Bob Halvorsen wasn’t singing the blues on Monday morning.
According to the Thunder?Bay Community Auditorium general manager, attenandance at this year’s Thunder?Bay Blues Festival was up – way up.
Weekend pass sales were 40 per cent higher than they were in 2012, with attendance approaching 22,000 for the three-day weekend. This despite a torrential downpour on Saturday night.
Those numbers rival what the festival attracted 10 years ago.
But, said Halvorsen, in Year 12, they had to find a way to re-invent Blues Fest. Attendance was on a steady decline in recent years. Those one to three per cent drops add up over time, and the festival was struggling.
Great Big Sea, Los Lobos, Collective Soul and Kim Mitchell are hardly blues bands, but they have some mass appeal.
The blues still remains at the heart of the festival’s line-up, and Halvorsen promised a return to a Saturday blues headliner in 2014 – a big enough name just wasn’t available this time around.
While some blues festivals have managed to survive sticking strictly within the genre, others, most notably Ottawa, have branched out and embraced all types of music.
The reality is Halvorsen and company were right. The numbers prove it.
