The 10th annual Riverfest Elora lineup is out, with The Flaming Lips, Carly Rae Jepsen, Blue Rodeo, July Talk, Wolf Parade, Dear Rouge and Bedouin Soundclash set to perform.
This year’s festival will take place at Bissell Park in Elora from Aug. 17 to 19 and site director Shawn Watters and festival manager Spencer Shewen say there are numerous surprises set to celebrate the festival’s 10th anniversary.
“We don’t really want to spoil that for people,” Shewen said with a laugh when asked about the surprises.
Riverfest Elora started as a backyard festival in 2009 with an attendance of around 700 people. In recent years, the festival has grown to see crowds of over 5,000 a day.
Watters attributes a lot of that growth to the local community.
“It’s not just Elora,” he said. “It’s Centre Wellington and … the neighbouring communities who every year come to it and … we put tickets on sale and people buy the tickets not even knowing who the bands are, which is … pretty fantastic that they do have a trust in us that we’re going to pick a good lineup for them.
“It’s a big thank you to the community, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing.”
This year, Riverfest is joining the Keychange pledge.
Keychange is a European initiative that aims to empower women to transform the future of the music industry and encourages festivals to achieve a 50-50 gender balance by 2022.
However, Riverfest is already there. Shewen said this year 55 per cent of the acts fit the female-fronted band criteria and a few years ago the festival chose to strive for gender parity.
“It shouldn’t be a hard thing to book … (a) close to equal amount one way or the other and it should be easy to do,” Shewen said. “We figured that in the last few years.
“It’s pretty easy to do if that’s something you decide you want to do, so we just do it.”
Watters said there are also more and more female-fronted bands coming forward in the music world.
Riverfest may also try new strategies to address the limited accommodations in the Elora area.
“Everything pretty much fills up during Riverfest,” Shewen said. “We are looking at moving our overflow camping … to a new site that is close by to where it was that will allow us to fit at least twice as many people as we did before.”
Riverfest has not yet confirmed this location.
The festival is also considering a hostel program where local residents can sign up with the festival and allow concert-goers to stay in either a guest room or even on a couch for the weekend.
“It’s kind of like Airbnb but it’s a bit more friendly,” Shewen said. “It’s through the festival.”
In addition to the three-day music lineup Shewen and Watters said the festival will also offer numerous art installations, yoga, karaoke, buskers, artisans and ukulele lessons.
“It’s important to give people programming that keeps them engaged and is fun for them other than just the music,” Shewen said. “We want to make the whole thing a good experience for everyone so that they walk away from it happy.”
This year’s festival line-up is 97.3% Canadian, and 12 of the 54 performers are from Elora or Guelph.
New this year, Riverfest will also be partnering with The McGinn Brothers Big Game in Support of Big Brothers Big Sister of Centre Wellington. The charity ball hockey tournament will take place in Fergus on Aug. 17.
Youths in various age categories will vie for spots in the final game to play alongside some of their NHL hockey heroes.
Fans will have a chance to bid on auction items, get pieces autographed, listen to live music and watch some ball hockey. Proceeds from the event will be donated to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Centre Wellington for its capital campaign to create a hub of services to support youth mental, physical and emotional health.
Riverfest will continue its four-year tradition of remaining packaged water free. This year the festival will also cut out the use of plastic straws.
To see the full Riverfest lineup and to purchase tickets visit riverfestelora.com.
