SpotlightBrochure-June17-RocktheBoat

SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE

JUNE 2017

I don’t know about you, but the excuses can be pretty loose around my house to plan a trip to Prince Edward Island: ‘I miss swimming in the warmest beach waters north of Florida,’ or ‘I think I’d like to visit wherever Canada’s number one golf destination is,’ usually work. This year, I’m going to play the Rock the Boat Musicfest card. A part of the 64-year old Tyne Valley Oyster Festival, the one-day family- friendly music bash is back for its fourth consecutive year and it’s a full deck of new and old faces. The lineup this year includes Finger Eleven, April Wine, Slowcoaster, Gordie MacKeeman and his Rhythm Boys, The Ellis Family Band, Ben Chase, and more. The five-day Oyster Festival kicks-off Wednesday, August 2 nd with the Canadian Oyster Shucking Championship taking place on Friday the 4 th and Rock the Boat on Saturday the 5 th . Jeff Noye, the Founder and Chair of the Rock the Boat Musicfest, spoke with Spotlight on Business Magazine from his Tyne Valley, PEI home in mid- June about oyster shucking and the festival as a whole, his community of volunteers, and a Guinness World Record.

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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JUNE 2017

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JUNE 2017 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE

By David MacDonald J eff, the music festival scene continues to grow bigger and bigger every year for Canada’s smallest province. How did your event break through so quickly? This is our fourth year and we are growing bigger and bigger each year – which is great. I think we initially had the reach we did because of the Tyne Valley Oyster Festival, which is the main festival – it’s a big job for us tourism-wise for sure. The Oyster Festival has been around since 1953 and since 1973 it’s coincided with the Canadian Oyster Shucking Championship which we host on the Friday night of the festival. Competitors and spectators travel here from all over. It’s the best shuckers in Canada – so it’s BC to PEI. Anyone who goes to oyster bars like to follow their shuckers to competitions and there are some great ones across Canada. Our event is a different feel, it’s totally unique. “We’ve got a great bluegrass act in Gordie MacKeeman ,we’ve got maybe a little harder rock with Finger Eleven, and of course classic rock in April Wine.” What kind of feel do you go for? Well it’s always our plan to have a mix of headliners who could headline a show anywhere in Canadaand a couple of performer or groups from the local area as well as a couple from the other Maritime Provinces. It really creates a nice blend of concert-goers.

work so hard to make sure there’s something for everybody. We’ve got a great bluegrass act in Gordie MacKeeman ,we’ve got maybe a little harder rock with Finger Eleven, and of course classic rock in April Wine. Everyone is going to find something they enjoy listening to and that’s really been a recipe for success. I love to play the host. The whole thing, especially the Oyster Shucking Championship, is one big PEI kitchen party – that’s what it is. It’s like your uncle’s down the road, just a lot bigger. The oysters, the music – you couldn’t get more Island. It’s what PEI is. And I understand that you’re the mastermind behind the Musicfest, Jeff. How did it all come together that first year? That’s true, I started the Musicfest in 2014 and it all came through volunteering – we’re pretty much all volunteers in this community. The Musicfest got started with the PEI 2014 program. We submitted a proposal to host a large event and then we had Blue Rodeo, Alan Doyle, and Jimmy Rankin jump on board. It was a big success. We’ve kind of grown from there in terms of our attendance and our ability to reach out to talent. We’re pretty well growing exponen- tially with attendance, though. It takes about 250 people to pull it all off and in a com- munity of about four or five hundred people, you’e getting more or less everybody involved either directly or indirect- ly. You’re doing everything from lining up security compa- nies to renting Porta-Pottys, applying for health permits, it goes on and on. Some people think it’s just hiring bands to come and play and then people show up and pay money to watch, but there’s so much more to it than that. It takes a village, as they say.

Our crowd demographics are definitely diverse the larger the event gets. I think we’re getting bigger because we

Our demographics in terms of volunteers are on the young

hours a year – and there is a committee that does pretty much the same. It’s a lot of work but the benefits are unbe- lievable when you consider that we are only a village of about four or five hundred people. The fact that we can bring in thousands and thousands of people to our com- munity every year like this is pretty cool. The money goes right back into the community to our sports centre. It helps pay for our hockey and figure skating programs which was the main goal on the Musicfest from the start. We want to grow to a point where we can pay for all the kids in the area to play minor hockey and or join figure skating if they want. I think we’ll be there in the next year or so. “I love to see the same couples, the same families return year after year.” I can see by the extensive list of sponsors on your website that both big business and smaller local busi- nesses are very much behind the Musicfest. Has this response also grown over the four years? For sure. The first year we were kind of banging on doors. Now the phone calls just keep coming in. This year we’ve had a lot of new companies approach us for sponsorships and partnerships and it’s really shown the naysayers how we get things done in Tyne Valley – but we couldn’t put it all

