Music lovers on the West Coast mourning the loss of the three-day Squamish Valley Music Festival this year have something to look forward to this coming weekend.
For the past five years, Squamish has been the premiere place to catch up-and-coming homegrown acts. The city was atwitter when Live Nation Canada announced it was pulling the plug on the August long weekend event, leaving beer-loving audiophiles with nowhere to spend their money during the BC Day Long Weekend.
But thanks to Vancouver Craft Beer Week (VCBW), Vancouverites won’t be missing out on the opportunity to catch some wicked tunes with a draught in hand.
With more than 100 breweries and 400 beers on tap, this three-day bill of local brewing and musical talent is just the beginning of a new lease on live music in the city.
Held at the PNE Fairgrounds, the Vancouver Craft Beer Week Festival kicks off Friday, June 3 and runs until June 5. Headlining acts include Vancouver’s own Boom Booms, JP Maurice, and locally-famed Peak Performance Project winner Good For Grapes — just to name a few.
“This is the first year we’re really focusing on music at the festival,” says Leah Heneghan, VCBW’s events director.
Heneghan is one of a team of four founding members of the week-long fête, along with business developer Paul Kamon, marketing director Chris Bjerrisgaard, and technical director Tyler Olson.
Since its humble beginnings seven years ago, VCBW has grown exponentially – and so, too, has its cultural influence.
“We had our very first beer festival at [Main Street’s] Heritage Hall with 100 people. If the beer festival sells out this year, it will be 18,000 people over three days, so it’s this phenomenal growth,” Heneghan reveals.
In 2009, there were less than 40 breweries province-wide, including the big-ticket names such as Molson and Kokanee. “By the end of this year, there will be 140 [breweries],” Heneghan says.
Of course, with a more than threefold increase in BC breweries, it only makes sense that VCBW would expand as well.
IT ALL HAPPENED AT HOPAPALOOZA
“The first event we ever had was at the Alibi Room,” says Heneghan. “That was Hopapalooza, and the Alibi Room back then was really ground-breaking in the craft beer scene. [Nigel Springthorpe, Alibi Room’s owner] had some amazing beers that nobody else in the city was getting and he had all of these taps, so having the first craft beer week event there was awesome.”
Since Hopapalooza’s inaugural event, musical acts such as Rich Hope have provided sonic entertainment, merging an appetite for beer with a love of tunes.
“In the beginning, it was just a week, and there were a whole bunch of events during that week. After that first year, there were so many people who were interested in it that the next year we moved it to the Armoury, which was 1,400 people over two days. That in itself – that kind of growth in one year – was pretty crazy,” says Heneghan. “So the festival kind of became the closing festival for beer week. We still do all the events leading up to the festival, but that’s kind of the big build-up in a lot of ways.”
Having evolved from dinner and beer pairings to sold-out niche events, Heneghan and crew saw an opportunity to expand VCBW with the public’s (and their own) interests in mind.
“It’s still a scary thing and you never know if your events are going sell out or if people are going to come to the festival,” she says. “[Hopapalooza] crashed our website two or three times in a row with people trying to get tickets. It sold out in eight minutes one year. We took a risk on ourselves and it’s going well.
“We keep growing an changing every year because we want to create this beer experience that all of us wants to experience ourselves.”
FINDING COLLABORATIVE HARMONY
It should come as no surprise that when it comes to organizing a music festival, a certain harmony is necessary to achieve.
That’s why Heneghan and crew paired up with CFOX and Wet Ape to bring talent to the stage.
The rock radio station hosted the #willplayforbeer competition via social media, which gave local bands the Brass Action, Dakota Pearl and Disco Funeral an opening slot on the main stage for each day of the festival.
“At the PNE [last] year, we did Craft Beer Fest at The Fair, and we helped them organize a 1,000-person beer fest for the duration of the fair. They’re kind of like the perfect partner for us.”
Another perfect pairing? VCBW’s annual beer collaboration, the proceeds of which are donated to charity. This year’s beer collaboration is between New Westminster’s Steel & Oak and Vancouver’s Strange Fellows Brewing.
“It’s a French saison with Tasmanian pepperberries and New Zealand hops, and it’s delicious,” Heneghan gushes.
The brew’s beneficiary is MusicHeals, a not-for-profit charity aimed at providing increased access to music therapy for patients in children’s hospitals, seniors’ centres, palliative care, AIDS and HIV programs, at-risk youth, rehabilitation, and more. The charity has been VCBW’s beer collab recipient in years previous, starting with 2014’s PrevAle, by Swollen Members rapper Prevail.
“We thought MusicHeals made the most sense because we’re bringing up such a big music aspect this year; it made sense to partner with a charity that was involved with music as well,” says Heneghan.
The Steel & Oak/Strange Fellows Tu MekeSaison will have its own booth at the VCBW Festival, along with 120 other breweries (and a half dozen cideries for the gluten-intolerant!) serving up their brews over the three-day affair.
The festival will also be serving up bites with six food trucks per day, plus two regular PNE vendors, and a Cartem’s Donuterie pop-up presented by the Donnelly Group.
The Vancouver Craft Beer Week Beer Festival takes place at the PNE Fairgrounds on Friday, June 3 (4-9pm); Saturday, June 4 (1-6pm), and Sunday June 5 (1-6pm). Visit VCBW.ca for a full festival line-up.
VCBW Music Lineup
Friday, June 3
CFOX Stage: Devon Coyote, Good for Grapes, and JP Maurice
Lamplighter Stage: Donnelly Group DJs
The (not so) Secret Garden Stage: Mark Woodyard and Friends
Saturday, June 4
CFOX Stage: Band of Rascals, Damn Fools, and Jesse Roper
The Lamplighter Stage: Donnelly Group DJs
The (not so) Secret Garden Stage: Mark Woodyard and Friends
Sunday, June 5
CFOX Stage: Savvie, the Matinee, and the Boom Booms
The Lamplighter Stage: Donnelly Group DJs
The (not so) Secret Garden Stage: Mark Woodyard and Friends
