It's a quagmire iced with sheep poop, and a squall has just passed through on this brooding midwinter day.

I'm visualising somewhere warm and dry. But Paxton Talbot is visualising a massive main stage flanked by 50,000W speaker stacks, a headline act booming out and around 12,000 'happy, kind people”.

Paxton Talbot on the site of the McLaren Falls Music& ArtsFestival. Photo: Tracy Hardy.

'Just on the other side of the fence, in front of that tree line and sheep. A tent city sweeping up that slope for people who don't mind a bit of noise and cars over there.”

He paints the picture well and the imagery is intoxicating, especially when you weave in a balmy summer eve and the sun being swallowed by the Kaimais.

Paxton is the face and name behind the McLaren Falls Music& ArtsFestival.

'Ah – no! I'm legally locked into not being able to tell you the programme… yet.” Okay, but who would he choose above everyone else to be at his first ever MFMF. 'Springsteen,” he replied without hesitation. The Boss himself. Is he serious?

Paxton Talbot. What a moniker. You couldn't have manufactured a better name for an impresario.

'Paxton, warrior of peace in Latin,” he explains. His parents were hippies.

And Talbot. It's French, pronounced ‘tell-bo', one of the 12 knights who came over with William the Conqueror in 1066.

One thousand years later the Anglicised ‘Tall-bot' is standing there in a soggy paddock, jeans tucked in his socks, looking very un-entrepreneurial and but exuding reassurance.

'We wouldn't be putting on this event and we wouldn't be expecting to generate the revenues necessary to make it financially successful if we were programming artists that people didn't know or haven't charted well in New Zealand.”

He chucks the word ‘model' around a lot. There's a desire for this model, there's a market for this model and there's an interest in this model.

‘The model' is an internationally renowned music and arts festival where the programme is broad and appealing to a very broad range of people.

'It will be unpretentious.” How can a music festival be anything else than what it is?

'It won't necessarily be a follower of fashion. It will acknowledge what is contemporary and will be about excellence, customer service and kindness, and all the values that people associate with music and the arts.” It seems the hippy gene has successfully crossed a generation.

But none of the drunkenness and drugs and disorder.

So this model – give me a model of the model.

'European style. Glastonbury is probably the closest.”

That famous English festivals aligns with the MFMF online blurb which talks of 'three open-air stages of musical splendour, an array of visual and performing arts, markets, cafes and stalls of organic and sumptuous delights, workshops and wellness, lakeside camping, waterfalls, rolling hills and glow worm caves.”

There will be lots of tepees to stay in. The hippy definitely lurks within.

'And no burgers and chips.” The man who presents as egalitarian can be a mite superior. 'It'll be gourmet, organised by Kim Renshaw of the night market. It'll be good,” says the entrepreneur.

After the falafels and kale chips there'll be something called ‘body talk' – described as an integrative whole healthcare for the body, mind and spirit. Sounds like you need to try it to understand it.

Paxton took his girlfriend to Glastonbury in 1994 and that won him over. 'She didn't see one band in three days. She went shopping. I got to see the bands and our tent was full of shopping.”

For the girlfriend it was about 'community and occasion”.

'If I had one ideal it would be that people came to MFMF with hopes for one thing and discovered something new along the way. That would be a key performance indicator for me.”

Paxton has the attitude of an evangelist. He is upbeat to the point he embraces his knockers, the nay-sayers, the people who will him to fail.

'We can't manage without them. They keep us on our toes. They have only got our best interests at heart.”

What about those who insist McLaren Falls is the very wrong place for a music and arts festival? He laughs, but he's not laughing at them. 'I agree with them because the first dozen times I came here I had more questions than answers.

'There is a perception the park couldn't accommodate a festival for 10,000 people. But as I have shown you today, there is an area well suited.”

He did show me and while it was probably at its worst – exposed, cold, wet and grey – Paxton still makes it work.

'It's just that its part of the park that is open to the public but nobody ever goes there. It's not a destination for people visiting for walks or water.”

If you use the formula of a person occupying a square metre in front of the main stage, then there's room for 20,000 people, probably 50,000, comfortably.

What about the man? Who is Paxton and what does he bring, apart from his experience as a director of Rhythm and Vines?

'What do I bring?” There he goes again, buying time, pondering. A reporter knows he is about to get another good grab. 'Honesty and integrity, experience, a very strong team and passion for the region.

'I have been burnt and I don't want to see the people of Tauranga burnt. Or anyone else associated with this venture.”

He has just saved me a question. I was going to raise the spectre of bankrupted promoter Daniel Keighley, the implosion of Sweetwaters Music Festival and a 12-month jail sentence for document forgery. It doesn't seem right to raise it now.

'There's a saying if festival producers were better business people, they wouldn't do festivals. Yes, there's considerable financial risk,” he admits.

Paxton has hair of envy, a Hugh Grant bob, and he rakes it thoughtfully when echoing my questions.

He's as unpretentious as he intends the music festival will be.

He is polite, has style and is utterly charming. His programme director, marketing director, event manager, production manager, marketing and publicity directors are in the inner sanctum. It's a late working lunch and things look and feel serious.

But the impresario is unflustered. He is schmoozing the media, making the best of a publicity opportunity, and he has the ability to make it pleasant, which ensures good press.

By the way – Springsteen won't be coming to MFMF. That was pie in the sky stuff, a wish list.

'It's so expensive,” he says. 'We have to work with Australian promoters to get the big names down under.” If that's a clue, then Foals, Bloc Party and Toro y Moi are floating around Australia at the time of the festival.

Are the acts locked in? 'Not all are locked in, most are locked in,” he says very assuredly.

There will be something for everyone, young and old; pop, rock, folk, electronica, psychedelia, blues, soul, hip-hop, R&B, world, alternative and beyond. He just needs to add names to the genres now.

Paxton is standing there in a bog with wet socks, poop, and a low cloud ceiling, and all he can see is sunshine. 'This is just the start of it,” he enthuses. 'The festival is the centrepiece of something bigger, a seven-day music and arts festival throughout the Bay of Plenty.”

He hasn't conquered McLaren Falls yet and his mind has gone global. Artists from all over the world attracting visitors from all over the world is his vision.

At the weekend I raised MFMF with a young friend. Her pretty faced exploded with anticipation. 'I have got to organise that weekend off.” I don't know what I am doing next weekend and she's organised six months out, even though she doesn't know who's playing yet.

The boyish enthusiasm of a boyish 42-year-old Paxton, the peace warrior, deserves that sort of support. He now needs 9,999 just like Kyra. I am sure and I hope that will happen when ticket sales open soon.

Then, as the blurb says, they can 'run through the fields howling at the moon, dancing in the dark and finding wonderland.” The hippy parents would be proud that a bit has rubbed off on the boy.

'I just want to stand at the side of stage and watch people being happy.”