Countryfest keeps security in mind after Vegas mass shooting

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This article was published 05/10/2017 (3244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The spectre of Sunday’s slaughter of 58 innocent people at a country music festival in Las Vegas didn’t stop Dauphin’s Countryfest organizers Thursday from announcing the top acts they have on tap for 2018 and addressing the issue of security.

“If we don’t do this, the bad people win,” Countryfest producer Rob Waloschuk said about the decision to go ahead with the news conference at the Club Regent Event Centre in Winnipeg.

Three of the big names on the bill at Countryfest 2018 performed at the ill-fated music festival in Las Vegas, including High Valley, Eric Church and Luke Combs, whose band played on the same day that a homicidal gunman opened fire on the crowd, killing 58 and injuring more than 500.

“On behalf of Countryfest I want to extend our deepest thoughts, prayers and condolences to all of those affected by this week’s tragedy in Las Vegas at Route 91 festival — not only to the victims and their families but to the artists and organizers,” Waloschuk said.

“These events that we put on… concerts and football games and hockey games are created to make happy places and happy thoughts and create some memories, and for a little bit of time, to get away from the troubles in your lives and focus on the good times in your life,” Waloschuk said.

“Countryfest has worked really hard over the last 28 years to create a venue and an atmosphere that allows people to have those good times and create those good memories,” the producer based in Yorkton, Sask. said. “We will not let this beat us. We will continue to provide this venue and atmosphere for years to come.”

Dauphin’s mayor and Countryfest president Eric Irwin said they work hard to keep the site safe so people can have a good time, and they are learning from the tragedy in Las Vegas.

“We do a lot of advance planning. We have two security companies plus the RCMP. We search vehicles coming into the site. We search everybody going into the amphitheatre and the festival square,” Irwin said in an interview after the news conference.

“I think we’re on it and ahead of it, but you can never get complacent,” said Irwin, the head of Canada’s longest-running country music festival. “I think the events in Las Vegas showed us that we have to spend a little more time on our perimeters as well. We’re in control and on patrol on the festival site. But, when it comes to the perimeter, we have to take extra care there as well,” he said.

Planning concert security in the U.S. where gun control is minimal is a much different challenge than in Canada, said Irwin, who was invited to sit on a panel about security at an International Entertainment Buyers Association conference in Nashville a few years ago.

“Some of the issues they have to deal with down there — it was really bizarre. They were talking about setting up shooter positions — where their own shooters could be set up around the site in order to be able to look after people or things,” Irwin said. “I said ‘We never thought of that, frankly’… It was so foreign to us.”

Having fewer guns to worry about doesn’t mean anyone should be lulled into a false a sense of security north of the border, Irwin said. “Awful things can happen. We always have to be very cognizant of our rules and our security performance.”

Waloschuk said in recent years, security concerns have been heightened in the U.S. and Canada. Many artists insist there be more intensive security screening of concert goers, said Waloschuk.

“They’ve asked for certain things like pat downs and metal detectors,” Waloschuk said. Those are now routine security measures at Countryfest, he said. He’s not sure what impact Sunday’s mass murder at the Route 91 festival in Vegas might have on artists’ riders at Countryfest.

“What will change from this tragedy? I don’t know,” said Waloschuk.

“That was done in order to destroy lives and to destroy people’s love of life, and we’re offering people an opportunity to celebrate the summer and love life again,” Irwin said.

He issued an invitation to “one of the biggest country music festivals in North America held in the smallest community” and said the four-day festival’s 2,000 volunteers are ready to roll out the red carpet for visitors.

Countryfest runs from June 28 to July 1. Concert and campground tickets go on sale to the public Nov. 6. For more, see www.countryfest.ca

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca