The Canadian PressWith the cancellation of the Roxodus Music Fest in Edenvale, Ont., last month, the extended hiatus of the WayHome Music & Arts Festival north of Toronto and the recent collapse of Michael Lang’s Woodstock 50 reboot in upstate New York, the hard realities of the modern multiday, campsite-and-concert affairs are being laid bare.
In a crowded field of competing festivals, curating an attractive enough music lineup to lure fans to the events is only half the equation. Today, it’s all about the 360-degree festival experience – the ease of ingress and egress, the upscale camping options, the food-and-drink possibilities and proper RV sites.
“Looks like they’re not going to get their money,” Dunford says of the creditors, who, unlike the rock stars who were scheduled to perform, were not paid up front. “Well, I could have predicted all of this.” Before forming Republic Live with his wife, Eva, Dunford made a fortune in the trucking business. Boots & Hearts, which takes place Aug. 8 to 11, has been popular since its inception in 2012 in Bowmanville, Ont. But Dunford says he began turning a profit only in the past couple of years, when he moved the event to his bucolic, custom-designed Burl’s Creek grounds. “I could afford the losses to build a brand and build something that people would come back to year after year,” he says.
That business plan was pretty much the one followed by Virginia Clark for her Wolfe Island Music Festival, a non-profit, indie-rock annual for more than two decades now. “It was a party on a dock, with a hay wagon,” says Clark, who saw her event, a ferry-ride away from Kingston, grow to a three-day camping affair. “But back then, I wasn’t competing against much. If the New Pornographers were playing Lollapalooza, I’d say fine, I’ll find another headliner, no problem.
That sense of camaraderie is important to the livelihood of annual festivals, and it’s something the bigger ones find hard to cultivate, if they even bother to try at all. “Sometimes the Goliaths just sort of bulldoze their way in,” Clark says. “Communities get nervous.”Bulldozing is something that Dunford and Republic Live literally did in 2014, when it moved into Oro-Medonte to construct Burl’s Creek. Roads and a natural turf amphitheatre were built.