N.B. Music Festivals Are Already Being Cancelled Due To COVID-19
SAINT JOHN — Major music festivals around the world from Coachella to Glastonbury are either cancelling or postponing its events amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and festivals in New Brunswick are already following suit.
In New Brunswick Flourish Festival in Fredericton has postponed its event until the fall. Tay Creek Folk Festival in Tay Creek and Paddlefest in St. Andrews have also cancelled their events for this spring/summer.
“It was a difficult choice to make but a number of factors came into play and it seemed the only correct decision at this time. We are putting first and foremost the safety of our wonderful volunteers, musicians and visitors; we do not wish to compromise their health in any way,” said Tay Creek Folk Festival founder Jenny Jobbins, in a press release. The festival was scheduled to take place in July.
“We feel that it would be irresponsible to hold our festival when big events from the Olympic Games to Glastonbury are putting the global pandemic above everything else.”
The organizers of Paddlefest felt a similar way. Their event was scheduled to take place at the end of May, but a few weeks ago they made the tough decision to cancel.
“We started looking at the trends and looking at what the long-term forecast for this would be and we just realized that it was a safety issue and we wanted to be a part of the solution, not part of the problem,” said Luke MacDonald, artistic director for Paddlefest in an interview with Huddle.
“We were gearing up to do our big marketing push, our big promotion, release our whole lineup and everything. It just wasn’t a good time to start releasing that information.”
Postponing the festival until the fall wasn’t viable for the organizers, so they plan to host the festival around the same time next year. People who purchased early bird passes are able to get a refund or keep their passes for next year’s festival where they will be honoured.
“I know a lot of events are looking at the options of what’s best for them in terms of rescheduling to a later date. We want to be optimistic, but it’s a very tricky time for events to even reschedule for the fall based on potential forecasts of how long this could impact everything,” said MacDonald. “On our side, we just decided it was probably best to just forego this year and look ahead to next year.”
MacDonald said Paddlefest is taking a small financial hit for cancelling, but it could have been worse.
“Not as bad as it could have been had we probably kept going a little further. We were in the middle of negotiations with artists and with retailers and vendors,” he said. “That was a determining factor too. The further we go, the bigger the risk becomes.”
Though Paddlefest is considered one of the smaller-scale music festivals in the province, it was a significant economic driver for St. Andrews, bringing in around 1,200 people from out of town.
“St. Andrews is obviously a summer resort town, tourism-driven community and Paddlefest is more or less the kick-off to that busy season,” said MacDonald. “I think it will impact the town a little bit and I think we’ve gotten a lot of support from a lot of business owner and community members realizing the value of the event. Hopefully being forced to cancel this year only makes the spin-off next year even greater.”
Meanwhile, some of the province’s biggest music festivals, Area 506 in Saint John and Harvest Jazz & Blues in Fredericton don’t take place until near the end of the summer. Typically around this time of year, both festivals would be announcing their headliners and acts. But right now, they’re exercising caution.
“Today is what I was anticipating to be ‘the least productive day in Saint John’ which is what AREA 506 launch day has become over the last couple of years as we release acts every hour throughout the day,” said Area 506 founder Ray Gracewood. “We’ve decided to postpone any formal announcement at this time due to the uncertainty of COVID-19 and the regulatory guidelines on public events that we’ll expect to see from regulators going forward.”
Area 506 is still slated to take place July 31 through Aug. 2, but Gracewood said they will continue to monitor what the pandemic will mean for the festival.
“We continue to monitor government directives and to understand how public events such as AREA 506 may be impacted and for how long,” he said. “It goes without saying that the health and safety of our attendees, volunteers, musicians and vendors is our number one priority.”
In Fredericton, Harvest Jazz & Blues is in the same boat. The festival is set to take place from September 15 through September 20, its 30th anniversary.
“We have our lineup just about booked. We would typically announce the line-up and go on-sale at the end of April and our plan was to do so,” said festival general manager Jeff Richardson. “We’re in a bit of a holding pattern just wait and see how things shake down over the next couple of weeks before we start to make those announcements.”
With the situation changing almost daily, Richardson said the festival is planning for different scenarios.
“We’re planning as though we are going ahead for sure, but we recognize of course that no matter how we proceed things will have to be a little bit different than they would have been,” he said. “We’re planning out various scenarios now and feeling a little bit thankful for having a bit of a longer runway. At the same time, you can’t help thinking about what you might have to do and you have to have contingencies in place for any scenario.”
Banner image: Jessica Martin (jessii the artist) opened the 12th Annual Tay Creek Folk Festival with Christopher Guindon. Image: Jeff Fevens/Tay Creek Folk Festival Facebook page.