The Rogue Arts Festival is about many things – visual arts, crafts, food, drink, dance, and hanging out with friends old and new. But mostly it’s about music. That means someone has to source, choose, and book more than a dozen acts, then program 20 musical performances from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon. For Rogue Arts, that someone is festival artistic director Arwen MacDonald.
Creating a well-paced and diverse musical timeline, and leaving the door open for a few surprising moments, is something of an art in itself.
“I try to tell a story through the weekend,” MacDonald told Coast Reporter between sets Saturday afternoon, in the middle of the Aug. 23 to 25 event in farm country near Wilson Creek.
“You want to start off on Friday really fun and local and then move into something else in the evening that’s easy and cool. Then Saturday, start with something a little different. Today we had square dancing. It was super fun. Then through the day, we build, build, build.”
The surprising moments can come anytime during performances, but most potently during what Rogue Arts, now in its fourth year, has dubbed its Collective Sets. A feature of many music festivals, it involves having musicians from a few different bands play together for the first time.
“I try to put locals with out-of-town musicians, and I might mess a bit with genres,” MacDonald said. “The craziest things can come out of it. It’s a chance to create something new.”
There were four collective sets this year, including similar-genre blends, like The Billy Hillpicker Band and Brothers in Farms, but also counterintuitive mashups like locals Hordes of Ords, Compassion Gorilla from Victoria, and Vancouver hip-hop artist Ndidi Cascade. It was clear that the musicians were having as much fun as the audience hearing how good it sounded.
So, how do you go about putting all that music into a two-and-a-half day festival? First, give yourself the better part of a year to do it. “I start in September, pretty much immediately after this one ends,” MacDonald said. “I do a lot of listening and a lot of asking around and sourcing. It all takes a while. If I’m a little unsure, I sit with the board members and we have listening parties. I have personal preferences, but I also have to step back and ask, ‘what do other people want?’”
As with many festivals, MacDonald will seek out some bands to invite, but many more apply for a chance to play. “We get hundreds of applications,” she said.
Rogue Arts couldn’t happen without many volunteers and a committed board of directors. The bands and a core group of professional co-ordinators are compensated for their work, including MacDonald, eventually. “I’m the last to get paid,” she said, laughing. “And let’s just say it’s a good thing we don’t do this for the money.”
