CRAVEN EVOLUTION
Popular country music jamboree has changed
There are two things you can always count on at Craven: The music and the weather.
Other facets have come and gone: Midway rides, strippers, video lottery terminals, the family-friendly atmosphere, MCs Williams & Ree — even the gopher run.
The Big Valley Jamboree saw government interventions to combat dwindling attendance, eventual bankruptcy, and the transformation to a rock concert after years of will-they-or-won’t-they fold.
For most of its first 17 years, Big Valley was a charity event — founded by a priest and later taken over by the Queen City Kinsmen.
Now, in its 12th year as the Craven Country Jamboree, it’s an exceedingly successful commercial venture.
Whether rock or country, music has been the draw since 1983. And as long as people have flocked to those festival grounds 38 kilometres north-northwest of Regina, weather has been an equal factor.
Sun stroke in plus-35 C heat while camping in a field. Beating the heat with a dip in a homemade grain bin swimming pool (as Harvey Linnen did in 1990). Letting the wind fan your bikini-clad body as you walk down Main Street.
Wearing a sleeping bag and wishing for mitts as temperatures dip near zero (as they did in 2009 for Clint Black). Searching Regina stores for a pair of elusive rubber boots, stocks bought out in a Qu’Appelle Valley swamp year. The campground a mud pit, the unluckiest of tents in a half-foot of water.
In the worst of times, no campground at all near the grandstand — people bused in from a campground near Lumsden (2011).
For the diehard fans, the main stage is where the magic happens — from the early days of Roy Orbison (1983), Conway Twitty (1984), Willie Nelson (1986), Loretta Lynn (1987) and The Judds (1990), to recent years’ rosters including Tim McGraw (2005 and 2013), Alan Jackson (2006 and 2012), Big and Rich (2006, 2007 and 2011), Taylor Swift (2009) and Eric Church (2010, 2012 and 2016).
And when it’s all over, festivalgoers head to the Long Branch Saloon, or The Pump Roadhouse, or Leopold’s Tavern — whatever the beer garden is called these days — to keep on chugging, spilling, and two-stepping the night away.
This is the jamboree.
THE HISTORY
The festival was founded by Father Lucien Larre as a fundraiser for his Bosco Homes for troubled youth.
Ria Kaal helped him create the Big Valley Jamboree, and served as festival producer from 1983 through 1993. Though the first year drew only 3,500 people, they saw potential in the festival, tweaked things and kept it running.
KAAL
“We wanted another kick at the can because I knew it could be a big thing … The second year, it was like 30,000 people. And after that it just kept building.
“We rented the stage — it came all the way from Portland, Ore., because we needed a stage that was 90-by-90 (feet) and that was the only large stage that was closest to us. Sound we got from Montreal.
“Part of the idea by having these non-profit groups come in to run the concessions, the Knights of Columbus doing the security, you already had a built-in crowd …
There were close to 1,000 Knights of Columbus that came with their wives and their families and on and on and on.
“I think a lot of people in Regina were wondering ‘What the heck is this crazy priest doing?’ Father Larre. Just the intrigue of it all, a lot of people came out.” As half of Craven’s best-known comedy duo, Bruce Williams has experienced Craven from the beginning. The “white guy” to Terry Ree’s “Indian,” Williams & Ree have served as festival MCs at least 19 times. Larre and Kaal found the South Dakota duo while scouting talent in Las Vegas.
WILLIAMS
“Once we got up there and saw how that volunteer spirit had already been implemented … we were completely swept up in it. There was unbelievable kindness on everybody’s part and we just went, ‘My gosh, we’ve landed the most heavenly gig ever.’ The people were just so hip to what we were doing, it was just amazing. An amazing trip, and then we were locked in from then on.
“It wasn’t as big a production, they didn’t have the screens and all that, so it was a lot more intimate, but it was still well attended. There were at least 20,000 people there and it wasn’t the raucous younger crowd; it was a more middle-aged older crowd and they were very polite.”
CHANGING TIMES
By the late 1980s, the government had stepped in to oversee the festival as controversy surrounding Bosco Homes and Big Valley ramped up. Larre was accused of abuse within Bosco Homes, and the festival consistently turned in marginal profits, in spite of million-dollar revenues.
In 1993, the jamboree was taken over by an Alberta company, Vinco Foods Inc., which subsequently began the Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose. But the festival continued its financial bleeding and ticket sales perpetually dropped.
“If people don’t want a jamboree here, they’ll vote on that by their absence. We’re not governments. We can’t run deficits year after year,” Vinco’s Alan Vinet told the Leader-Post in 1994.
