Q&A: X-Fest originator looks back, ahead

You never know what might happen when you put on a mammoth music festival.

Chris Ricci has seen it all and then some in his decade running the Xclamation Festival in downtown Modesto.

The event, which usually features about 50 bands, has drawn an attendance ranging from 7,500 to 15,000.

Ricci has dealt with undependable security crews, poorly designed beer gardens and overexcited heavy metal fans. He also has had the pleasure of seeing big-name national acts come to his hometown.

As he prepared to open the 10th X-Fest on Saturday, Ricci sat with The Bee to share some of his memories, talk about what's worked and what hasn't, and discuss his goals.

Q: What was your favorite year of X-Fest?

A: Last year, because I got to have some of my personal favorite bands on the show — Pepper, Expendables. There was something for everybody.

Simple Plan was there, and they were great. It was exactly what X-Fest is supposed to be — a little bit hip with some bands maybe that aren't on the radio that are big, and some great bands that are well known nationally as well.

Q: Tell me about the first X-Fest, in 2000.

A: The first year of X-Fest was pretty amazing. So many good and bad things happened. It was so spontaneous. We went from two days before the event, having no tickets sold, to the day of the event, having a line of 5,000 people trying to buy tickets.

That was back when (Modesto band) Flying Blind was starting to blow up and just before they got their record deal with Universal. Their performance that night was amazing — watching the crowd erupt when they were on the stage and (bass player) Andrew Franca coming out in a thong.

We hired this security firm out of the Bay Area, and about halfway through the event, they had enough, so they all left. I talked to the police, and my recollection is that the police called in every police officer to come in.

We ordered this beer booth from St. Louis that was built into a semi-trailer truck. So the X-Fest crowd comes in and it was set up so you walked in the beer garden, picked up your beer from a table and paid cash as you walked out. Instead of going to the cash register like you were supposed to, people would drink it there or they would take the beers, walk to the edge of the tent, hand them to their friends and not pay. It was just insane.

It didn't take long for that to get a little bit out of control, so we ended up shutting down the beer at 9 (p.m.), which made any person who wanted a cocktail have to go to the bars and restaurants, which had no idea what X-Fest was and were not prepared in any way, shape or form for the event. So they didn't have enough of anything, so everyone sold out of every single thing they had everywhere. There was not a drop of refreshment left downtown.

Q: Tell me some other X-Fest memories.

A: Second year was an interesting year for X-Fest. We did 80 bands that year on 10 stages. My goal was to do 100 bands, but it didn't work at all. I noticed this pattern of the people congregating down the middle of J Street just kind of hanging out avoiding all the stages because the bands I had booked were not popular enough. The crowd just wasn't into it. The next year, it wasn't about how many bands we had, it was about bringing in good bands.

Another X-Fest memory was the year Built played (2001) — one of the last years the State Theatre was involved with the event. We had all the hard-rock bands in the State Theatre. Built at the time was really one of the hottest hard-rock bands in the valley, a really talented band. They did one of the most inspired performances I ever saw. They were just completely off the hook. They went into their hit song, and the crowd just went bananas.