Basic HTML Version
72
73
CANADIAN INDUSTRY ONLINE - JULY 2012
the community: Since its early days,
Countryfest has supported a range of
civic initiatives and organizations — a
commitment that only grows stronger
as attendance continues to rise.
“Over the years, we’ve donated
to a new pool, a new arena, to the
Grandview Hall, to walking trails and
to the Dauphin and District Commu-
nity Foundation for music education,”
says Eric Irwin, who’s both mayor of
Dauphin and president of the non-
profit festival.
“The biggest yet was $400,000 to
start up the Countryfest Community
Cinema — a four-screen multiplex, sta-
dium seating, state-of-the-art theatre.
They’ve been open for just over a year,
but they’ve put 72,000 people through
there already.”
The inaugural Countryfest was
organized by a private group of busi-
ness owners eager to regain income
they’d lost on a stalled hotel project
outside of town.
The hotel site was converted to
campgrounds for festival-goers, but
the venture proved a financial disap-
pointment. The following year, it was
turned over to a non-profit group,
whose members procured $100,000 in
seed funding from investors through-
out the community.
“The first year our group oper-
ated, we lost $50,000 of that $100,000,”
Irwin recalls. “So the next year we
went back and got another $50,000
from the same people. The third year
we booked the Kentucky Headhunt-
ers and we made some pretty good
money. Within about three years, we’d
paid back all the seed capital plus 20%
interest, and we’ve had a reserve fund
to cover a rainy day ever since.”
Festival programming has always
skewed populist — think Vince Gill,
Terri Clark and Toby Keith — but with
three stages for audiences to choose
from at all times, there’s plenty of
room for roots, blues, and even rock ’n’
roll.
This year’s lineup, for instance,
features the newly solo Ronnie Dunn
(late of Brooks & Dunn), Georgia
faves the Zac Brown Band, and coun-
try queen >> Reba McEntire. But its
Thursday mainstage spot — a rarity
for country fests, according to Irwin —
is reserved for Can-rock royalty Randy
Bachman and Fred Turner.
Audiences are clearly in favour of
the more-is-better approach. Though
tickets don’t sell out quite as quickly as
they used to — as Irwin points out, at-
tendance is particularly dependent on
the plight of local farmers — the festi-
val still draws more than 14,000 people
each day.
It also injects about $10 million
into the local economy each year, a
significant portion of which benefits
service groups and community organi-
MANITOBA SHINES