Rob Kellas might just have the best job in the world.
Over the last 16 years, the Yorkshire, England native has built a career out of going to some of the world’s most famous (and not so famous) music festivals. Once there, his job is straightforward: he has a blast with his mates, films the shenanigans they get into and then uploads the results to YouTube (after doing some intensive editing, of course).
If this all sounds way, way too fun to you to be a real job then, well, join the envious club.
But the enterprise, which is known as TPDTV, has developed a devoted following of fans who now routinely tune in by the hundreds of thousands (and sometimes the millions) to watch Kellas and his buddies live the dream at festivals (and increasingly other events) from Tokyo to Tennessee.
Now, Kellas is returning to one of his favorite events, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which he is heading to for the fifth time.
As Kellas was en route to the desert ahead of the start of Weekend 2 on Wednesday, April 16, The Desert Sun spoke with him by phone to hear about his time-tested festival tips, most anticipated Coachella sets and why he thinks TPD TV will always try to come to Coachella. His responses have been edited for clarity and length and published below.
TDS: What advice do you have for doing Coachella ‘right’?
RK: So, the biggest thing for us that we kind of consider doing it right so to speak is taking advantage of the camping that’s there. I know that might not be for everyone, but for us, the beauty of a festival is like stepping out of reality and into like a temporary world where you get to exist free of all the real world and just stresses and anxieties and frustrations.
When you camp at the event, you’re just constantly living in it. You wake up and you’re there straight away and I think that’s really a way to get the most out of the festival. You’re surrounded by good people. You’ve got brand-new neighbors for the weekend. Everyone looks after each other. There’s loads of amenities and activities on in the campsite, and it just kind of lets you buy into the world and the event.
That’s not just with Coachella, but with any major festival. So, we really lean into that. It also saves a lot of money because hotels are very, very expensive on the weekends that Coachella is on.
What artists are you most looking forward to seeing?
There’s four of us traveling over from England, and collectively, I think the person we are most looking forward to is probably Justin Bieber. Which isn’t something that is normally strictly in our rotation, but it’s not often you get to see such a mega star. And given his kind of divisive Weekend 1 performance, we’re really excited to see what that’s like in real life.
We also love Turnstile, that’s one of our favorite bands collectively, and we’ve been lucky enough to see them across the world in few different venues, and they just rock so hard. I don’t know how they make their guitars just sound so crispy and hard rocking, but we’re really looking forward to seeing them.
The good thing about Coachella and the way it differentiates from a lot of festivals is it’s such a diverse lineup. There’s not many festivals where you have like a Sabrina Carpenter and a Justin Bieber and then bands like Turnstile or like Drain and that kind of heavier stuff. There’s a band called Hot Mulligan that we’re looking forward to seeing, which is kind of like a punky-type rock band.
What’s different about your Coachella trip this year?
We normally fly into LAX and then it’s the drive straight to Indio, straight to will call. Then the next morning it’s Day Zero (when campgrounds open on the day before the festival begins) and we always end up really burned out. Sometimes we even have to have a little nap, which some people might laugh about, while we’re at the event.
But this time we were like, OK, well we’ve learned from experience. Let’s build in an extra day for ourselves and we’ve got this extra day now where we’ve got to kind of take things a bit slower, eat a bit better. Just building the time to rest and relax a little bit because when you are there, chances is you’re going to be all over the place. You’re going to be running between stages.
There’s quite a lot of (lineup) clashes this weekend for a lot of people from what I’ve seen in online discourse and stuff, so people are going to be running from stage to stage. So take any time and any opportunity you can to rest up a little bit and stay hydrated, stay well fed, get some vegetables in you, get some vitamins in you, just listen to your body and what that needs, stay protected from the sun. Just the basics really.
What part of the festival can people skip?
Some people absolutely would never skip this, but what I’ve learned is probably skip the merch queues. There’s some great merch at Coachella, and I know particularly in the US we find that like merch for bands and gigs and shows and stuff, it’s way more coveted over here by the Americans it seems than it is by us Brits. We might buy a t-shirt at a show in the UK but over here it seems almost a bit more like a fashion choice. The merch is a lot better, generally, over here.
