TORONTO — A new summer music festival is coming to Ontario.
Republic Live Inc. announced Tuesday the first “annual music and arts camping festival” will take place July 24 to 26 at Burl’s Creek Event Grounds in Oro-Medonte, north of Barrie.
The festival will include four stages, original art installations, a variety of food concessions and a farmers market.
Spokesperson Laura Kennedy told Global News the festival will showcase numerous genres of music but said the line-up of performers won’t be announced for another four to six weeks.
The name of the festival has also not been revealed but Kennedy denied reports it will be called HomeAway.
The company has registered the trademarks HomeAway and Starseed and also owns the URL starseed.com. (Kennedy said only that Starseed is “another name that we were talking about.”)
Festival organizers said they were inspired by a 2011 trip to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee.
“We started wondering why we didn’t have anything like it here in Canada,” said Shannon McNevan, executive director of Republic Live, in a release.
The company has partnered with Bonnaroo promoter AC Entertainment for the new festival.
Last year’s Bonnaroo featured an eclectic line-up of performers, including Elton John, Kanye West, Skrillex and Canada’s City and Colour and A Tribe Called Red.
Burl’s Creek Event Grounds, a 700-acre site near Lake Simcoe about 90 minutes north of Toronto, is also the new home of the Boots and Hearts Music Festival, which has been held for the past three years in Bowmanville.
It runs Aug. 6 to 9 with acts like Brad Paisley, Florida Georgia Line and Little Big Town.
In 2009, Burl’s Creek was set to host the Virgin Festival — with acts like Nine Inch Nails, Pitbull and Pixies — but poor ticket sales forced organizers to move it to Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre with only weeks to go. A spokesperson said in a release at the time that music fans wanted the festival where it was “easier to access.”
Burl’s Creek Event Grounds is owned by Stan Dunford, CEO of transportation company Contrans Group Inc. and the majority shareholder in Republic Live Inc., a privately-held company based in Woodstock, Ont.
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