by Danny Colman originally published on Rock On! This Week’s Sound Bites…5/1/25
“Marcia Ball, Terence Simien, Southern Avenue,” began Crawfish Festival founder and organizer Michael Arnone (Pronounced Ar-known-e) as he didn’t even scratch the surface of the line-up for this year’s May 30, through June 1 “32nd Annual Crawfish Festival” being held at the Sussex County Fairgrounds in Augusta, NJ.
Three days, two stages and countless bands are on tap to welcome those who love music, the outdoors and authentic Cajun food; imported from Louisiana.
Whether it’s Jambalaya, Crawfish, Vignettes or a host of other fabulous offerings from his home state of Louisiana, Arnone says there is nothing like it anywhere except back home in the bayou.
So, how does a gentleman from Louisiana start a crawfish festival in New Jersey?“In the mid-eighties, I was and still am a union electrician and we didn’t have much work in Louisiana. I’m from Baton Rouge and was living in Baton Rouge and the Hackensack local called our local and said, “Hey, we’ve got plenty of work” and I had way more of an accent back then. I knew New Jersey was kind of up in the corner, so I got an Atlas and I left on a Tuesday and got there on a Friday and started working up there as an electrician and you know, we get homesick; like if you go out of state, there is no good pizza, no good bagels; I didn’t even know what a bagel was (laughs). So, you get homesick and you want what you know, so I decided to rent this little pavilion, Suntan Lake on Route 23 in Butler, New Jersey and hired a couple of bands, put some ads out, printed 15-hundred tickets thinking, oh man, everyone is gonna come to this and we sold 70 tickets. We had jambalaya, boiled crawfish, beer and two bands I’d found locally. Everybody had such a great time and I’m like; you know what? I’m gonna try this again; it wasn’t something I grew up thinking about; I’m gonna own a festival when I get big and older, it just turned into something. The first year was 1989 and we’ve been doing it ever since except for a few years due to Covid. I tell people, it’s not The Rolling Stones, it’s crawfish in New Jersey and we’ll get almost 20,000 people. When we first started pre-email, people would call and say; “Where ya’ from?” I would say, “Baton Rouge” and they’d say, “Oh, we’re coming” and so, word got out to a lot of people from Louisiana who were living up here that this was the place to go once a year to have boiled crawfish and jambalaya. Then, you have so many people who love New Orleans and Lafayette that they started coming. So, it wasn’t something that I just dreamed up and said, “Oh this is what I’m gonna be when I grow up,” it just kind of happened and I’ve been fortunate, I really have.”
Taking great pains to recreate a true Louisiana atmosphere can’t be the easiest thing to do but when asked if the food and the music is authentic, Arnone, who was relaying this from his home in Louisiana, responded quickly and confidently.
“Without a doubt!” He snapped. “When I started this thing, I wanted it to be like a backyard party at my house. So, to this day, when we make jambalaya, I’m getting Savoie sausage from Opelousas, Louisiana, our Po Boy bread is Leidenheimer French bread from New Orleans, we’re using Camellia Red Beans, the Alligator sausage is coming from Louisiana, we grill that; we use Gulf shrimp and we use Louisiana crawfish tail meat for our crawfish Etouffee. So, it’s funny, I can be up there in a grocery store and nobody talks to me or smiles to me but once you walk through the gates, everybody has that same Louisiana vibe; it’s like family, it’s like, hey; how ya’ been over the past year? The next day, everybody goes and they just don’t talk to everybody like we do.”
“A lot of our bands from Louisiana will tour two or three times to the Northeast.,” he continued as he explained how he finds some of the “Down home” music he finds for the festival each year. “So,like Galactic, Galactic will have maybe two or three tours to the Northeast and what we’ll do, we’ll put out an offer in June or July and give them 90 to 120 days to confirm and what that does is give them time to route themselves up and route themselves home. So, we’re like the Macy’s in a mall, we’re the anchor and they’ll make money on the way up and on the way home. They may play a Monday night in a tiny club in Virginia, who knows? It’ll be gas money or hotel money but that’s how we’ve been able to do it. I’ll look around and see who is playing a Jazz fest, who is playing at Tipitina’s, at Maple Leaf and then I have a great relationship with the artists and the agents but mostly the agents. Years ago, Page Stallings called me and said, “I’ve got this lady, Samantha Fish and you need to hire her” and I said, “I’ve never heard of her” and she said, “You will.” So, I hired her and now, everybody knows her. Same thing with Trombone Shorty, when I had Trombone Shorty in 2009, he was ninth on the bill and now he’s playing with U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and probably not the Crawfish Festival anymore (Laughs). Which is good for him, I’m very happy for him, I really am.”
