The Walnut Valley Festival is on the ropes and it’s up to us to save it.
I talked this week to Bart Redford, executive director of the Walnut Valley Association, and here’s how he puts it: “We’re definitely having this year’s festival and then we’ll just have to see where we’re at after that.”
The music festival that draws thousands to Winfield every year is tapping financial reserves to stay in business, and that can’t continue forever, he said.
“We need a few years of some good crowds, so we can kind of replenish our reserves,” Redford said. “I think it’s doable.”
I agree with him.
The festival’s troubles have a familiar ring to them — the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the post-pandemic inflation we’re all dealing with right now.
“In 2020 we couldn’t have a festival, and in 2021 we saw about three-quarters of our usual crowd,” Redford said.
Then, last year was the festival’s 50th anniversary.
“We went a little bit extra in terms of the lineup and the number of performers,” Redford said. “We had a good crowd. We had a better crowd than we’ve had since 2018, before the pandemic. But it wasn’t enough really, to cover some of the other expenses that we got into.”
Like a lot of businesses, the festival did get some government assistance that allowed it to punch through the pandemic.
But since then, the festival is having to deal with higher costs for stage and sound equipment, porta-potties and everything else necessary to put on a festival that essentially doubles the population of Winfield over four days.
I HAVE TO CONFESS, I’ve never been to the Walnut Valley Festival, mostly because I didn’t really understand it.
It’s weird, because when we lived in California, my wife Kathy and I went to folk music shows all the time.
We developed a taste for it when, during a spontaneous day trip to Ojai sometime in the ‘80s, we more or less tripped over a folk music concert at the local Women’s Club and decided to give it a try. After that, we went to almost every concert they had.
A couple years later, Kathy and I huddled under a Space Blanket on a rainy day at UCLA for Troubadours of Folk, listening to Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, John Prine and a host of other legends.
