Is there a White Knight out there prepared to help save the Sound of Music?

By Pepper Parr

December 3^rd, 2024

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Some good news did come out of the daylong session of City Council yesterday.

Six delegations, they weren’t all heard.

The one that will matter to most people is the decision to do whatever can be done to save the Sound of Music.

Dave Shepherd is now the Chair and the guy working to keep the ship afloat.

The issue before Council was to 1: Sunset the event, 2: Pause for a year, 3: Proceed with the 2025 event, forgive the $95,000 that Sound of Music owes the city and renegotiate the rate at which the $125,000 loan is repaid.

Shepherd explained that there is now a new board in place and that other than a 10-month-a-year contract person there is no one on the payroll.

Shepherd took Council through what he was up against – and it is a formidable challenge – which we set out below.

The really good news came from Councillor Galbraith who reported that he had been approached by an individual (he wasn’t prepared to say who the person was or the organization they were with) and that they were prepared to financially support the Sound of Music Festival.

Council then deferred making a decision on what to do with the SoM until Staff meets with the “White Knight”

During his delegation, Shepherd set out just what he is up against.

Many of the bands get paid in US$; his revenue is in Canadian dollars.

Many of the bands he would like to book are committed to Live Nation.

That $95,000 that is still outstanding – they are old, quite old invoices from the city for various services that were provided in the past.  “We would like that to, in essence, go away. If we could have that happen, that would be great for our financial structure going forward,

He added that “We’ve made almost 30% reductions in our costs going into 2025 we’ve stabilized our board, we have stabilized our staff, but we do recognize this is still a tough, tough business to be in, and we’re asking for support from the city

Councillor Sharman wanted to know if “… your position is now approved for recovering those grants?

Shepherd: It’s probably stabilized. There’s been some new grants that have been put out by the Feds and the province. Unfortunately, they’re the one we looked at, I would say, is mostly around incremental increase in size. And we are, I would say, stuck with the size of our festival because of the area we use. Having said that, I think going forward into 2020 2026 will be good. 2025 will be tough.

“We won’t get the Heritage grant. There is another grant that we are applying right now  –

“The way they work is, typically, it’s paid half up front, once you are approved, and then half up to six months later. And to be quite honest, we are still waiting at the six-month mark for a grant from last year. It is not the fastest process, to say the least.

Sharman: “My second question is with respect to your feelings about 2025 and how viable that’s likely to be and risks that you face, and whether or not taking a pause for 20 25 is something that’s interest or not.

Shepherd: I  think it’s very valuable to continue on to make the festival happen. We’ve cut 30% from our budget. We’ve stabilized our staffing, and our board of directors. The problems that we run into, for one, are US dollars. A lot of our bands are US-based. So now we cannot look at the US bands anymore, the cost of fire, police, ambulance, fencing, golf carts, everything has continued to go up. Insurance costs. Just have insurance for a festival alone.

We want to keep this free. We want to keep this Canada’s largest and best free music festival, and I can’t think of any other festival in North America, to be honest, of this size, that’s free, and that’s our mandate to keep it free.

We are projecting a small surplus this year based on this year’s current budget. Weather permitting.

Councillor Galbraith: “If we go with option one, forgiving the $95,000 loan, you feel that you could continue with the festival in 2025

Shepherd: Yes, with the forgiveness of the loan and the repayment terms and the annual funding that the city gives every year. I think we could make 2025 happen. I think we’d have a pretty good chance of success.

Councillor Bentivegna: Have you had discussions with any other organizations that are familiar with some of the things that you do, and perhaps some sort of partnership that will help maintain and sustain this event, right?

Shepherd: Yeah, that’s a fair question. We have an excellent working relationship with Street Crawl out of Hamilton. They’re a similar type of organization, not quite the same size as us, but a smaller community-based street fest. They understand the situation that we’re in. They’ve given us some ideas, and they’re going to help us actually, with some programming this year as well, to save some of our costing, some of our pricing will be alleviated, working with them together on certain things. We’ve reached out to Rotary as well, too, and ideally, you know, there can be some cost sharing when it comes to fencing or when it comes to golf carts or things like that. So we’ve worked on a few things that we’re trying to get some areas of expertise together, and maybe we can find some cost savings for both.

Councillor Stolte: I’m just curious about the no US bands, as much as I’d love to support Canadians. Do you know the proportion in the last year or two of the festival, as far as Canadian versus us acts? Last year we were, I’m gonna say 80/20 Canadian us. We really focused on Canadian last year. If you were at the event last year you saw a lot of Kim Mitchell and Chilliwack and Trooper and Canadian rock bands. This year we’re probably looking close to 100% Canadian, which is great, honest, more than happy to have Canadian bands. But we’re also limited on who’s available, who wants to tour, who can play, who’s unavailable due to vacation or surgery or whatever reason. There’s a small list of bands who actually can play. Some bands are tied to Live Nation. They cannot play the sound Music Festival. They’re only allowed to play Budweiser stage or Scotia site. There’s a whole nasty behind-the-scenes music industry that we don’t know about, which allows certain bands only to play our festival, and vice versa. So we’re very limited as to who is available.

Councillor Stolte:  I’m anxious about the thought of pausing anything for a year. As soon as you pause something, there’s a much higher likelihood that it never comes back. Is that you’re nodding?

Councillor Kearns: I think this is a really big decision to be making, whether it’s pause, sunset or continue. A community group delivered an informal, very short poll around those three options.

They came back with, a 35.7% favorability. The next two, which would be sunset or pause for a year, came back with 25% and 18% respectively.

Do you feel that some additional engagement would be required before the city makes such a big decision like pausing or canceling this event?

Shepherd: Yes, I would, I would say that’s fair. If we look at positive or canceling –  more engagement is necessary. Okay, so just for clarity, as a follow-up, if we were to select option two or three today, how might you feel the community would respond based on those numbers? I don’t think they respond very well.

Where do the people who attend come from?

68% reside within 40 kilometers, which would capture Mississauga to, let’s say Grimsby

Burlington itself, is 20%  and 12% or more than 100 kilometers away.

And just a follow up to that, knowing that information, what are the hotels, for example, you communicate with them with respect to the number of visitors, and what are they saying?

Shepherd: Yeah, they’re sold out. The Pearl the Waterfront;  Holiday Inn was under renovation last year, but still, we were able to use some of the rooms that were available for our bands. Actually, they love it. It’s their biggest time of year. It is sold out. We have a great working relationship with them.

I’d like to see more of a relationship with hotels, to be quite honest. They’re there, but they’re not a sponsor. I’d love to see them as a sponsor.

Could you estimate if, if this festival were to sunset, who would be affected? By way of vendors, local businesses, collective arts, beers, nickel Brooks, all of those. But what would be the impact on our community and a ripple effect?

Shepherd: I couldn’t give a number. I wouldn’t know that number, but I would say there’s every business downtown would be affected. Every restaurant downtown would be affected. Hotels would be affected. Electrical companies that help build the stages, Robertson, for example, the amusement company. It’s a huge number. I would say it would really, it would really be a detriment to the city. I think you know, this is what Burlington is known for. This is the biggest event of the year. People look forward to it. Vendors look forward to it. Vendors are calling us already asking, how do we get ready for next year. We’re planning these events next year, and if we don’t have them tied up very soon, they’re going to wonder what’s going on, is their festival next year?