With a revamped board of directors and president Marina Lagacé at the helm, Sunshine Music Festival returns to Palm Beach Regional Park on Saturday, August 30, and Sunday, August 31.
"I was kind of surprised, honestly, that I ended up getting involved, and that I ended up becoming the president of the board right away," said Lagacé. "But, it turns out I'm pretty well suited to the role."
As a musician herself, Lagacé, along with music directors Danny Vincent and Robyn Andexser, have created a well-balanced lineup of local and visiting musicians to perform on stage for audience members, who most likely will be hunkered down on blankets or dancing the weekend away.
"There are so many people who are involved with making this festival happen, and my role, ultimately, is rather small," said Lagacé. "I got involved because I have a history of being a musician; I toured a lot. I've been a performer for half my life."
The two-day Labour Day weekend event is one of Canada's oldest folk festivals, and although there will be a wide-range of performers, the festival is sticking to its folk roots.
"I think most of us are really in a deep agreement that at our roots, we are a folk festival, prioritizing live music, original music, in a variety of genres," said Lagacé. "We are a fairly new board so we've all been finding our footing, but it's also given us a great opportunity to sort of reinvent ourselves."
Lagacé said they are hoping to receive feedback from audience members this year in order to understand what worked and what didn't. The entire festival is volunteer run, with revenue coming mostly from ticket sales and some grants.
"The community is different than it was 10 years ago, but certainly from over 40 years ago when the festival first started," said Lagacé. "We're really open to welcoming a lot of diversity into the festival in terms of ages and experience levels of the artists, too, and different kinds of identities and personas and styles of people on stage."
She said the board tries to get at least a few artists every year who are local.
qathet group Alec Ross and the Beer League Band will perform Sunday and so will Skaboom, whose lead singer Dave Neal has lived on the northern Sunshine Coast for years now.
"We see ourselves as serving the community of qathet and our mandate is to support up-and-coming artists and musicians, and also long-term, established musicians who actually live in our community," said Lagacé. "We always have food vendors, then there's craft and arts vendors as well."
Lagacé said she, Vincent and Andexser are the artistic directors, and that they are currently coming up with an artistic direction mandate.
"I come from Victoria and Vancouver, and so as a musician, for example, I booked Jack Garton and Kitty and the Rooster; I knew them from my time in East Van," said Lagacé. "Then the other part of the artistic direction team, Danny, he knows a ton of musicians as well, but from different circles."
She said they wanted to have a good balance of diverse musicians from multiple generations.
"We rely heavily on ticket sales, and we have had to increase our prices the last couple of years, but we are one of the cheapest festivals in the province," said Lagacé. "We offer accommodations to our artists that a lot of festivals don't, and that alone costs us a lot of money."
Something new on the Sunshine Music Festival website is a donation button, to help support the festival's artist fund. There are one-day passes and also weekend passes available.
To see the lineup, buy tickets or to donate, go to sunshinemusicfest.ca/lineup.
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