ANTIGONISH: Joe MacEachern is known for helping create the well-known Evolve Festival and says the new Relics Music Festival to be held this upcoming summer, is an evolution of the past popular festival, not a sequel.
“For years people have been asking for a kind of reunion show from the producers and organizers of the original Evolve Festival,” MacEachern told The Reporter.
When a musician friend called and asked to get a reunion show together, MacEachern, his brother and their friend all saw this as an opportunity to reunite.
“Everything just aligned. We got a phone call from a friend who was overseas teaching English who said his band the Burt Neilson Band were thinking about getting a reunion show together and it just steamrolled from there,” MacEachern said. “We found this beautiful venue in Thorburn called Music Mountain.”
Once the site was secured he said the team started making phone calls, then band after band and DJ after DJ, they began booking their line-up.
“Everything started falling into place,” MacEachern said. “And I said ‘Now we got a concert on our hands.’”
After only days of going on sale, early bird tickets have almost sold out, something the organizer noted shows the demand for the festival.
“We’re really excited and we haven’t really even released our line up yet. We’re just slowly releasing a band every now and then to peak interest and keep that momentum going,” MacEachern said. “So, every few days we’ll release another act and hopefully in about three weeks we’ll release the full website with the entire lineup.”
Although people appreciate the quality music, he suggested it’s people wanting to get back with their old friends which is creating the demand, and noted they are anxious to show everyone what they have in store.
“My brother Terry is heavily involved as a DJ and as an audio technician and had his hands in almost every major festival in the Maritimes for logistics. And it’s fun for me too because Terry was kind of younger when I did Evolve, so it’s nice now to be two grown men and have the opportunity to work with him and he’s like my best friend too,” MacEachern said. “And Dayton Martin has been all over North America and all over the world and has been behind the scenes at a lot of festivals, he’s quite excited to be involved in the group as well.”
Even though they had the opportunity to buy back the Evolve Festival name, he said they decided to start something new, however, he said a lot of people who helped with the original Evolve Festival are coming back to help with this new event.
“It’s nice to have everyone all back together and have them chatting again,” MacEachern said. “And we wanted to start something fresh and different with new concepts evolved for a new time, but we wanted to pay homage to that time and era, hence the name Relics.”