In conversation with all the gossip-mongers out there who specialize in small-town hogwash, perhaps the topic that comes up most often, outside of Ma-Te-Way of course, is the Renfrew Bluegrass Festival, or more particularly, the cancellation of the Bluegrass Festival once hosted by the Town of Renfrew.
This festival, and its cancellation, appears to have been in the gunsights of Mayor Tom Sidney from the get-go after his election as mayor in the 2022 municipal elections.
Landslide Tom — he won by 13 votes — apparently told his newly assembled Council that the Renfrew Bluegrass Festival was no longer going to be a thing, and that he was going to be putting the boots to what a lot of other people seem to think was a wildly successful venture.
Why?
Was it not working? Did it not pull in enough cash? Is the Bluegrass crowd too rowdy? Was it a law enforcement issue? Did it require too many Town of Renfrew resources, both human and physical? Was it not as wildly successful as my gossip-mongers seem to think? Is Tom not a Bluegrass guy?
I’m not much of a Bluegrass guy myself. Nothing against it, and it’s not like I’m going to complain if I hear it. Hell, I can drink my beer to just about any tune, and not just one either. So I’m not going to have any kind of problem if a bunch of folks want to get together, let their hair down, and enjoy some pickin’ and pluckin’ as they pound down the juice of their choice.
It’s the Ottawa Valley for crying out loud.
I can certainly understand if the thing was a financial sinkhole. Was it?
I can see the point if it was a crowd control issue. Was it?
A liability issue? Everything has a liability component attached to it. Was this the fatal stake through the heart?
A noise problem? Poor attendance? Lousy performers? An abomination in the eyes of local church folk? Too many complaints of favouritism from Renfrew hip-hoppers? Not enough Pride representation? Too much Pride representation?
Like what gives, Mayor Sidney?
It seems to me that such an event would be tailor-made for our mayor, as it would give him the opportunity to show up wearing his Big Joe Mufferaw outfit, not that Big Joe was a Bluegrass guy by any stretch of the historical imagination.
I had a buddy of mine, a fine-enough fellow who lived right here in Renfrew-town, who would pack up his guitar, his booze, and his vittles and head out to Ma-Te-Way in his motorhome before the weekend and set up camp at the facilities made available by the town. This guy is a regular sort of bloke, a husband, a father, a business owner, just a regular slice of Canada. He’d go early to get a good spot. I mean, he could have just stayed home and attended whenever he wanted. What was it that made him go to all the effort to camp less than two miles from his front door?
Like, who leaves early to get a good spot at a failed festival? Wouldn’t there be plenty of ‘good” spots?
If he had to show up early, it must have meant others were on their way too, eager to snag their own good spots. If this is the case, what is it about this experience that differentiates it from a COA — Campgrounds of America — site on a Saturday afternoon?
Why would people come from all over to attend? And by all over, I’m not talking Cobden, or Almonte, or Mosquito Falls. I’m talking about people coming over the bridge from America the Beautiful, back when it used to be America the Beautiful.
I’m not here to suggest that Mayor Sidney is a stupid man. I’m also not here to give the impression that he’s a spiteful individual. He could be neither or he could be both, but I don’t know the guy and he doesn’t respond to emails so all I can do is wonder. But, he, more than anyone, seems to carry the freight on the decision to kill the Renfrew Bluegrass Festival and attempt to replace it with a proven failure known as the “Roots in Renfrew” event that was held in combination with the Craft Beer and Food Truck Festival.
For the record, the new event had no camping component to it.
The new festival managed to draw in somewhere in the area 300-350 people for the entire weekend of operation. It entailed entertainment, transportation, and advertising costs that contributed to an event deficit in the range of of some $115,000. In short, not the robust success it was advertised to be. Something far less than that it seems.
Roots in Renfrew has since been handed off for peanuts on the dollar to interests in Calabogie, at the Calabogie Motorsports Track, along with all promotional and trade rights. Apparently the Calabogie folks are going to use it as a template for a festival of their own this coming summer.
Jenna McEwan was the town’s Communications and Marketing Coordinator at the time.
“The Signature Events Working Group has developed a plan to enhance the music event, while building off the framework that has been successful in years past with a goal to attract a broader crowd base with increased visitors and increased ticket sales. The plan would see artists from various genres of music including some great local talent be showcased over two days.”
Okay then.
The Signature Events Working Group indeed.
It seems to be one of many of an increasing line of somewhat pedestrian gatherings who have christened themselves with impressive-sounding titles to mask the fact that it’s actually six people meeting in an abandoned Rec Centre with a party-box of Tim Hortons coffee, all the while sitting on milk cartons of different colours.
It appears their signature idea didn’t really have any legs here in Renfrew and that they couldn’t get rid of it fast enough and sell it off to Calabogie.
That Craft Beer and Food Truck Festival was, and perhaps is, a successful event, so long as it takes place in the correct context, and to me that’s precisely where it started out, at Low Square. The fact that an event is well-attended, as this one always seems to be, is not necessarily a clarion call to go find some field somewhere in the hopes that you can fill the field with the same crowd. It’s the same question that event planners have had to grapple with since the beginning of planned events. Do you want a smaller venue packed with people, or a larger venue with a sparse crowd? The first appears dynamic and happening, a success. The second screams “Where is everybody?”
A decision was made on a popular and well-attended festival when its numbers failed to rebound a year after the pandemic. My goodness, everything had a downturn after the pandemic. That tragedy was an aberration, not the norm. But our hand-picked members on The Most Esteemed Working Group couldn’t wait to pull the plug on it, panic, and replace it with a different idea, which in the end turned out to be even less of an idea.
One of the stated objectives was to bring people from out of town into town. Then you craft an event to feature prominently local talent that nobody outside of town has heard of. No offence intended to local talent, but I don’t know of too many people who are going to pack up the family and drive several hours to watch my son attempt to play a harmonica on the big stage on a Saturday night. Sorry, I love my son, but sorry.
With no camping, where would these people stay? The Best Western? The Least Eastern?
The Renfrew Bluegrass Festival was, as the Working Group would call it, a signature event. They replaced it with a high school cafeteria talent show.
As it stands now, it appears that our mayor and our working group have laid a bit of an egg. They took an established event and turned it into something that failed to meet any acceptable bar, then they got rid of it altogether, leaving us with no event at all.
And they took a bunch of people from out of town and took away their reason for coming. They, and their money, will go somewhere else.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 