Location trumps everything else. And for Rock of the Woods, which takes place every July in the picturesque Cowichan Valley, nothing could ring more true.
Now in its third year, the upstart music festival has had its share of challenges with dealing with bureaucracy, changing locations, and marketing the area to urban centres, but the purpose of the festival has remained intact: bring a cultural music experience to the Cowichan Valley, and bring the Cowichan Valley to those who enjoy music and culture.
But it hasn’t been easy. This year’s festival is again in a new location, the festival’s third in as many years. And the growing pains festival organizers have experienced within the Cowichan Valley are only now beginning to subside.
According to festival director Dave Bain, a graduate of Camosun College who grew up in the Cowichan Valley, it’s taken this long to forge a relationship between the music festival he’s envisioned and the community he was raised in. It’s a community that, until now, never had a cultural or music festival and really didn’t know what to do with one.
“The first year we ran into some troubles with the Cowichan Valley Regional District (CVRD), and it went through my mind to do it somewhere else, like Victoria, but the whole idea when I started this was to support the people that supported me in my education and growing up there, so I don’t think Rock of the Woods could move out of the Cowichan Valley because I really want to see it grow into the high schools and the community,” explains Bain. “We could do it somewhere else, but for me personally it wouldn’t have the same effect.”
As well as securing licensing from the CVRD, Rock of the Woods has to get approval from the agricultural land commission. Now with a couple of years under their belts and their good reputation well known in the area, festival organizers are able to navigate the logistical hurdles a bit easier.
“The main reason why he needs us is getting the liquor license and that triggers our involvement,” says CVRD bylaw enforcement official Nino Morano. “I haven’t seen any issues at the last two festivals and the feedback has been positive. At first we took a chance, and now it’s not much of a chance anymore because it’s worked out. We even had elected officials attend the event last year and they seemed to be really happy with it. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, but I don’t see anything that’s a deep concern or safety issue.”
According to Bain, dealing with bureaucracy is a year-long process, something that will start up again for next year immediately after the 2013 edition, which runs July 26Đ28 in Glenora. This year’s Rock of the Woods will be located at the Godfrey Brownwell Vineyards, where the festival has signed on to a five-year lease. Previous installments have taken place in Bamberton (2011) and Glenora Farm (2012).
Although it’s gotten a lot easier and smoother as the festival has gained recognition in the community, both the festival organizers and the Cowichan Valley went into the undertaking of hosting a music festival in the region without a lot of previous events to base their models on.
“We’ve been kind of learning how to do this together and that’s been a struggle, and until this year it was mind-blowingly hard to do,” says Bain of his annual partnership with the community, “but we’ve finally proven that it’s a safe and positive thing for the Cowichan Valley.”
Now able to draw larger musical acts to the area, the festival seems to be hitting its stride and creating a vibe of its own that goes beyond the music, according to Bain. This year’s lineup includes Seattle folk-rockers The Cave Singers, San Francisco psych-soul band Monophonics, Canadian indie-pop darling Hannah Georgas, UK-born Whistler DJ Mat the Alien, and Victoria folk/reggae group Jon and Roy, among dozens of others.
“Rock of the Woods is special because it takes place in a beautiful, pastoral valley and the vibe is right,” says Jon and Roy vocalist/guitarist Jon Middleton. “Dave Bain has managed to get some great acts this year. It’s also unique in that there is no event like it taking place in the Cowichan Valley area.”
With a new long-term home at the Glenora winery, Rock of the Woods now hosts at a 70-acre farm, including 30 acres of vineyards, 30 acres of fields, and the remaining acres of forest, with a view of the rest of the Glenora Valley.
Because of this, festival-goers are able to celebrate music and culture in an area Bain believes is hard to beat in natural beauty.
“In the Cowichan Valley we have six different swimming holes that are minutes away from each other. It’s a very relaxed atmosphere, but also a very positive one,” he says. “It’s a pretty interesting place and you can go for hikes or do whatever you want, and that paired with all of the amazing music and artists that have come out of it, it’s inspirational to me, and that’s where I started growing the idea of the festival.”
Matt Longpre, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist for Victoria indie rock band Sunhawk, has been a longtime supporter of the festival. Longpre has helped the festival with graphic design and played it with his band every year since its inception. He says he’s seen the festival grow a lot in three years.
“Rock of the Woods has a unique flavour to it,” says Longpre. “The lineup is always a great mix of artists on the rise, and I think there’s a culture developing more each year. It’s a perfect location, too. Somehow the Cowichan Valley in July feels like California.”
Bain says creating the culture that Longpre mentions has been a conscious goal of his entire team. In order for the festival to be successful, Bain says the community feel of the Cowichan Valley needed to transcend to the Rock of the Woods festival grounds.
“We all know that music festivals are about people creating relationships with each other in a musical setting. What’s different with our festival is that we cultivate that, so we focus on making sure people are comfortable, and we provide them with options to interact with each other,” says Bain. “What we’ve seen from that is we’ve created this culture where people can have positive experiences and reflect back on them afterwards. It’s created a family and a community. So, instead of people thinking they are coming for one element of a music festival, we try to wrap it all together with the community.”
Bain graduated from Camosun’s Interurban campus in 2009 with a BBA, majoring in Marketing Communications Management, and still helps Camosun with alumni strategy. He says festivals aren’t profitable businesses in the short-term, and he credits what he learned at Camosun for helping him to see the big picture of Rock of the Woods. That big picture includes long-term community partnerships and stability, both things that could be achieved with the festival’s five-year agreement with the Glenora winery.
“We got such a warm welcome from the Glenora community, it’s unreal,” says Bain. “Everyone knows our names and is asking about everything that’s going on. You get quite the sense of a small-town community once you’re there, and it has all the amenities of what makes a music festival great.”