The company toyed with capping ticket sales to incentivize festivalgoers. It hired a new MC in 1994. It introduced VIP seating in 1995, cancelling the historic “gopher run,” in which people line up with their lawn chairs to secure frontrow seating in the grandstand area.
By February 1996, the Kinsmen had taken over, after Vinco put the jamboree into receivership.
“This time,” wrote Leader-Post reporter Trevor Sutter, “organizers are going back to the basics — no more VLTs, high-priced tickets or massive corporate sponsorship. Just an army of volunteers, copious amounts of booze and sweetsounding country music.”
But in 1999, the dire financial situation persisted. In 2000, Kinsmen held the first Rock’N the Valley, featuring classic rock bands such as The Guess Who, Nazareth and Styx.
Not the first rock show on the site (The Tragically Hip performed there in 1995), Rock’N the Valley lasted until 2004.
For 2005, Craven went “back to our boots,” with Troy Vollhoffer at the helm. This Craven Country Jamboree was no longer a charitable endeavour — although it does continue to include charities. (The 50-50 draw benefits Kinsmen, for example.) By 2007 it had become an annual sellout, with attendance capped at 23,500.
Vollhoffer cut his teeth at Craven, helping his dad Harold with stage setup in the 1980s. His company, Premier Global Production, has expanded to host country music festivals in Wisconsin and Arizona.
Next month, it’s launching a new festival in Calgary, managed by Saskatchewan ex-pat Gerry Krochak.
THE MUSIC
Growing up in Regina, Krochak’s parents made him a live music fan. He was five when he saw Johnny Cash at the Centre of the Arts, long before the Man in Black made his way to the Valley in 1987. In the early 1990s, Krochak’s love of music served him well as he began reporting on and reviewing music for the Leader-Post.
Like thousands of Craven-goers, he has witnessed some memorable shows over the years.
KROCHAK
“You want to talk about legendary, Dolly Parton headlining on a bill where Waylon Jennings was also on the bill (in 1993). If I had to pick a single night of greatness in Craven, that would be it. I always think of that show as being kind of the pinnacle of country legends … You talk about a one-two punch, that was a jaw-dropping back-to-back.”
WILLIAMS
“I remember Roger Miller came up (in 1984) ... He called us into his dressing trailer and he pulled up his pant leg and then pulled down his sock and he had four joints stuck in his sock and he had smuggled them over the border. And we’re like ‘Are you crazy?!’ He just said ‘They don’t ever check you.’” Eli Fluter was chairman of the Big Valley Jamboree from 1983 to 1993
FLUTER
“George Jones, he closes on Sunday night (in 1987) … He’s got the crowd all going nuts. He says, ‘I’m going to be here till you guys go to sleep.’ After an hour and 10 minutes, he leaves. You know, No Show Jones. He crashed, that was it. The crowd was booing and hollering. Sunday night, it’s 11:30 p.m.”
KAAL
“I was in the waiting room (in Nashville) to see (talent agent) Tony Conway and there was this young man sitting in the waiting room also, waiting for Tony … I go into (Conway’s) office and he said, ‘Ria, listen to this song, see what you think.’ And it was If Tomorrow Never Comes by Garth Brooks. And he said, ‘He’s the guy waiting out in the entrance there.’ … This was in October, and I booked him to come in July (1991) — and I booked him for $15,000. By the time July came, he was worth $150,000. He still came for $15,000, which was amazing.”
WILLIAMS
“The earliest recollections I have are Garth Brooks, who climbed the scaffolding on stage and took his wireless mic clear up to the top of that scaffolding, and everyone was just gasping. ‘What’s he doing? Is he drunk? Is he going to fall?’”
THE PARTY
In its first decade, the jamboree was meant to be a family affair. There were church services, bingos and midway rides for kids.
There were also people who considered the music secondary for other reasons, like Terry Wakeford, who in 1993 told the Leader-Post his reasons for attending: “Women. Party. Drink. And to have a good time.”
Too bad he didn’t overlap with Susan Flegal, whose mission in 1995 was to find “fast horses, faster men and more beer.”
“There is a 90-per-cent chance you are getting laid at Craven,” Austin Tasler said in 2006.
Which is why, in 1993, free condoms were at the ready, courtesy of Saskatchewan Health.
“Half of the 4,000 condoms they brought to Big Valley were gone by Sunday afternoon,” the LeaderPost reported. “Some of the prophylactics were even flavoured. The most popular was strawberry.”