Obviously, from humble beginnings of only 70 sold tickets to crowds of around 20,000 is a huge difference and one that required a larger space. A space which Arnone is very happy with for the festival.
“Funny story (laughs), we were up at Suntan Lake in Butler, New Jersey and we outgrew it; I think they turned it into a Home Depot or a Staples and then we moved to Waterloo Village Concert Field for a few years and then in 2001, we found the Sussex County Fairgrounds. So, we’ve been there since 2001, it’s 130 acres, they are great people to work with, it’s just a great, great venue for us.”
Venue? Check! Ticket sales? Check! Bands? Check! Now, what about the food?
“Food is where we shine in addition to the music,” he explained. “We’ll have about 15-hundred people camping for the weekend. The campers will show up Friday starting at 10 (a.m.). We have five different campgrounds, so if you came to camp, we actually have a concierge service where they set up the RVs for you, so just bring your clothes and your toothbrush (Laughs). Friday night we’ll have free jambalaya for everybody camping. We’ll cook jambalaya in these huge 45 gallon cast iron pots; three pots will feed 15-hundred people. So, you can imagine; they’re nice size pots. Then, we’ll have three bands on Friday night just for the campers and then the gates open at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday and when you get there, we’ll have boiled crawfish. We’re boiling crawfish all day long and our pots are kind of unique; they’re two feet deep, four foot by eight feet and we’re boiling all of these crawfish alive. Sometimes, the kids want to come touch em and pet them and if they have a bucket, we’ll give’em one to take home. We’ll have charbroiled oysters, Alligator sausage; I’m flying my nephew up to cook the jambalaya in the big pots. We’ll have vignettes, Shrimp & Grits and we’ll also have hamburgers and hot dogs for the people who don’t want to eat spicy. You’ve got to remember, it’s not hot, hot food; it’s seasoned. Sometimes people use the word “Cajun” and they overdo it and just put a lot of cayenne pepper and that’s not what we are; it’s seasoned but not overly hot where it’ll burn your mouth.”
“We have vegetarian red beans and when we first started, we cooked it all in the same pot and just pulled the sausage out and called it vegetarian and people would say, “This is vegetarian?” We’d say, “Yeah, we scooped the sausage out for ya'” and we got a quick lesson on what vegetarian was and so, now we have two pots, one with meat and one without; what do I know? (Laughs) Jambalaya without a doubt is our best selling item. We’ll sell four to five-thousand plates in two days, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll sell a lot of crawfish, we’ll grill a lot of Alligator sausage, we’ll grill a lot of oysters; for the jambalaya, I’m shipping up 1,000 pounds of smoked pork sausage. The crawfish, my buddy will pick up Wednesday morning, alive and then he’ll go get the bread and drive them up. One of my drivers who has been with me since ’93, Doug, just passed and so, we’re using a co-transport company this year for some of the other stuff; the shrimp, the crawfish tail meat, the crawfish meat pies, they are like empanadas. We’ve got fried pork skins but we tell everybody there are no calories, we’ve sucked all of the calories out; bring your loose pants, that’s all I can say (Laughs). There is alcohol at the event, I like to say, “We’re a family event that likes to drink.” We’ll have Bud Light, some Smirnoff drinks, Twisted Tea, Sun Cruiser, Nutril is gonna be there, we’re gonna have a ready to drink margarita by Suburban which is new to us, so that’s brand new.”
Surely, with such enthusiasm about the eats, the food must rank at the top of Michael’s list of favorite things about the event; or does it?
“I would have to say, I love the load in,” he said with enthusiasm. “I love when it starts Tuesday morning. I love watching it go from a field to a fully functional festival and you’ve got people coming in, people you haven’t seen in a year; it’s like a high school reunion. Everybody is happy; I don’t go onstage, I don’t play in front of anybody but to know that you can make that many people happy at once, that’s a pretty good feeling that not everybody gets. I guess it’s the Italian in me. When we were kids, you’d go to grandma’s house and it was, “Let me cook” and I’d say, “Well, grandma, I’m not hungry” and she’d say, “It doesn’t matter, I’m gonna cook for you” and then you’d go in the other room and grandpa would say, “You ever think about losing weight?” (Laughs) Grandpa, she just cooked me half-a-pound of bacon, six slices of toast and four eggs (Laughs). My favorite menu item? It’s not the jambalaya; after you are cooking something for hours and hours, you just want to try something else. I love the fried chicken; here is the secret that we don’t tell anybody. We’ll go to the po-boy booth and get a catfish po-boy and don’t dress it; no mayo, no lettuce or tomato, then take it over to the Etouffee booth and have them pour the Etouffee over your catfish on the Leidenheimer French bread and that bread and the catfish just soaks up that Etouffee and usually people will share that and it is so good. I love the grilled oysters, I’ll do Vignettes in the morning; I just don’t like what I cook, it’s great but I want to try other people’s food. I gotta tell ya’, everybody loves to eat. When I went up there and I had a date; what would I make for her? Fried shrimp, that was my secret. I’d make a girl fried shrimp and she’d want to move in and marry me, it was that good (Laughs).”
