Festival celebrates 10 years

On Memorial Day weekend, the Do LaB will take Bradley, California, by storm with its five-day Lightning in a Bottle Music Festival. This isn’t just any year though — the annual eco-friendly, electric dance music festival, started in 2006 by brothers Dede, Jesse and Josh Flemming will be celebrating its ten-year anniversary.

The Flemming brothers got their start from a party in the mountains, but have since grown significantly.  Do LaB Along with LiB, the trio also hosts a soundstage at Coachella. Dede said they didn’t have a long-term goal in mind when they launched LiB, but are happy where they have ended up — as more than just a music festival.

“We wanted to focus LiB more towards conscious living, but we wanted it to be a balance,” Dede said. “We’ve been really good about providing great music and also making the festival eco-friendly and offering classes on cooking, yoga and meditation. We didn’t want the focus to just be about partying.”

It seems to be working. Dede said many attendees tell him that the festival changed their life and perspective.

“I can’t speak to why or how this festival is transformative to its goers, everything about it is a very personal experience. We’ve created a unique platform that allows people to express who they really are,” he said. “They get to experience other people and new friendships bloom in new ways they certainly aren’t used to. We are giving them room to be exposed to what else is out there, and it’s always something positive. There naturally isn’t any negativity or judgmnts on our festival grounds.”

The festival has not only affected festival goers, but also the lives of its founders.

“This has been my life for the last 10 years,” Dede said. “I’ve worked incredibly hard with my team day in and day out, and I’ve been more involved with the business side of things. After working so hard and for so long, you start to lose sight of what you’re doing it for. Its so much work and the goal can often get foggy. The only thing that snaps me back and reminds me what I do this for is the people that come out to these events and hearing about their experiences. After one person tells me, ‘This changed my life and I’ve never been happier,’ is when everything just clicks.”

Not everyone is always comfortable when first entering the festival. Along with festival returners are a group of new people often not entirely sure they know what they are getting into.

“It’s neat to see people open up. When we have these newcomers enter the festival and are a bit nervous to begin with, we watch how the majority of everyone else rub off on them and open them up,” Dede said. “We keep converting just a few more people each and every year, and we see the difference it makes in their lives after.”

Those who are converted are joining a community of equals — Lightning in a Bottle does one thing differently that not many festivals agree with: there’s no VIP area. Flemming believes removing a VIP area from the grounds is what helps build the community. There’s an importance in building a residency for the weekend with people who are willing to live together.

“You can’t build a community if we have segregation. We are all one, and we are all here to celebrate,” Dede said.