Since 2012, the general manager has been passionately supporting the Breton festival, which in thirty years has become an unmissable summer event. They should still be nearly 300,000 from Thursday to Sunday, on the Carhaix site to acclaim some 70 artists.
We recognize him by his eternal white shirt in the concert halls where he breathes in the spirit of the times: Jérôme Tréhorel has been the stirring director of the Vieilles Charrues, a festival which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, for ten years.
“We welcome festival-goers as friends for a barbecue“, he likes to say. They should still be nearly 300,000 (270,000 in 2019), from Thursday to Sunday, on the Carhaix site (Finistère) to acclaim some 70 artists (Stromae, OrelSan, Midnight Oil, Ibeyi, Clara Luciani, Dinos, etc.). But the robust forties is not the style to rest on his achievements. Les Charrues, who were pioneers for cashless (the festival-goers’ bracelet is used as a means of payment), will offer this year a show of 400 drones every evening.
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Nothing predestined this Breton from Quessoy (where Bernard Hinault hung up the bike in 1986) to turn up the volume every summer. As a teenager, he listenedvaguely the music the neighbor was talking about“, as he tells AFP. He falls one day on TV on the English group Suede. First injection of the virus. Curious behind the scenes, the business student is volunteering at a festival in his region when someone says to him: “You seem nice and not too stupid, it would be good if you came to help out the Plows“.
Iggy Pop hops
In 1998, while attending a concert from the back of the stage at Les Charrues, he felt someone fidgeting, turned his head and saw Iggy Pop jumping to prepare his entrance. “I said to myself “that’s what I want to do”, not jumping (laughs) but working in festivals“. It will go through the press services, development of sponsorship and partnerships (“5000 VIPs, 250 clubs, people who want to be next to people who interest them in the economic fabric”) or communications. “And I was offered to be director in 2012 and since then I’ve been on perf (laughs). Festival organizer is a profession that does not exist in manuals, you have to know how to surround yourself with programming and orientation, know how to say yes or no and therefore know what we are talking about between accounting software or contract with a service provider Ticketing.»
As with other non-subsidized festivals, “a year is based on the preparation of four days“, unfolds this father of two children. Today, the Plows are “15 permanent employees; and during the event 7150 volunteers and 2500 employees hired by the festival and by service providers and suppliers“. For a budget which should this time exceed 18 million euros.
Activist
The last few years have not been easy for festival patrons between the 2015/16 attacks which increased security constraints, then the health crisis. This dirty period even ended up cracking the sacred union of festivals.
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Tréhorel was thus taxed by certain peers as “collaborator“, so-called vassal of the Minister of Culture at the time, Roselyne Bachelot. An image that does not stick for those who have especially seen him put his foot across the door to exchange directly with the minister. “I said to him “you don’t care, let them drool”. And Jérôme was at the end, he organized Charrues in 2021. Jérôme is an activist for the cause of festivals“, salutes for AFP Christophe Sabot, boss of Olympia Production. “The sector was supported during the health crisis, you have to say when it’s good», Comments Tréhorel soberly.
All the festivals have resumed this summer, but the director of the Plows has not yet put the worries away in the locker room. If his date fills up, he worries about his branch in a context “inflation“. There will be time to come back to this later. He looks forward to Thursday and the “first smiles from festival-goers“.