FORTY YEARS OF FOLK
Event builds on solid foundation
It was Holger Petersen’s first year as artistic director of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in 1986 and it felt as if everything was going wrong.
A major act for the festival’s seventh year was missing in action, an ambulance was called after a child fell off the playground and one of the mainstage staffers was in labour and had left the Gallagher Park grounds.
“Donovan (the musician) flew into town that morning and he wanted to rent his own car and so I’m standing on the mainstage waiting for him to show up,” said Petersen as he reflected on the festival’s 40th anniversary edition. “And I’m looking and there’s almost a block-long lineup to pay to come in, which we’d never experienced before.”
Lovers of the Folk Fest, which kicks off four days of music Thursday, are now scrambling to pay as much as $250 for a sold-out weekend pass or any remaining single-day tickets. For a festival that started selling weekend tickets for $30 in 1980, the clear growth in popularity and name is a point of pride for longtime volunteers and organizers.
In its early days, the festival was still a passion project that had benefited from money from Alberta’s 75th anniversary to get itself off the ground. When the city made the decision to move the festival to its now-iconic location in the river valley, Petersen, then chairman of its board of directors, thought it would be difficult to get people to come to what was essentially a barren hill in 1981.
“We had to pull favours all the time,” said Petersen of how they booked acts on a shoestring budget. “It was dire.”
But Petersen and 31-year festival producer Terry Wickham said the festival grew “organically” from a few hundred people in Gold Bar Park to now over 100,000 attendees in the heart of the city because it never strayed from its community roots.
“People like concerts,” said Wickham. “But they love festivals.”
After a rough patch in Wickham’s early years — “we were $60,000 in debt … we owed money everywhere” — the festival has grown threefold since 1989. It expanded to include multiple stages in the Edmonton Ski Club area in 1993 and to include four nights of shows around the same time.
It was a mistake in 1998 that opened up the entire hill as a “natural amphitheatre” — the mainstage was facing six degrees too far east, but Wickham said to leave it and it introduced a whole new part of the hill for audiences to enjoy.
Wickham and Petersen credit “the best volunteer base in the world of folk music” with the festival’s transition from an inkling to an institution.
“What we’ve tried to do is get big, but retain our sense of community, our sense of friendship,” said Wickham, “So when you phone the office, you don’t get an answering machine, you get us.”
RAISED ON THE HILL
Generations of Edmontonians and music lovers from around the world have marked milestones in life at the festival.
In the 1990s, musician Solomon Burke married a couple on the hill and many friendships and marriages have been sparked there as well.
“Kids who were babes in arms are now taking their kids to the festival,” said Petersen. “It’s an important part of people’s lives.”
Gord Holt has been volunteering at the festival for 22 years and his wife Liz joined him as soon as the kids were old enough to volunteer themselves.
“Our children were raised on the hill,” said Liz in their Riverdale home on July 31.
Now retired from teaching and public service, the Holts would often take vacation time to help set up the festival. This year, over 2,700 volunteers will work between 20 and 40 hours each to bring the 40th edition of the festival to life.
“People are doing for free what you couldn’t pay anyone to do,” said Gord, adding that some volunteers he’s worked with come from as far as Scotland to be part of the festival.
The widely celebrated festival is still weathering its fair share of challenges. Extreme weather like wildfire smoke, thunderstorms and strong winds are making it more difficult to make emergency plans, said Wickham, and the festival isn’t sure if this is the new normal.
Ensuring that the lineups are as local, Canadian and diverse as possible while still aiming to book big international names is also becoming more costly each year.
Wickham noted that this year the festival is removing Stage 4 to add space for an Indigenous pavilion with Indigenous-led cultural performances, music and education.
“We’re not saying it’ll be perfect this year,” said Wickham. “But it’s a sincere attempt for the last term to involve and engage Indigenous communities.”
Folk Fest regulars say each festival is a time of learning for next year. Though the key is to enjoy the musical moments.
“There’s nothing like being outdoors when the kids are sleeping beside you, you’re falling asleep with your friends around, maybe you snuck in with a bottle of wine,” said Wickham. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”