That year, the party even extended to the curling rink, where Regina’s Casper Entertainment hosted a strip show. Poorly attended, it did not return in 1994.
THE WEATHER
“Rain or shine, it’s always excellent,” Nathan MacDonald said in 2009.
The weather rarely gets in the way of the party, though that’s not to say it hasn’t posed problems. From the get-go, flooding has been a problem for the valley venue.
“Almost the entire place was under water,” CKRM’s Tom Staseson said in 1983. “By the time the rains stopped, we didn’t have very much time and people worked like dogs to get this thing going.”
In 1997, the day before a 17-millimetre rainfall turned the grounds into soup, the opposite was true.
“We poured 750 gallons of water on Main Street this morning,” jamboree GM Peter Clarke said. “By noon it was all gone. We sure wouldn’t mind those scattered showers they’re predicting.”
FLUTER
“The biggest thing I remember was one year we were flooded and we were walking around in rubber boots. In front of the stage there was four inches of water.
“Another year we moved up the hill. Again the valley flooded and we moved everyone up the hill and we still had the show on the stage, but we bused the people back and forth with school buses.”
WILLIAMS
“(The audience) withstood the rain and that was the thing that was so curious to us, that when the weather turned foul that people just stayed there. They covered up, but they stayed out there, and then the performers also performed ... There are so many artists nowadays that won’t even go on if it’s really nasty.”
KROCHAK
“The weather, it’s a cliché, it can’t possibly dampen the spirits of some of the great country music fans on the planet. Every year it seems like there’s one day (of rain), but it’s almost like you don’t even notice it.
“I have been there, too, when it’s blazing hot … When it gets to the point of being dangerous, I’d rather have a sprinkling of rain than 35 degrees.”
THE VILLAGE
Fewer than 250 people live in Craven. One weekend each year, that number increases hundredfold.
Darrell Bridges was mayor of Craven for 16 years, including in 1993 (the year of the strippers) and in 1999 (Big Valley’s last year).
A village resident for 32 years, Bridges says the festival means a “headache” getting to and from town. For the village as an entity, it’s another story.
In the beginning, it was a boon.
BRIDGES
“They donated money for us to build a new curling rink and other things and the village profited from it being there. And the hotel and everybody made lots of money in the first years when it started, but gradually as people tried to make more money on the grounds, then the village didn’t make any money.
“More so when we supplied water and sewer to the jamboree grounds, it was more of a headache than anything. Small village like we are with 400 people, and you get that many people come in and you have to try and supply them with water and sewer supplies, it just didn’t work.
“(Today) I know that the store does fairly well and the Esso does fairly well, but the hotel, you hear some say it’s good and some say it’s not.”
THE TRADITION
“Funny thing, though. The more I ask around, the more I find that Saskatchewanians fall into two groups: Those who religiously, piously, make an annual pilgrimage to this low-lying site just south of Craven — and those who’ve never, ever gone. Not even once,” LeaderPost reporter Will Chabun wrote on his first visit to the jamboree in 1997.
Bud Hooper fell into the former group. The Saskatoon man aimed each year to be first in line, arriving a week early to pull in his RV.
“I gotta be first,” Hooper told the Leader-Post in 1993. “Been here 10 years. Been first the last seven … It’s tradition. We can’t break tradition.”
With his wife and daughters in tow, and later with his grandson, the man had more than two decades of Craven experience when he died in 2009.
KROCHAK
“There’s a tradition in Craven that’s pretty special and if you go to a lot of other festivals, you could certainly feel that. I’ve always found … there was a community sense there, where this was the temporary coolest city in Canada for four or five days — everyone seems to have each other’s backs.
“It’s hard to imagine Craven without the jamboree … It’s part of the fabric of each summer.”
WILLIAMS
“The spirit of (other country) festivals kind of pales in comparison to Craven because of that first salvo, that area was just so imbued with a feeling that I just can’t describe it. We call it the mother ship; Craven is the mother ship of all country music festivals in my opinion, because they can all learn from that original volunteer spirit that everybody had.
“Nowadays, modern country music, everybody wants to get paid. There’s hardly anybody that volunteers anymore.”
KAAL
“It’s comparing apples and oranges. We wanted to make it a family event and it’s now a commercial event.
“We didn’t make any money. They’re making money now. And music is different. You don’t have the Merle Haggards and the Waylon Jenningses and the middleaged farmers and so forth that would come out to see their No. 1 star. Now it’s all kids … It’s a different atmosphere — and that’s fine. I have no problem with that.”