Backyard Fest plays on

Fans of Backyard Fest got some shocking news on April 4 of this year when the festival posted on social media that the backyard venue was deemed unsafe. Photo: Joe Pugh

A beloved downtown music festival is once again kicking off this long weekend after almost being cancelled.

Backyard Fest, a backyard and underground music festival, will showcase both local talent and musical groups from B.C. and Alberta. 

This is the fifth year running for the festival, which takes place every May long weekend in the backyard of downtown Nanaimo’s Sound Heritage, a vintage music and stereo store

The festival originally started in 2017 as Festival Lemieux, in memory of Anton Lemieux who had passed away that year. His father, Jean Lemieux, was the owner of Sound Heritage at the time. Those who knew Anton decided to put on the festival in Anton's honour and to raise awareness about drug use.

The festival then continued the following year and became Backyard Fest.

The two day festival showcases both local talent and musical groups from B.C. and Alberta. Photo: Joe Pugh

Dave Read is the owner of NoiseAgonyMayhem a metal, punk, and psychedelic record shop on Commercial Street and an organizer for the music festival. He said he got involved with the festival when it became the Backyard Fest.

Having also performed at the festival in the past with his band Caveman & The Banshee, he said the community is the best part of it.

“Just seeing the crowd having such a great time,” said Read. “I mean, I'm there all day too, not just if I'm performing, and that's the real reward  to see the smiling faces coming in, and even happier people coming out at the end of the day”

Fans of Backyard Fest got some shocking news on April 4 of this year when the festival posted on social media that the backyard venue was deemed unsafe by the City of Nanaimo and fire department officials. This meant the festival would not be able to run this year. But then only two days later, the festival posted to social media that the festival was once again able to continue. 

Read said during this time everyone was nervous and had their stomach in their throat.

“To put it in a nutshell, we were trying to upgrade the space to how we felt the authorities were expecting it to be and it looked like those efforts were going to take longer than expected,” he said. “We still didn't really have a clear picture of whether we were going to get approvals on certain things.”

Read (pictured right performing in Caveman & The Banshee) said the community is the best part of the festival. Photo: Joe Pugh

He said by April 4, the festival had to lock in performers and infrastructure needed for the festival to make sure it could happen. But without enough time and resources to make the necessary changes to the venue happen before May, they had to cancel it.

Read said a lot of work was put into figuring out how to keep the festival going by both the festival organizers and the City.

“Then we heard from some folks from the events department in the [City of Nanaimo] who said that they fully supported Backyard Fest, and were happy to help us get it going again for 2024,” he said. “You know thanks to them and thanks to all the volunteers and everybody who picked it back up again and did like six months' worth of work in a month.”

He said right now it's too early to say what is going to happen to the festival in 2025.

“As with any sort of festival you always take stock after the event has happened and what we always try to do is see what we could have done better and how we can improve on it and fix things that possibly need to be fixed,” he said. “So I'm sure that's the path we'll take after this one but it's too early to say anything right now.”

Read said the most important thing about the festival is the community that attends it.

“It's such a shame these days people are glued to their personal cell phones and little things and sucked into social media and stuff,” he said. “That's not real you know, what's real is seeing friends and neighbours and people that maybe you only know from going in their store or seeing at a show and bumping into them in the backyard and having the sun shining down with good music playing on.” 

He said the festival is a positive community event that everyone is invited to and celebrates in the downtown area.

“It's just really great for the downtown, especially in an age these days when things are getting so big and there's so much out there to choose from music-wise,” he said. “It's nice just to be able to, in many cases, walk down to a downtown festival or take public transit down and enjoy yourself. It helps revitalize the town itself.”

Tickets for the festival can be purchased on the Backyard Fest website where the official list of performers can also be found. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the Vault Cafe, Vault Skateboards, Sound Heritage, and NoiseAgonyMayhem.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.