Music
Bonnaroo's co-founder is bringing a similar festival to Canada
by Mark Teo
January 2, 2015
Since it began in 2002, Bonnaroo has become one of the world’s largest summer festivals, attracting upwards of 100,000 people to pastoral Manchester, Tennessee. Yes, it’s ground zero for obnoxious farmer’s tans, “Suns Out Guns Out” tank tops, and white-person headdresses, but it’s also undeniably one of the most revered stops on the festival circuit: It’s an immersive, multi-day camping extravaganza, and there’s music from the moment you wake up until you fall asleep, wasted on Boone’s Farm. It also draw a massively diverse crowd: In last year’s edition, EDM-loving revellers had Skrillex; NPR dads had the Drive-by Truckers; hip-hop heads had Pusha T; guitar-loving wastoids had Diarrhea Planet. Plenty of Canadians travelled to the U.S. South for Bonnaroo, and for good reason.
Now, for Canadians, travel costs may be getting much, much cheaper, as Bonnaroo’s founders have announced their intentions to bringing a similar festival to Canada—namely, Ontario. Festival co-founder Ashley Capps made the announcement on the Knoxville News Sentinel.
“We’re working with great Toronto-based partners, Republic Live, and we’re very, very excited about this,” he told the newspaper. “It’s an amazing site, and it, like Bonnaroo, will be a camping festival.”
So, where will the Canadian answer to Bonnaroo be held? The camping grounds will be in Burl’s Creek, which is just north of Barrie. (To non-Ontarians, it’s roughly an hour and a half outside of Toronto.) Its name won’t be Bonnaroo—according to reports, it’ll be called HomeAway. The park was recently sold to new owners who promised to revitalize the space, and it seems like HomeAway may be the event space’s first major festival—with all due respect to the Boots and Hearts, a country-music fest also organized by Republic Live, and the Barrie Automotive Flea Market.
Homeaway is scheduled to land in the summer of 2015, and it should rival Bonnaroo in scope: Burl’s Creek sprawls over 700 acres, and the capacity lands at 80,000 people. Excited? You should be. Here’s a flyover of the fest grounds.
The lineup, according to Festivalsnobs, should arrive early this year. [H/T Canada.com]
