“Rockesha: The Hair is Back” promoter releases statement about cancelled show.

Facebook — The promoter for the “Rockesha: The Hair Is Back” concert has come forward and posted a statement about the cancelled show. Rob Lyons  of Splat Entertainment LLC was the promoter and has taken full responsibility for its failure.

The event was scheduled early in 2014 and has been promoted for months. Online links had tickets being sold for $ 30.00 and VIP admission at $ 100.00 each. But sadly the fans who did buy tickets showed up to see Eric Martin (Mr. Big) play a short set for their paid ticket. After Martin‘s set the stage was set up with gear for the band Firehouse. The fans began to boo and grew concerned when nearly an hour passed and no sign of the next band.

Fans commented online that they watched crew members remove Firehouse‘s equipment and watched as equipment for Lita Ford was being replaced onto the stage. More time passed, no bands, and suddenly a public address statement was made the show was over.

In the last few days many comments were made online by the fans, and some of the bands. Now promoter Rob Lyons has come forward and given his statement posted below.

——————————————————————————–

Statement below is from the official ‘Rockesha’ facebook.

First off, I want to say that Warrant, Quiet Riot, Lita Ford, Firehouse, Eric Martin, Eddie Trunk, ARM Entertainment and the Waukesha County Fairgrounds had absolutely nothing to do with this debacle on Saturday.

I as the promoter of this event am entirely responsible, nobody else had a thing to do with this. There are people that are extremely upset and I do not blame them one bit. The fact of the matter is that we did not come close to the presale or day of show ticket purchases. It is on me to make sure that the bands get the rest of their money and because the concert did not meet expectations it put me in a very tough spot. Unfortunately, I was put in a bad situation by a business associate who I never had a reason to doubt as we had past dealings. On June 6th, this person was to meet me at a local fast food restaurant in Lake Country to hand deliver a cashiers check for $15,000.00. As I waited for over 3 hours with excuse after excuse from him, I realized this was not going to happen. I made a call to the police department in his area to press charges, later that night I received a call from someone claiming to be his father and telling me that this gentleman tried to take his own life, skeptical, I stayed on my path with the police. The officer actually called me back to verify that his father was indeed telling the truth. This so called “friend” of mine is currently sitting in a mental institution in the Madison area. I have friends that can verify this not to mention countless emails and texts.

At that point, I really only had 2 options, first was cancelling or rescheduling the show 2 weeks ago, that was not really a great option since I would lose over $41,750.00 in deposits already paid to the bands, stage, fairgrounds, etc. THESE WERE THINGS ALREADY PAID! The other option was to press forward and have the show and pray that we had a good walk up crowd. Well, 47 paid patrons the day of show killed any effort. I think a combination of things like weather, other parties played a part but once again, still my responsibility. We had a total of about 1,200 people there on Saturday via VIP and general admission, of those, the radio stations gave away roughly 500 tickets and VIP’s, sponsors also received tickets and VIP passes.

I have seen or heard a lot of things posted here, the fact is since January 1st, 2014 until the day of the show, we had just over $25,000.00 in paid tickets via Paypal, Groupon and in person cash, we also collected about $4,800 in sponsorships, both low. But we kept moving forward because everyone told me this state will wait until the last minute to purchase tickets, that was our hope, didn’t happen. So to those posting that there is “hundreds of thousands” unaccounted for, that is not the case. We spent almost $12,000.00 in advertising via 3 radio stations, paid prints, facebook boosts, etc. All of this information is verifiable.

What I need to do now is come up with a plan to start reimbursing all of the fans who had their weekends ruined over this. Nobody feels worse than I do, my heart aches for everyone, I had people that flew in for this and this fell apart, I will never be able to apologize enough. I will be pursuing legal action against my “friend” as I am sure a few of you are planning the same on me. For those out there posting that this was fraud, that is not the case. All we wanted to do was put together a great concert so all of you could have a great time.

I will do everything in my power to make this right but please bare with me as I figure this out and come up with a plan.

Rob/Splat Entertainment LLC

—————————————————————————

We’ve also pulled some comments and statements made by bands involved in this weekends show.

Metal Sludge
The Sludge Is Back