side, mostly people in their late twenties or early thirties like myself. And we have people in their 40s and 50s and 60s who really take interest in running the oyster supper and our parade and things like that. I started volunteering when I was 19, so really our volunteer base is from 19-70 and up. They’re an incredible group. We’ve never had problems trying to find volunteers, which some people might find hard to believe in such a small community but people here really love to help out. And that’s a part of it, right? If you’re willing to put the work into it, the rewards are going to be there. That first year I probably volunteered two or three thousand hours. After we got the bugs worked out, I still put in 1,000

here one time, I guarantee it won’t be your last. So the way we look at it is that one year of excellent tourism could translate into another 20 years for us. I love to see the same couples, the same families return year after year – and more often than not they have friends in tow with them. Word of mouth advertising has been very good to us. Blue Rodeo actually stayed at my house one year. They were actually staying in a cottage we got for them down on the water but they wanted the ultimate view of the parade – we have one of the greatest community parades you’ll ever see. Well, we’re on the parade route and they ended up staying for the day. We jammed out back with them and it was really something I’ll always remember. My all-time favourite memory from the Oyster Festival has got to be back in 2014. I’m an oyster shuck myself and that year we put together a Team Canada and broke the Guinness World Record for the most oysters shucked in one hour. There were ten of us, one representing each province, and we beat the previous record held by a team from France. The Guinness people flew in from Dublin to monitor it all. We shucked 8,840 oysters in one hour. I have the Guinness World Record hanging on my wall and my picture is on page seven of the Guinness Book of Records – it’s pretty cool. I encourage people to visit tvoysterfest.ca and check out our videos on YouTube to get a feel for the whole experi- ence, but like I said, you have to be here to get it.

together without our sponsors.

We partner with so many businesses like Moosehead Brewery, Scotiabank, and Dennis Motors and Yamaha. Dennis Motors is going to have a VIP area setup this year. They loan us four-wheelers and side-by-sides as well, which helps us get the job done. Our sponsors help us with more than just money – and don’t get me wrong, we couldn’t do this without cash flow – they also help us with the whole setup by sending us workers and things like that. It’s a total community effort. Can you tell the readers about the accommodations and transportation in Tyne Valley for the event? When most people come to PEI they often only go to Cav- endish or Charlottetown or Summerside. I want that demo- graphic to know that there’s even more to the Island. When you travel out into the Island you’re going to meet Islanders who’ve worked their whole lives on the water, the kind of people who will take you in for supper. We’re hospitable and that translates into everything we do. We’re the least expensive festival you’re going to find on the Island and we go the extra mile with local accommodations. We’ve teamed up with the Mill River Resort to offer The Mill River Resort Experience which includes two nights accommo- dation, one ticket to the Oyster Shucking Championship, one general admission to the Musicfest, discounted green fees at Mill River Golf Course, and breakfast both mornings. We’ve also partnered with Wedge Tours again to provide transportation to the event grounds from nearby Sum- merside. Pricing for everything is available at the website, tvoysterfest.ca. There are also campsites available in the area like inside Green Park but they’re not directly affiliated with the Festival. What’s the atmosphere of the whole five-day Oyster Festival like? The concert is awesome – incredible, actually and I love it – it’s more or less been my work the last four years. But my favourite night of the year by far is the Canadian Oyster Shucking Championship. You’ll never see another event like it. People are so pas- sionate about it – we have almost 1,500 people jam-packed into the local sports centre. We always have expert step dancers dancing to East Coast fiddle music and all you can eat oysters once you’re inside. And there’s a bonfire outside – it’s such an amazing experience. You have to be there to know just how fun it is! And with Canada 150 this summer, I’m sure we’re going to see a surge in tourism in Tyne Valley. We usually see in the ballpark of a 90 percent return rate of guests to the Oyster Fest and that includes people who only found out about through local advertising after they come off the bridge or the ferry – that’s how awesome this event is. If you come

ROCK THE BOAT MUSIC FESTIVAL

(902) 439-1716 jeffreynoye@gmail.com

Green Park Provincial Camp Groud 360 Green Park Rd Tyne Valley, PE C0B 2C0 Canada

www.tvoysterfest.ca/rock-the-boat.php

as spotlighted in the JUNE 2017 issue of SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE

www.spotlightonbusinessmagazine.com

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