Folk festival board says show won’t go on

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/04/2020 (2343 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the Winnipeg Folk Festival’s organizers and its legion of loyal fans, April 14 will be the day the music died.

That day, Tuesday, was when the folk fest’s board of directors decided to cancel the 2020 edition of the event, which was to be held July 9-12 at Birds Hill Park.

The COVID-19 pandemic is to blame. Executive director Lynne Skromeda said Tuesday that staff had considered a number of alternative ways to hold the festival in 2020, but uncertainty caused by the coronavirus and the restrictions against public gatherings to prevent its spread left them no option than to wait until 2021.

“We tried so many different scenarios — a small event later in the year with just Manitoba artists, a livestream — and we just couldn’t make it work,” Skromeda said in a telephone interview.

Staff also considered segmenting the large space the festival site at Birds Hill. They considered a plan that involved lines being drawn on the ground to keep spectators a safe distance apart, but the idea proved to be not feasible, Skromeda said.

“Part of the live music experience is being close together, indoors or outdoors,” she said. “We didn’t even know if anybody would want to be out there (this summer).”

The folk festival faces a big dent in its balance sheet because of the cancellation as well as the loss of several pre-festival fundraising concerts that have already been cancelled or postponed. It will offer refunds for those who have already purchased festival passes, but will ask those people to donate the funds back to the folk festival in return for a charitable donation tax receipt.

Passes dated for 2020 will not be accepted for the 2021 festival.

“We think we will be able to weather the storm,” Skromeda said.

If the fortunes of the 2020 folk fest could be charted on a graph, it would run in a line completely opposite to the familiar graph of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Manitoba and around the world. On March 1, anticipation was high among fans and organizers when the folk fest announced its lineup, which was highlighted by Australian singer Vance Joy, Icelandic rockers Kaleo and legendary singer-songwriter John Prine.

The threat of COVID-19 grew exponentially during March to the point that the province declared a state of emergency on March 20, and on March 27 the government announced it would ban public gatherings of more than 10 people. Some large Manitoba events, such as Pride Winnipeg, decided in March to postpone until September. Others, such as Dauphin’s Countryfest, chose on April 2 to postpone to 2021.

On March 29, Prine’s family announced the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient was in critical condition in a Nashville hospital, suffering from complications caused by COVID-19. He died on April 6 at age 73, leaving Winnipeg folk music fans in grief, and, on social media, fearing a similar fate for the 2020 folk fest.

“I just can’t believe how much the world has changed in six weeks,” Skromeda said.

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall