COWICHAN VALLEY BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL
Where: Laketown Ranch Music & Recreation Park, 8811 Youbou Rd., Lake Cowichan
When: Friday through Sunday, June 16-18
Tickets: $30-$85 daily ($125 for a weekend pass) from cowichanbluegrass.tickit.ca
The lineage of the Cowichan Valley Bluegrass Festival can be traced back to 2002, when it began life as a tiny, homespun festival held at the Sooke River Campground.
The former incarnation, held each year on Father’s Day weekend, became so popular during its final years in Sooke it sold out regularly. That was both a blessing and a curse: Due to the limitations of the site, expansion was not possible. “We were turning people away,” said Robert Remington, the festival’s artistic director.
Securing a new home was difficult as on-site camping needed to be part of the deal, Remington added. “With bluegrass culture, people get together for three or four days, and set up a 24-7 community village, where they sit around and jam. You have to have a place where people can camp and sit around all night.”
Organizers eventually found a sympathetic location and made the move from Sooke to Lake Cowichan in 2019. Now based at Laketown Ranch Music & Recreation Park, a 250-acre multi-use entertainment complex near Youbou, the Cowichan Valley Bluegrass Festival can accommodate upwards of 2,000 patrons. That makes it the largest bluegrass and old-time music festival in B.C.
“We’re it, for multi-day bluegrass festivals of this size,” Remington said.
Ticket sales thus far support his theory. “People who are into bluegrass are like curlers on on the Prairies. They’ll drive two hours through a blinding blizzard at 40-below to go curling. And bluegrass people, nothing is going to stop them when Cowichan comes around.“
The four-day festival, whose early-entry crowd arrived on site Thursday, a day prior to today’s official opening, is not alone where bluegrass on Vancouver Island is concerned. Remington voiced his support of both the Chemainus Bluegrass Extravaganza & Festival (July 15) and the Coombs Bluegrass Festival (Aug. 4-6), and cited their dedication to bluegrass music as integral to the festival culture on Vancouver Island.
“What’s good for smaller festivals is good for everybody,” he said. “What’s good for one, is good for all.”
Cowichan Valley Bluegrass Festival is a cut above the competition artistically, with several Grammy Award-winning and Juno Award nominated acts performing this weekend, including The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys (Nashville, Tennessee), AJ Lee and Blue Summit (Santa Cruz, California), and Veranda (Montreal).
The acclaimed New York duo of singer-guitarist Michael Daves (whose work with Chris Thile of the Punch Brothers earned him a Grammy Award nomination) and former Yonder Mountain String Band mandolinist Jacob Joliff, are playing their only Canadian date of 2023 this weekend. “We’re trying to get the word to people about all of these artists,” Remington said. “This is music that gets very little radio airplay — it’s almost like an underground cult.”
The festival has been punching above its weight class for years, and would have made significant waves in 2020, Remington said, had it not been cancelled due to the pandemic. The festival’s 2021 edition was also cancelled and Remington booked only Canadian acts in 2022, out of necessity.
“Last year was kind of a restart for us,” he said. “This year, we’re ready to roll full on.”
Five stages and tents offering acoustic and amplified performances, in addition to dance workshops hosted by the Cowichan Square and Contra Dance Society, are in motion through Sunday. When organizers first began incorporating dance workshops and performances at the Sooke festival in 2016, the impact was immediate. Remington wanted that to continue when the event moved over the Malahat.
“When we brought in square dancing, we really lowered our age demographic,” he said with a laugh. “Bluegrass audiences, like folk audiences, these people are getting older. When we brought in Appalachian old-time square dancing, we had a really good demographic mix.”
Those not prepared for the dancing component — which is an integral element of the culture, especially in the south and southeastern states of the U.S., where bluegrass was born — are always pleasantly surprised, Remington said. “People think square dancing is hokey, with all the frilly skirts and all that. But it’s really not like that. Younger people are really into it. If people know anything about Appalachian old-time music, it has a hypnotic drive. There’s a rhythm to it.”
Some attendees come to the festival, never having never been to a bluegrass festival. They certainly will have their fill of fun. “It’s a unique culture. There’s all these things going on,” Remington said.
“A lot of people who come here, they play an instrument. The people who don’t play an instrument could possibly feel left out, and even if you don’t partake in that, you can experience the culture. We’re trying to offer as much participatory stuff as we can.”
