Festival Blog
Sellouts are music to organizer's ears
Calgary Herald - Heath McCoy
And how will the people of Calgary remember the 24th annual Calgary Folk Music Festival, which wrapped up Sunday evening?
"There's a group of people who, in the past, always bought their
tickets on the day of the show," said Les Siemieniuk, general manager
of the festival. "Well, this year they woke up, looked out their window
and said, 'It's a nice day. I think I'm gonna go to the folk festival.'
And you know what? This is the year they couldn't." Siemieniuk
punctuates his story with a hearty laugh.
His jovial mood is understandable. With the weekend shows sold-out, and
excellent attendance figures on Thursday and Friday, 2003 has been the
Calgary Folk Music Festival's most successful year, in terms of
attendance.
Over the festival's four days, about 37,900 people roamed Prince's
Island Park (a sellout is 40,000), taking in music from around the
world. The artists included such stars as Elvis Costello, Ani DiFranco,
Ricky Skaggs, Daniel Lanois and Blue Rodeo. The Calgary festival is
hotter than ever and Siemieniuk knows it. "People are going to have to
step up early next year (if they want tickets)," he said Sunday
afternoon on the festival grounds. "They've always been able to wait to
the last minute before, but it's not that way anymore."
Organizers said it was too early to tell how successful the festival
had been in terms of overall profits, however. Factors such as
merchandise and beer garden sales had yet to be taken into account. And
of course, there's always those little glitches. On Sunday, festival
organizers were doing some last minute scrambling to feed their
volunteers after a shipment of food fell out of the back of a truck.
"That's about $500 we hadn't planned on spending," Siemieniuk said. "I
won't know for sure what we've got in the bank for next year until I've
got the auditor's report." But organizers are confident that this year
will set the festival up nicely for the festival's 25th anniversary.
Siemieniuk admits he wants to make next year extra special. But don't
ask him how the festival plans on topping itself. Not yet anyway. "This
bodes well for No. 25 for sure," he said with an exhausted laugh. "But
to tell the truth, at this point I'm still thinking of the 24th. At
this point, I'm just trying to get through the day."
