THE RECORD Online

Spring 2002

Rockin' for 25 Years

As the Agape festival reaches the quarter-century mark, the influence of Greenville College on the Christian music industry grows ...

Freshly harvested grass still perfumes the air as semi trucks lumber down the dusty road, their contents awaited by an eclectic group of people. They have gathered at the far end of a race horse track, but the real race will be against time. They now have less than 24 hours to convert these fairgrounds into a vortex of rock and roll. As the trucks are unloaded, a structure begins to take shape. Burly roadies, football players and scrawny musicians all labor under the crisp sunshine as a large, black rectangular stage is constructed on the field. Metal girders grow from its four corners, and racks of something are slowly hoisted up them into the sky. Something . . . yes, lights. Hundreds of lights. And speakers. Monolithic sub-woofers fan out from the sides of the stage. The crews work well into the night, erecting a makeshift outdoor amphitheater. Bundles of cables and wires, hundreds of feet of snow fence, vendors of corn dogs and funnel cakes – an energetic village grows from the pastoral fields.

Six thousand teenagers, young adults and the young-at-heart pack the dark between snow fencing in front of the stage. The performances started hours earlier, but this audience mills around patiently for the night’s main attraction. To pass the time, some of the teens adorn themselves in mud – well, mostly mud – these are fairgrounds, after all. The drum beat rattles windows in houses within a half-mile radius as it has for most of the day. The lights shower the stage in colors, and the place erupts in a cacophony of bass, guitar, song and exhilaration. Another Agape Fest has begun.

Or at least, it will begin again in May. And months worth of work have culminated that way, more or less, for the last 25 years.

On a cold, sunny day in mid-January, Duke Hampsch heats up a bowl of Spaghetti-Os in the Agape office at Greenville College. Dressed in khakis and a golf shirt, he would not stand out in a crowd of average students. Judging from his brown hair, you would never deduce his lineage: his older sister and brother, GC grads themselves, have red hair. Like Duke, now in the throes of organizing a major concert, older brother Chad Hampsch was director of Agape in 1999. And sister Becky (Hampsch) Brannon served as director of hospitality in 1996 — the same year Duke, age 16 at the time, volunteered to help his sister at the festival. He was given the all-important position of manning a horse trough full of cold drinks for the performers.

“It was my job to reach in there so they didn’t have to,” he says. “Not that I’m bitter about it.”

Five years later and now he’s the one with the authority to task others to get their hands cold. But at the moment, Hampsch is just trying to eat his lunch. Outside the office door, student guitarists practice their riffs. Those are the necessary distractions, laments Hampsch, when you have to share the Upper Union with college lab bands (their former home having been demolished to make way for a new dormitory and parking lot). With fork halfway to his mouth, the phone rings. “You don’t mind if I get this?” he asks. “This is one of those big-time music people.”

In fact, it’s a booking agent for a band Hampsch wants to secure for the upcoming Agape. Like a seasoned fast-talker, Hampsch lays out his proposal, and then arrangements to, well, be in touch. “I don’t know if we could spend that much money on them,” he says.

The Spaghetti-Os remain untouched.

Such is the life of the director of the region’s premier Christian rock festival. And it’s behind these walls that the real work, and the real learning, takes place, said Hampsch. Oh, the actual Agape event is challenging, to be sure. But it’s here that Hampsch, and a quarter-century’s worth of directors/coordinators before him, have cut their teeth in the music industry. It’s no surprise to Hampsch that many of his predecessors have gone on to top positions in that business.

Chaz Corzine was called into the dean’s office during the fall of his freshman year at GC, in 1976. He said he found the dean of students, Del Catron, and senior student Chris Marsh. It seems Marsh “had this idea about a Christian music festival,” said Corzine.

The elder student had already signed a few bands, but was running into some problems promoting the fledgling event.

“He admitted he didn’t have a clue what he was doing,” said Corzine.

Catron knew Corzine had a background in music – he grew up helping promote concerts – and asked for his help. The flyers went out, the posters went up, and in the spring of 1977, Agape made its debut. During that first event, there were five bands and a guest speaker, said Corzine. Headlining the festival were musicians Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill, still well-known artists in the contemporary Christian music industry.

“Everybody had a lot of fun, nobody got hurt, and we made a little money,” he said.

The next year, Corzine, a youth ministries major, took over the helm of Agape and ran with it for the next two years. He also organized about four concerts annually at the college. And in the process, he said he learned the skills that would form the foundation of his future career.

“In the four years I was in GC, I met everyone in the music business,” he said.

