Festival fans can enjoy a busy August
All Together Now still retains the original ethos of those early Electric Picnic events.
Electric Picnic, the biggest remaining music festival here, follows in two weeks, and also brings a date change that further breaks what had been a fairly solid Irish music calendar only a few years ago. Covid changed a lot, and for a couple of years, there were few festival opportunities, but now that things have come back, it looks like the gig and festival have further pivoted towards bigger gigs rather than festivals.
Lots of my friends have been asking me all summer whether I was busy during the festival season and I basically told them it’s only starting this weekend. There have been the usual big festivals (Longitude) and slighter smaller ones that are on the up (Beyond the Pale), but there is no doubt that this summer things have become more streamlined and less populated. Significant Irish festivals such as Body and Soul and Indiependence have taken some well-earned time out, while more alarmingly, The Wild Roots festival in Sligo had to cancel at the last minute.
It’s a tough world out there for music promoters, and quite often, it’s only the big ones who will survive. It does leave opportunity for many smaller events though, and I’ll get back to that momentarily.
The main reason there are fewer music festivals is because there were probably too many before the pandemic. Lots of the festivals are fighting for the same acts in the same short timeline, and I think too many of them have lacked a distinct identity in recent years.
Longitude is one festival that has survived by adapting to the various trends that were fashionable at the time. Originally it was based around indie and electronica, but when hip-hop and trap became exceptionally popular in the late 2010s, Longitude was the festival that best catered for this audience. In recent years they’ve adjusted that slightly, and balance some of the poppier, more popular hip-hop, trap, and r&b acts with lots of accessible modern dance acts. It remains an essential festival for many of those who have just done their Leaving Cert, but even Longitude has become more restrained, and it is now a two-day rather than a three-day event.
Marlay Park, like Malahide Castle, is also used for many one-off acts, and this is a trend that promoters such as MCD and Aiken have pushed harder over recent years. In Cork we are very familiar with Live at the Marquee and the Virgin Media Park shows, and these kinds of gigs are often held in Dublin, Galway, Limerick, and other places too. In Dublin, Malahide Castle, Marlay Park, Live at the Iveagh Gardens and more, bring lots of big festival-styled headliners to one-off nights more tailored to music fans’ tastes. The promoters make economies of scale and enjoy a fairly decent working relationship with often suburban communities that open their doors for a few weeks every summer to music fans. Many of these acts are therefore unlikely to play festivals, and lots of the fans will pick and choose to spend their hard-earned money more carefully.
The big promoters are thus more active than ever bringing big shows here, but their festival events are probably more streamlined. All Together Now was created by John Reynolds, who originally started the Picnic, and there is a feeling that the Waterford festival still retains the original ethos of those early EP events. The Picnic is a more commercial affair now, but without Live Nation it probably would not have survived the years where it was becoming harder to make money from it. In the next few years, All Together Now and the Electric Picnic will surely survive, but we will see what happens elsewhere.
It’s not all about the big ones, though. In Cork this summer we’ve had encouraging grassroots parties and even a new festival called Bualadh Bass. August sees the return of the Good Rooms Magic nights by the Lee, at the Lee Rowing club this time, while this weekend Cork Pride once again takes over the streets.
Smaller festivals such as Open Ear continue to flourish while operating within their means, and many great acts will continue to get on bills that cater for more people.
