We caught up with founder Jered Ardry concerning the realities of constructing a pageant from the bottom up, and the way he’s scaled the occasion with out shedding its soul.
Launching a music pageant in right this moment’s local weather usually requires deep pockets, main backing, or each. Jered Ardry, the founding father of Sound Haven, had neither.
When he launched Tennessee’s impartial bass pageant in 2018, he did it with just some hundred {dollars}, a handful of trusted relationships, and a perception that he might construct one thing significant. Eight years in the past, Ardry stated he had “minimal to no funds, and hopes and goals” in an unique EDM.com interview. However what he lacked in capital, he made up for in imaginative and prescient, grit, and a neighborhood able to help him.
In Sound Haven’s first 12 months, ticket gross sales lined the manufacturing prices. Consciousness unfold by grassroots promotion and ticket giveaways on-line, however Ardry stated the pageant’s inception relied on the energy of the relationships he constructed within the scene. “Because it was such a small occasion, we weren’t required to place many deposits down at first,” Ardry defined. “I had a very good relationship with the venue, and with some manufacturing firms by the reveals that I used to be throwing. It was by belief in my relationships that allowed me to leap into it with no need to place deposits down.”
That belief helped get Sound Haven off the bottom, however pulling it off was one other story. Its inaugural 12 months delivered highs and lows, forcing Ardry to navigate the pressures of being the pageant’s go-to drawback solver, operator, and disaster supervisor. “I performed a set on the first Sound Haven, and as I’m performing, a number of persons are coming as much as me and telling me about points and issues. It was extraordinarily demanding,” Ardry mirrored.
After the primary 12 months, as soon as the grounds cleared and the adrenaline wore off, one thing shifted. Ardry skilled a way of achievement in contrast to something he’d felt earlier than. “Seeing the suggestions from everybody actually made me understand, that is one thing I wish to do perpetually,” he stated. Ardry shared that the second Sound Haven really felt sustainable arrived in 2021. What started as a scrappy experiment step by step advanced into one thing with endurance. Regardless of operational turbulence, the pageant was a monetary success, receiving outpouring fan reward and validating each the idea and the years of reinvestment behind it.
“It made me understand that I had one thing that actually impacted individuals’s lives, and finally achieved the objective that I had got down to do. I simply needed to proceed leveling it up, evolving it, and bettering it.”
Credit score: Jered ArdryAs Sound Haven grows, Ardry stays centered on preserving the weather that made attendees fall in love with it within the first place. He says defending the pageant’s intimate, community-first ethos is non-negotiable, together with sustaining the “homie vibe, the ambiance of feeling snug and protected, the quick walks and the sound system tradition.” That final pillar is one in every of Sound Haven’s most defining traits. Its 2026 version will function three distinctive levels, plus a slew of renegades, every powered by huge sound programs tailor-made to the bass-heavy expertise the pageant is understood for.
Final 12 months, the pageant boasted “the tallest Funktion-One subwoofer stack to ever be deployed in the USA,” as seen beneath.
This 12 months, followers can expertise crisp frequencies from top-tier sound programs, together with Funktion-One Vero VX and a wide range of customized rigs. In whole, the pageant usually hosts round seven extraordinary speaker arrays all through the grounds.
Past the music, Ardry says Sound Haven’s greatest evolution has occurred behind the scenes. The pageant’s progress, he feels, is most evident in its operational maturity and professionalism. “We’ve actually come a great distance in relation to being organized and producing the occasion in a fashion that’s protected and comfy for everybody,” he defined.
Even with that progress, Ardry is fast to dispel the romanticism usually connected to operating a pageant. What attendees expertise as magic is constructed on an immense quantity of unglamorous labor.“It has been extraordinarily difficult to be an impartial pageant on this economic system,” Ardry stated. “Via seven years of Sound Haven, only some have been worthwhile. It’s been powerful to proceed. Nevertheless, by our companions and thru Sacred Hive’s present income, we’ve continued reinvesting in it as a result of we imagine within the imaginative and prescient and wish to see it profitable.”
For Ardry, that imaginative and prescient has all the time prolonged far past placing on a weekend of music and tenting. He hopes Sound Haven finally turns into a spot remembered not only for its units, however for the best way it impacts its neighborhood.
“I might love for Sound Haven to be one thing that folks look again on as an expertise that modified their lives, formed their path and made them impressed to pursue their very own goals, whether or not that’s DJing, dwell portray or performing,” Ardry stated. “I’ve had so many individuals inform me that it modified their lives, or they met the love of their life at Sound Haven and acquired married. These issues make all of the laborious work value it.”
Whereas the total lineup has but to be introduced, Detox Unit, YDG, Ott., and Casey Membership have already been confirmed. Sound Haven will happen July Thirtieth-August 2nd, 2026, at Jaceland in Tracy Metropolis, Tennessee. Tickets are on sale now and may be discovered right here.
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