What does your dream music festival line-up look like? For me, it’d include Lorde, Grimes, Jessie Ware, Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, and a slew of European dance artists. Luckily, the second weekend of this year’s Primavera Sound Barcelona featured all of the above, plus indie favorites Tame Impala, the Strokes, IDLES, Mdou Moctar, Brittany Howard, Genesis Owusu, and so many more. I flew to Spain earlier this month to catch the fest.

Eighty thousand people attended each day — way too many for Primavera’s grounds at the Parc del Fòrum — but despite the overcrowding, I had a wonderful time tromping from stage to stage and dancing till 5 a.m. Yes, 5 a.m.! Most events shut down by midnight in the Twin Cities, and local sound ordinances require outdoor sets to end by 10 p.m., but Barcelona parties until the sun comes up.

I wasn’t the only Minnesotan observing the differences between Primavera Sound and a typical First Ave show. Married couple James Taylor and Ashley Ryan, both of whom work at First Avenue in Minneapolis, caught the first weekend of this year’s Primavera festival (which suffered from much rockier crowding and queue issues than weekend two). Taylor is a booker at First Ave, and Ryan is the club’s vice president of marketing. Once we’d all landed back home, I called Taylor to learn about his time in Barcelona and his perspective on the grade-A line-up.

Hey! First of all, how long have you worked for First Avenue?

Since January 2017. Ashley and I moved here from Austin; she got hired by First Avenue first. I had a music venue in Austin called Holy Mountain, and I was running that for a few years [until] we closed it down in 2015. And then I spent 2016 touring in a band out of Austin [called East Cameron Folkcore], which included some European festival touring as well.

How many festivals do you usually go to per year, exempting the pandemic?

To be honest with you, Primavera was the first festival that I've bought tickets for. In Austin, I would go to Austin City Limits, and there was another festival called Fun Fun Fun Fest. But between Ashley and I — Ashley worked in radio in Austin — so we would get tickets to both of those festivals almost every year.

What about Primavera this year made you buy tickets?

Ashley had really wanted to go to Primavera for years and was always looking at the lineups. And it was summer of 2021: still deep in the throes of lockdown and dealing with COVID. We were like, “We have to have something to look forward to.”

And the lineup was really good. Even though, from the time we booked the tickets to the time the festival actually happened, that lineup changed a good amount. [Note: Many artists, including Massive Attack, Bikini Kill, Japanese Breakfast, and Kehlani, dropped out before the festival.]

As a booker — as somebody who does some of this for a living — what are you feeling when an artist has to drop out? Disappointment, obviously, as a music fan. But what else?

The morning after night one, I got on Twitter and was seeing some of the discourse on how people were feeling about the festival. Especially for Ashley, working in marketing, there's some amount of empathy for everyone. Because you know what it would be like to be on the receiving end of those crappy comments. As a booker, at this point, you just have come to terms with rolling with the punches of it, I guess. Bands are gonna have to cancel. It's just the world we live in, to some degree, right now.

It was interesting: A few days before the festival, Charli XCX canceled some Europe dates, because I think she needed to rest her voice. And our friends who were particularly interested in seeing her were like, “Oh, I hope she doesn't cancel Primavera as well.” And, as a booker, I was telling them, no, if I'd assume anything, it's she canceled their club dates because the club dates are probably easier to make up than if you cancel a festival.

I'd love to talk more about the music itself, too. Did you see anybody at Primavera who you're like, "We have to try to book them in Minnesota ASAP"?

Yeah, the coolest thing that I saw that I hadn't wasn't familiar with was Dreamcatcher, which was a Korean rock/metal/pop band. It was great. One of our friends who we went with is a big K-pop fan, so they were on her radar. They were great. They are actually playing in Minneapolis this summer, although it's another promoter doing that show. But I would love to book them in the future.

Slowthai was another one that was great that we haven't booked that I would like to work with. I just think he's fantastic.

I had hoped to see a few smaller bands and more music discovery, but then once you get to the festival and figure out the lay of the stages, it's not as easy to go watch 30 minutes of this and then 30 minutes of this and 30 minutes of this.

We saw Charli, who we just had at the Palace. And the National, which is coming up at Surly. It was cool to see them early in this new tour cycle for them. Wet Leg was another one. We had had [one of their first U.S. dates] a few months ago. I thought that show was really good, but it clearly felt like [an early] tour date. But then seeing them like a couple months later into touring — I thought their Primavera set was amazing. So tight, and they seemed much more comfortable on stage and performing those songs. I thought that was cool.

How would you describe your experience at Primavera overall?

Everything I had heard about the festival is that it's easy to get around, and there's not long waits for anything, and you can get really close to the bands you want to see. [But] then that first night, it was like two hours to get a drink, you know? So that cut into seeing some music. We were leaving Charli, and the crowd was coming in to see Tame Impala, who was up next, and there was a traffic jam of people. They had no one directing traffic. And it was scary for a minute.

It was great to see on day two how much they had course-corrected and figured some things out. They had more security and a better traffic flow, which was impressive to see. And, you know, obviously, being two people who work in the industry, you're a bit empathetic of the sleepless night a bunch of people probably had trying to figure out how to fix things the next day.

Obviously, they honored tickets from 2020 and 2021, and then sold more tickets, and I think they probably just didn't expect everyone to show up. But it was good. Also, having been to many festivals, but either in a working capacity or performing capacity, I just haven't been in the general crowd for a lot of festivals. So maybe I'm just not used to it.

Maybe. We bought VIP tickets, and that totally made a difference. But I don’t know, I read a recap of the festival on Spin, and the writer was like, “People were complaining about crowds and everything, but personally, I was fine.” They were backstage shaking actors’ hands or whatever. It's nice to remind myself that even if an industry person has a great experience, it's not necessarily the experience of the majority. About being an industry person: As far as you know, how is booking a festival different from and similar to booking the First Avenue venues?

I can't even fathom what it's like to book an international festival in what is still COVID times. When artists cancel, I can't imagine the stress of trying to get people to fill in. Obviously, we still have our challenges, with cancellations and turnout still not quite being what it was. But it's a whole lot easier booking small clubs.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.