After graduation, he took a job as a booking agent in Atlanta, Ga. Now, he is part-owner of Blanton, Harrell, Cook and Corzine, the Nashville-based agency that manages such artists as Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and author Frank Peretti.
“It’s a relationship business,” said Corzine. “It’s who you know. That’s absolutely what God called me to do, and GC gave me good preparation.”

Corzine said Agape never lost money in its first six years of existence. But that changed. And in 1986, when Michael Scanland became coordinator, he said the Agape staff was given an ultimatum by the college: break even, or Agape is through.

“It ended up being all right,” said Scanland, who had been raised in a musical family and had organized several smaller concerts on campus.

Scanland was a biology and chemistry major, but he hadn’t decided on a career. After his senior year, and his stint as Agape head honcho, he opted to become a concert promoter. Six months after graduation, he opened his own business, Michael Scanland Productions. To make ends meet, he also waited tables. But his business grew larger and larger, to the point that he sold it to Nashville-based Jam Productions, the largest independent producer of concerts in the country, secular and Christian. Scanland heads his own division at Jam Productions, which puts on about 1,200 concerts a year. Of those, he oversees about 300, half of which are Christian. He also works with pop artists Brittany Spears, O-Town and Aaron Carter.

“Agape taught me a lot about business, whether Christian music or not,” said Scanland. “It’s what I do every day – the same principles, the same concepts.”
Agape has continued to flourish since then, and other directors of the event have gone on to bigger things. Like Michelle (Fink) Wright, who graduated from GC in 1990. She served as assistant coordinator in 1989, and then as director the next year. She said she had attended the festival for many years, even before she was a student.

“Before I did Agape, I wasn’t sure what my career goals were,” said Wright. "Agape was the one turning point that set my professional path.”

She’s been in the music industry ever since. The majority of her career has been spent in marketing for Reunion Records. For three years, she worked with Corzine at his company. And last November, Wright and her husband, Eric, formed their own business, Wright Management, in Nashville. Already, they manage recording artists Rachael Lampa, Cindy Morgan and Natalie Hemby.

“It was something we had been thinking about, building our own future, on our own terms,” said Wright. “And I learned the basics of the music industry through Agape. It was very practical education. It was ‘Music Industry 101.’”

For Duke Hampsch, Agape is his reason for attending GC. “Agape is why I’m here,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of it. That was my dream – to be director of Agape.”

During his freshman year in the fall of 1999, Hampsch was appointed director of logistics, but was soon promoted to co-coordinator of the main stage, where “everything happens.”

He held major roles with the festival since then, and now is charged with helping almost 50 college students under him produce a major music event. And that doesn’t include the hundreds of other volunteers his staff recruits to facilitate everything from security to overnight camping to publicity.

“They vary from buying duct tape to making flyers to send to 70,000 people,” he said.

Hampsch himself has two main responsibilities: to find out who the good bands are, and to sign them up. Then, it’s everyone’s job to get the audience through the gates. And they have an annual budget of about $200,000 to do it.

“If we don’t have a good lineup, no one will come. But we can have a great lineup, but if no one knows, no one will come.”

From the first staff meeting on Nov. 6 to the time the festival begins, Hampsch asked each staff member to pray for Agape for three minutes a day. He figures that the event will have about 30,000 minutes of prayer behind it come May 3-4.

The week prior to Agape is spent making sure the Bond County Fairgrounds in Greenville are ready for 6,000 people.

“All 47 staff people are shoved right in, they have the opportunity to make themselves,” said Hampsch. “It’s such a thrill to see this thing we’ve been working on the whole year come together.”

And what has he learned during his time as director?

“Leadership is about giving things away, letting other people take a chance,” he said, noting he has only allowed himself to make ten major decisions about the festival. The rest, he has delegated to someone else. That’s the main thing I’ve learned – dealing with people.”

After graduation, Hampsch, a youth ministries major at GC, hopes to keep “organizing these types of events to reach a larger number of kids,” he said.

Perhaps his experiences with Agape have prepared him for working with teens in more ways than he yet knows: both roles require one to be able to function on minuscule amounts of sleep. Agape officially ends about 11 p.m. on a Saturday, but crews work straight through the night tearing down and cleaning up. “For me, it’s exhausting because I haven’t slept all weekend anyway,” said Hampsch.

On Sunday, the Agape staff sleeps – finally. Within a week, the fairgrounds show no physical evidence of the previous weekend’s antics. Already, staff have started organizing the next festival. And one can still almost feel the pulse in the ground at the Bond County Fairgrounds. Like it has for 25 years, Agape never really ends.

It just hibernates.

View more information on the Agape Music Festival...

Last updated: March 19, 2002