Sun to set on Real Love Summer Fest

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This article was published 11/02/2025 (597 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Real Love Summer Fest will be holding its final edition this July, organizers announced Monday morning.

First staged by local concert promotion company Real Love Winnipeg in 2014 with a 27-artist bill, over the ensuing decade, the festival has hosted more than 270 performances by local, national and international artists, becoming one of the premier annual events for independent music discovery in Manitoba.

“After a decade of unforgettable music and community, RLSF is coming to an end,” festival co-organizers Gilad Carroll and Adam Soloway wrote in a post on social media Monday. “We are endlessly proud of what we’ve built and beyond grateful to everyone who has attended, performed, volunteered or worked behind the scenes at the festival over the years. The memories and friendships we’ve made will stay with us forever.”

Longtime friends Carroll, 33, and Soloway, 32, made their first inroads into the local music scene by co-ordinating a series of local compilation albums called Beach Station Blues, recorded in a cabin in Winnipeg Beach.

Those compilations coincided with the founding in 2012 of Real Love Winnipeg, an independent arts company. In 2014, after Real Love considerably expanded its concert promotion in Winnipeg, Carroll and Soloway were approached by the owners of the Matlock Festival about working on a large-scale event.

“Without thinking about it too much, we said yes,” says Carroll, who, with Soloway, Sam Sarty, Brett Ticzon and Isaac Tate, is a member of shoegaze group Living Hour. “People were coming to our shows and we had met so many bands, feeling very inspired about being part of the music community, so we dove right in.”

The first three Real Love Summer Festivals were held at the Gimli Motorsports Park, with the initial fest running from June 6 to 8, 2014; a $20 bill covered the full weekend pass to see artists like Animal Teeth, Ingrid Gatin, Micah Erenberg, Richard Inman, Slow Leaves, Slow Spirit, Surprise Party and Zrada.

“I’m pretty sure there were 400 people there, and I’m pretty sure half of them snuck in,” says Carroll, who with Real Love Winnipeg implements over 100 music events each year.

It was apparent the still-new festival had already outgrown the motorpark confines, and the event moved to Teulon’s Ignite Retreats for the remainder of its run, during which organizers continually brought in a mixture of local indie music and outside acts to perform on a stage built by longtime volunteer Brian Gluck.

While the festival retained a commitment to providing a platform for favourite local musicians, in recent years, festival organizers also managed to bring acclaimed American indie artists to rural Manitoba, a setting that drew them off the beaten touring path, introducing them to a new swath of musical geography.

“If you are anywhere close to Canada this July you have to make your way out to this festival I’m playing,” Chicago performer Joseph Chilliams posted last summer. “It will be the most random beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life, kinda like an asteroid passing by earth.”

“Shoutout stars, because I was in the middle of nowhere in Manitoba and I saw every constellation that exists,” he wrote a few days after performing a Friday night set to more than 600 festival attendees. “Big koombaya vibes.”

Carroll and Soloway say the decision to end the festival with 2025’s edition is a difficult one on a personal and community level, especially after the pandemic axed 2020 and 2021 festivals.

“What we love to do is put on shows and bring touring bands to Winnipeg to expose people in Winnipeg to music they might otherwise not hear, and when it comes to the festival, so much work is required to co-ordinate all of the other aspects,” says Soloway, adding that “there will still be ways for people to engage with (Real Love) in the summertime.”

“We’re planning and already talking with venues, business owners and non-profits about working together on different outdoor events for when it’s nice out with an emphasis still on bringing touring artists in while uplifting the local scene,” says Carroll, who with Soloway also co-founded First Date Touring, a firm representing over 40 artists, including the Pains of Being Pure At Heart and Charlotte Cornfield.

“I was talking with (recording engineer and musician) Riley Hill recently and he was saying that Manitoba is a very festival-rich province, and not to say that Real Love didn’t have a great place in that (landscape), but we know there are lots of other amazing festivals every summer,” adds Carroll, who says that Living Hour is in the process of finishing its fourth album, a followup to 2022’s Someday is Today. “So by doing this we’re opening ourselves up to work on other things and to pursue our own artistic and creative practices more.”

Soloway anticipates the final festival lineup will be announced in April, with the event scheduled for July 25 to 27 at Ignite Retreats in Teulon.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com