IN CONCERT
What: Laketown Shakedown featuring Snoop Dogg, Incubus, Smash Mouth, Sublime with Rome, Jesse Roper and more
Where: Laketown Ranch Music and Recreation Park, 8811-2 Youbou Rd., Lake Cowichan
When: Friday through Sunday
Tickets: General admission day passes cost $50 (Friday), $89 (Saturday) and $109 (Sunday), or $199 for a three-day general admission pass
Note: Children 12 and under are free when accompanied by an adult
Less is rarely more in the festival world. Fans have grown to accustomed to wanting bigger and getting it.
But with regards to the summer programming at Lake Cowichan’s Laketown Ranch Music and Recreation Park, the less-is-more philosophy certainly applies — and appears to be working wonders.
The third annual Laketown Shakedown gets underway Friday at the site near Youbou, kicking off the first of two large-scale festivals with a drastically altered visage. Gone are four events from last year that were focused exclusively on Canadian rock. In their place is a revamped Laketown Shakedown, with a roster of international rock and rap acts that is expected to draw more than 6,000 fans each day this weekend.
That’s a significant step up in terms of programming and profile from last year’s Canadian classic rock-themed event, which drew 1,500 fans, and the trio of Laketown Shakedown showcases for regional artists that were staged through the summer.
“What we were getting from people in the age of streaming music was that people have such a wide variety of tastes when it comes to music,” said festival manager Mike Hann of Duncan’s Wideglide Entertainment, which is co-producing Laketown Shakedown with Live Nation Canada.
“We thought we would combine everything in one big bash, make it multi-genre and go after everything from hip-hop to rock to electronic music. The thinking is to cater to all those tastes in one weekend. We are putting all our energy into this one event, as opposed to spreading the crowds out over four different weekends.”
Wideglide’s Sunfest Country Music Festival — which is expected to draw 10,000 fans per day to the 172-acre Laketown Ranch site Aug. 1-4 — is still the top dog on Vancouver Island, but the revised Laketown Shakedown has been making a strong first impression. When headliners Snoop Dogg, Incubus, Sublime with Rome, Jesse Roper and Smash Mouth were announced in March, Laketown Shakedown quickly became one of the bright spots of the summer schedule. “The way it has been received has been really reassuring,” Hann said.
“The overall response has been overwhelming, to be honest. People got what we were trying to do right out of the gate. Not doing four events, and putting all our efforts into one, allowed us to curate a better experience for people.”
The summer festival business has been a difficult one in recent years and the news that two of Greater Victoria’s big events were either being cancelled (in the case of Rock the Shores) or postponed until next year (Rifflandia) had some wondering if the fallout would spill over to other events. Laketown Shakedown has not felt that crunch, Hann said.
The presence of Snoop Dogg, a cross-generational rap icon who has never played a festival on Vancouver Island, and has not played in Victoria since 2012, always helps. But other highlights abound. Alt-rockers Incubus have not played Victoria since 2007 and are currently on their first major tour of North America since 2015, while Smash Mouth, the hitmakers behind the enduring viral hit All Star, have never played in the area.
“It was our mission statement right out of the gate to bring something that the Island hasn’t seen before, or doesn’t see very often,” Hann said. “We knew our combined resources with Live Nation could pull that off.”
Three stages will be in action through the weekend, including a late-night stage. Fans from Victoria and other outlying areas not camping on site will have several shuttles to bring them home, which takes the festival from being camping-only to something much more flexible. Hann and his production team have adjusted the site’s specifics to accommodate the various needs of fans, from those who are on site all weekend to those only coming to see Snoop Dogg.
“We’ve re-jigged the site to suit what we are doing a little bit better,” Hann said. “The layout is going to be improved, especially for this kind of music, and for dancing.”
Weather can play a part in determining the success of any festival, where walk-up ticket sales are concerned. But Hann is confident, given the response thus far, that Laketown Shakedown has found its new identity. Fans can expect the festival to offer more of the same going forward, he said.
“We’ll take some time after the event, de-brief, and determine our way forward. But we seem to have come across a formula that people are into at this point in time. We’re not going to try and re-invent the wheel if this is what people clearly want. And that seems to be the case from the response. I don’t see any reason at this point why it wouldn’t continue in the future.”
