid-80s as opposed to the upper 90s of last year. Saturday is expected to be a sunny 86 degrees.

Also this year, a local water bottler signed on as a BamaJam sponsor.

Malone Garrett of Nantze Springs water of Dothan said his company is supplying 72,000 bottles of private label water in souvenir bottles bearing the BamaJam logo and pictures of Kid Rock and Brook & Dunn.

“We are not going to run out of water,” Garrett said. “Last year they used 2,500 cases and there will be 3,000 cases on site this year. If we run out of the BamaJam label, the Nantze Springs label will be available.”