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Organizers of the Forward Music Festival hope for an even better weekend next year. - File photo

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More musicians, more nights, more fans and more volunteers. That's what Bessie Cherry wants to see at the second annual Forward Music Festival next fall.

She and the four other organizers of this past weekend's inaugural event haven't yet had a chance to debrief together, but they know one thing for sure: they want to do it again.

The Forward Music Festival, which gathered 72 music acts over two days in eight venues, was a "stellar" success, said Kyle Pfister, another organizer. After more than a year of planning, the reality of its success hit him Friday morning as fans started filtering into the Overture Center's lobby to pick up their general admission wristbands. That's when the weekend switched from planning mode to implementation mode.

Over the next 48 hours, he said he loved just eavesdropping on people's conversations around him -- hearing snippets like "Dan Deacon was the craziest night at the Majestic ever," and "Oh my God, did you see the Monotonix?"

Still, he added, "There's so much that could have been improved."

Cherry wants to involve more venues, like the Barrymore Theatre, and invite bands to design a showcase with their dream line-up. Having so many musicians in town is pretty average for any given weekend night in Madison, but "having us all do it together made it even better. I definitely think we'll add another day or another night. It just seemed to end so quickly," she said.

The weekend wasn't completely without heart attack-inducing moments of stress. Dillinger Four threw a monitor off stage ("They just got so caught up in the moment," said Cherry). A couple bands were late for their sound checks. And Killdozer's equipment didn't show up as planned, leading to frantic calls with the owner of the Guitar Shop on Atwood Avenue. (He was out of town for the weekend, but he arranged for a repairman to let them into the shop to get the equipment they needed.)

Cherry jokes that they'll need to get Segways next year to save them from all the running around -- "We were all so hot and sweaty."

One thing they're committed to keeping next year is the two-day general admission wristband, which cost $25 most of the summer and went up to $40 about a week and a half before the festival. They heard complaints from people who wanted to just hear one or two bands and resented having to spend money on a two-day pass, said Pfister.

But wristbands simply make sense, he said, because it allows people to check out lesser known bands for which they normally wouldn't spend $10 to $15 on a single ticket. Stars Like Fleas, for example, drew a crowd of about 300 people at the Orpheum Stage Door Theatre on Saturday afternoon, a crowd the band wouldn't normally have attracted on its own, he said.

They sold 1,504 wristbands in advance and about 300 more during the weekend as walk-in purchases at the High Noon, Majestic and smaller venues combined. This didn't generate enough revenue to break even, however.

"We all expected to lose even more money. No business is profitable in its first year," said Cherry.  "Between the five of us, we were able to come up with a couple different ways to come up with the money."

About 15 to 20 volunteers helped out with the festival, and Cherry said that the organizers successfully recruited university students who couldn't otherwise afford the wristbands.

"We arranged their (volunteer) schedules around the shows they wanted to see," she said. One student told them she was a big Mason Jennings fan, so they had her to do all the grocery shopping for hospitality preparations on Friday so that she could make Jenning's show on Saturday.

Some of the most vocal protestors ended up being the most supportive fans. Cherry recalled one guy who blew them off after he heard the price of the wristband, telling them "No way, that's ridiculous!" After they set him up as a volunteer, she noticed him out volunteering and enjoying himself at practically every show.

"That's what we wanted to do: make it accessible," she said.

Pfister is encouraging fans with suggestions or criticisms to help make the festival better next year, and "put their comments where their feet are and get moving."

Darwin Sampson, owner of The Frequency, one of the eight festival venues, said patrons were "very happy for the most part."

"At the Frequency we had some great performances by both local and regional acts. There were some rumblings about the ticketing system and some band wristband snafus, but overall the organizers ran a fairly tight ship. I certainly plan to be a part of Forward as long as they continue to put it on," he said.

Sampson sent an email to the festival organizers in the last couple days with a few pointers "as to how they might slim things down and make it better."

"I think the idea is there, now they just need to hone their process and make improvements as they go," he said.