But we’ve made the mistake before where we queue for two hours in the merch stand all to find out that maybe one of the sizes that we needed wasn’t in stock. I would say, if you really want the merch, then get it pre-ordered or after the event (from the Coachella website). Because there’s so much to see artist wise, when are you going to build in that potential two-hour window to queue up?
Why do you keep coming back to Coachella?
(Coachella) can get a reputation for being this fake kind of facade of people aren’t there for the music, they’re there to be seen, they’re there to dress up, they’re there because a brand has sent them. And that’s a lot of the messaging that we get overseas. But when you’re there, and you see the real people of Coachella that have maybe been going for 3, 4, 5, 10 years, you realize that it’s such a great community.
There’s meetups there for everything from people that use the Coachella Reddit to last week there was a meetup for people [named] Ryan and a load of people called Ryan got together and stuff like that. We were kind of disappointed they’re not doing that this weekend because we’ve got a Ryan with us.
But yeah, it’s just so positive. It’s like: ‘Does your neighbor need a drink? Do you want to drink from us? Do you want to chat? Where you guys from? Whereabouts are you from?’ This, that and the other. It’s not just for us because we’re from a bit further afield, everyone seems to be like that with everyone. It’s just a wonderful place that just radiates like good vibes, and that’s what we’re all about.
We’re just coming out of the winter, the dark nights and stuff, and it’s quite a miserable time for a lot of people with seasonal depression and stuff like that. So, coming to like a massive major event like this (with) such a diverse lineup, great weather and great people, great food, it just can’t really be beat, man. And I don’t think we’ll ever stop coming as long as we’ve still got the facilities to get here, I think we we’ll do it indefinitely.
What makes Coachella stand out from other festivals?
We have a festival called Download Festival in England, and it’s probably England’s best, I think, in terms of like major full-scale four-, five-day event with camping and this, that and the other. But it always comes with a heavy serving of rain usually, so you’re never quite as comfortable as you’d like to be, and you need to prepare for the extremes. It is not really in Coachella’s control obviously, but the weather’s a massive thing for us, and just like the natural setting as well.
We wake up, we sleep in a camper van with a tent box on the roof, so whoever’s lucky enough to be in the roof that night you open it up and you see the mountains surrounding you in Indio, and it’s just like something off a desktop wallpaper background or something. It’s just so, so beautiful.
On what Coachella can learn from European festivals
So, a lot of the changes Coachella’s made in the last few years, they’ve kind of put it a bit more in line with some of the European stuff. I remember Coachella used to be famous for having restricted drinking areas, back in 2022 and before that. For us as Brits and people that go to a lot of festivals in mainland Europe, that was really jarring for us, and that was something that us across the pond were really aware of about Coachella that you can’t take your drinks wherever you like. Obviously, Coachella’s made that change and now that’s kind of no longer a thing.
I do think in America, generally, your prices are a lot higher. I don’t want to talk really negative but it is a fact that, at least in my experience, you want to be budgeting probably twice as much when you’re over in the states just for your drinks and your food and stuff like that. It’s not exactly cheap in the UK and in Europe. There’s definitely like premium on it when you’re at an event but the premium seems quite a bit higher over in the US.
Coachella is far from the worst for it, we’ve been to many (festivals) in America that are a lot worse than that, but that is something that I’d love to see maybe make it a bit more accessible for people. Because for my first 10 years of going to these events, I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it to Coachella just because of the high barrier to entry with cost. Thankfully as we got a bit older, we’ve kind of been able to make it work. But when I think about going to festivals in England back when I was 17, I’d hate to think that some 17-year-old out here would be priced out of a lot of the things they’d like to do. So that would be something I’d love to see, I don’t know how that would work, but I would love to see some movement there.
How are you feeling going into this weekend?
We come from England and we love England and we love being at home, but very few places fill us with a feeling of excitement and joy like being in this valley. As soon as we get here and we’re on the road, it is just such a privilege to be here, and it’s just a lovely place you guys have got and we’re blessed to share the space with you for a weekend.
Paul Albani-Burgio covers growth, development, business and, sometimes, music festivals in the Coachella Valley. Email him at paul.albani-burgio@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Face of YouTube’s TPD TV says you should skip this thing at Coachella
Reporting by Paul Albani-Burgio, Palm Springs Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
