Riverfest Elora has upped the ante for its eighth edition of the summer festival.
On April 28 Riverfest announced that Walk Off the Earth would be headlining the festival’s Friday night, with Chromeo on Saturday and The Sheepdogs and Hey Rosetta! on Sunday.
“But that being said … in the middle of our lineup there’s a few bands that could be headliners too, like Wintersleep, Matthew Good, The Rural Alberta Advantage, they’re all amazing – and Kardinal Offishall,” said festival manager Spencer Shewen.
The festival will run from Aug. 19 to 21 and site director Shawn Watters said organizers are expecting more people than the 4,500 that attended on Saturday last year.
“I think one of the days will definitely be sold out,” he said. “We’re not sure which day, but it will be at some point in time.”
The festival has the capacity to hold 5,000 to 6,000 people in Bissell Park at any given time.
Shewen said the festival has been really well received this year.
“We’ve already sold almost as many weekend passes as we sold all of last year,” he said on May 2.
“I would say half of them were before we announced the bands and the other half were in the last five days.”
Building on the three-stage idea from last year’s festival, Riverfest Elora is making the Dine Alone Record’s Wax on Wheels performing area a proper stage, rather than using a trailer like last year.
However, a trailer will be located beside the stage and will sell merchandise and CDs, Shewen explained.
“The other interesting thing that we’re going to do there is … have meet and greets and signings with the band scheduled at (the) trailer,” he said.
“So like the Sheepdogs are going to come down at some point in the afternoon and people can go and get their T-shirts or albums signed or whatever they’d like and meet the band.”
Shewen also said there will be more up and coming artists on the Dine Alone Record’s Wax on Wheels stage.
“David Charles Fischer (DCF), who’s actually from Fergus, will be closing that stage on Sunday night,” he said. “We have a band called Etiquette which is Julie Fader and (Graham Walsh), some other good local guys like Rich Burnett and Lee Watson will be on that stage as well, and Brandon Wolfe Scott from Yukon Blonde, he has a solo album so he’ll be doing a solo set on that stage too.”
This year’s Riverfest Elora is also connecting with Slacker Radio.
“They’re an online streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music, but they’re going to be creating a Riverfest Elora station for us,” Shewen said.
“It will be on our website, we’ll be sharing it over social media and people can listen to basically a playlist of all the bands that are playing at the festival.”
Watters added, “Which is totally cool for people who want to know they may be familiar with some of the music, but at least they can play some of the bands and get a feel for them.”
Tickets are $140 for a weekend pass, available at http://riverfestelora.com. Cash tickets are also available at Ashanti in Elora; Van Gali’s in Fergus; the Bookshelf, Earth to Table Bread Bar and the Cornerstone in Guelph; Orange Monkey in Kitchener Waterloo; and the Grand Café in Cambridge.
See the full festival line-up at http://riverfestelora.com/2016-lineup.