Three days worth of music awaits festival goers which includes bands of different genres from all over the country, including popular Jersey Shore area band the Ocean Avenue Stompers whose big brass sound fits right into the atmosphere so, it’s a good thing that no expense is spared when it comes to sound quality and equipment.
“The music on Saturday and Sunday starts at 11:30 a.m.and we’ll have two stages. We have probably one of the best sound systems in the world, we have the L2; I’ll spend 40,000 dollars just on the sound because we want that to be great. You’re gonna notice if you go to a place and it’s bad sound and our two stages don’t overpower each other, they’re close but they don’t overpower each other, there is no bleed from one stage to another.”
As the Crawfish Festival turns 32, Arnone looks back and notices that it has become a generational event as families have grown and expanded right along with the party.
“Funny you should say that,” he laughed. “A guy who lives in Wallace, Louisiana named Damon, just reached out to me, his parents used to live in New Jersey and he’s going back up; his grandkids are now fourth generation coming to the Crawfish Fest and that blew me away. His parents who have passed, they started at Suntan Lake with me and now he comes up with his kids and his grandkids. We’ll have face-painting for the kids; we’ll have kids up to around 14 or 15 years old and then after that they don’t seem to wanna hangout with their parents, I know I didn’t. After that we’ll have them from 25 years old to 75 years old and the good thing about it is everything is flat. We’ve got some people in (Wheel) chairs, it’s kind of a big area, if we see someone walking with a cane, someone in a golf cart will most likely stop and say; you need a ride? We do that too, we try to make it easy for everybody.”
“Easy for everybody,” everybody but him and his crew as their work seemingly never stops. Arnone says that at the closing bell, the wheels are immediately turning for next year’s event.
“Sunday night,” he said seriously. “Sunday night while it’s still fresh in our heads, we’ll start taking notes, talking about it and what went well, what we can do to make it better and then I’ll take a day off in Jersey on June 2 and not talk to anybody. By that point, I’m pretty much dead, I’m out of adrenaline, I’m just shot. I’ll drive 10 miles to a hotel and sleep for a day, sometimes two and then I’ll head home and not talk to anybody for two weeks and then we start talking about the following year and then offers go out at the end of June to my headliners. I know who is selling tickets at Jazz Fest, Tipitina’s, Maple Leaf and Chickie Wah Wah and then I’ve got some agents that I work with and they’ll say, “OK Michael, look at her.” Some of them, I won’t even know but they know me well enough to know what I’m looking for and they know I don’t like to negotiate a whole lot so they’ll give me a price and either I like it or I don’t. I don’t like to play the game. I had a band one time start out at 30 (Thousand) and they came back and said, “Oh, we’ll take eight” and I’m like, “Nope, don’t need ya,” I’m looking for long-term relationships and not a home run. The good agents that I work with and I work with about 10 or 12, they know that good sweet spot and they’re gonna keep their musicians working, they’re not looking for a home run thinking I’m in New Jersey and I don’t know what I’m doing and it insults me when I know what you should be making and you ask for 30 and you come back and say you’ll take eight because you’re 30 didn’t stick; so now you want eight? Sorry, I don’t want to work with you.”
Tickets start at $45 for groups of 10 or more adults ages 14 and up and a single day ticket starts at $50 but Michael says that there is an extra “Special” VIP type ticket available.
“There is the King Crawfish Crew which is $275 and that gets you into the main stage photo pit and just for kicks, I threw a package on there that includes your own private golf cart and driver but nobody has taken me up on that yet. You never know, there are people up there that can do that. People have asked me if we had that; we do now. We do sell quite a few of the main photo pit passes, not a lot, I think we have 30 available. What we’ve learned is, a lot of other events won’t compete against us. I remember in 1994, this girl’s daddy asked me; “What are your goals?” I said, I want to have two days, I want to have The Neville Brothersand I want 10,000 people. I never had The Neville Brothers as The Neville Brothers but I did have all four play at different times so, I kind of hit my goal. I wanted to have Fats Domino one year but I never had him. I called because Fats could still play at the time and his agent laughed a little bit and said, “You know Michael, Fats is retired but he can be motivated (Laughs)”:and I started laughing and I said, “I probably don’t have enough motivation but I’m gonna use that the rest of my life.”
Over the three days, there are also acts such as Blues great, Carolyn Wonderland and others such as Galactic and Eddie 9V and to see who else and/or purchase tickets to what promises to be a fantastic three days, please visit https://www.crawfishfest.com/