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
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SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE • JUNE 2017
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