Riverfest Elora and Summerfolk say their heads are still above water after a rainy weekend

Two Ontario music festivals that had to cancel shows due to torrential rains this past weekend say they still have their heads above water financially, and they expect to return next year to celebrate milestone anniversaries. 

Riverfest Elora shut down its Saturday night show due to a lightning storm and moved two of the acts who were scheduled to perform into its indoor after party venues. 

Summerfolk in Owen Sound shut down performances three times due to lightning and moved its Sunday night main stage performances to the Down By the Bay stage in the beer tent because of flooding in the amphitheatre, said artistic director James Keelaghan.

"On Sunday, we had rain, the likes of which I had only ever seen when I was in North Carolina on the edge of a hurricane," Keelaghan said.

"I walked into the amphitheatre, and there was, like, a foot and a half of water … like backstage."

Rain has always posed a risk to the fortunes of outdoor music festivals, but Canadian festivals have been contending with additional threats to their livelihoods since coming back from COVID-19-related shut-downs, said Erin Benjamin, the president and CEO of the Canadian Live Music Association. 

"The ongoing convergence of influences ... be they inflation or continuing supply chain disruption, etc., and then you add severe weather into the mix, I mean it continues to be a perfect storm for festivals," she said. 

Advance ticket sales for Summerfolk had been so dismal that organizers had been worried about paying all the performers, nevermind staging next year's 50th anniversary edition, Keelaghan said.  

But on Friday, he said, he watched ticket sales go up and up and up.

"Even when it was raining, they kept buying tickets, he said.

"On Saturday, when we had the first of the torrential downpours and we had to shut the site down, people were still buying tickets," he said

"We couldn't believe it. We just couldn't believe it," he added. "We sold, like, 200 or 300 day passes on Sunday, even though the forecast was for torrential, debilitating rain."

Attendance numbers were still down, Keelaghan said, but nowhere near as badly as expected. 

While the final accounting still needs to be done, he predicts that the festival will be about $40,000 off budget. That's not as bad as they were worried it could be.