Comox Valley fired up for Woodstove Festival

Cumberland’s Woodstove Music & Arts Festival has sold out in record time this year, but there may still be tickets to come. Empanadas Ilegales from Vancouver played at Woodstove 2024. (Joe Pugh/CHLY 101.7 FM)

The Cumberland Culture and Arts Society are warming up for the annual Woodstove Music & Arts Festival this November. Things took off with an early spark in September, when adult weekend passes sold out in only four days. Lineup announcements began a month later, in the first week of October. Cumberland’s cozy fall festival is also branching out into the visual arts this year with the introduction of the Woodstove Visual Arts Crawl.

Tereza Tomek is the founder and executive and artistic director of the Woodstove Festival. She joined CHLY and DIG FM to discuss the unprecedented rate of tickets selling out. 

“It definitely took us all by surprise because last year– we have sold out for the past few years, but not until maybe a week and a half before the event. And this year we sold out in four days. So it was quite [a] shock to everyone on our team, we definitely did not expect that,” she said. 

The festival itself is distinctive in its format, taking over the Village of Cumberland, turning every available space into a music venue for the weekend. Prioritizing indoor spaces for a cozy fall experience, it isn’t just classic Cumberland venues like the Waverly Hotel that stage performances; unconventional spaces like the hair dressing studio Alley Cuts are transformed for the event. 

This year’s festival will have more varied art representation with the new Woodstove Visual Arts Crawl, featuring new and previously created works by local visual artists. (Joe Pugh/CHLY 101.7FM)

“So there will be– at any moment there may be between eight and fourteen things to choose from to go see. So, people call it the ‘FOMO Festival,’ but it's also really cool because there's really something for everybody. If you wanna have a big dance party to a party band, you can do that. Or if you wanna sit and listen to some heartbreaking original songwriting in an intimate venue, you can do that as well,” Tomek said.

While the non-traditional festival stages make for a unique experience, the limitations of the number of buildings in town available makes growth a challenge, limiting the number of attendees possible. 

This year there will be a new venue to honour Diana Paige, a founding member and late president of the Cumberland Culture and Arts Society.

“Another [venue] is we're using Village Square this year and turning it into a new venue that's going to be called Paige Stage after our non-profit society's founder who passed away this year. So in honor of Diana Paige. So we're excited to honor the work that she's put into making this festival happen for the past eight years, and have a stage named after her,” Tomek said. 

This is the festival’s ninth year running, and while it has grown to be a local classic and draws many people to the valley each fall, it started much smaller. The Woodstove was inspired by the ArtWells festival in Wells B.C., which Tereza Tomek attended as a musician. She was inspired by the festival, and planning a move to Cumberland herself, Tomek struck up a conversation with local artist Kevin Flescher about the possibilities of bringing a similar festival to Cumberland. That conversation sparked the idea that ignited when Tomek met the Cumberland Culture and Arts Society, and partnered with co-founder Heather Thomson to make the festival a reality nine years ago. 

“We really didn't know if anyone was going to come,” Tomek said. “[We] definitely didn't have as many venues as we do now, but it was really successful, people really loved it, and we decided to keep going. So it's grown a lot over the years from that time, to what it is now where we actually have a real budget and a real staff team of organizers. It's a lot more sustainable now than it was back then, but, you know, it took nine years to get to where we are now. So it's a lot of hard work, a lot of volunteering, a lot of dedication from quite a few people in the community.”

Tomek said this year’s rapid ticket sales comes from a core audience who returns every year, and are ready to purchase as soon as tickets are available, knowing the festival has sold out in the past. She said that when details like volunteers are finalized, informing the capacity of the festival, there will be another release of tickets. This information will be shared on social media, and through the festival’s mailing list.

Tomek said beyond complex capacity calculations with varied venues, and space to wander between, another challenge to the organizers is plotting the schedule, with many local acts sharing performers across multiple bands. 

Big Fancy & The Shiddy Cowboys from Fort Fraser will return to the Woodstove Festival this year. (Joe Pugh/CHLY 101.7FM)

“It’s an amazing process because it feels like you’re putting together this grand piece of art. And when it all comes together and you look at it, it's the most satisfying thing ever. You just, you know that what you just created is like going to bring so many people joy,” she said.

Tomek said that generally the festival aims for at least half of the lineup to be local acts. Because touring artists are coming from further, and are less frequent to perform in the community, they will often perform twice in the weekend. The visiting artists are also less likely to be rebooked the following year, as the organizers aim to keep bringing new acts to the valley, creating more opportunities to play at Woodstove, and giving the audience a chance to discover new artists. 

“Whereas local artists, we generally try to book as many artists from the local community as possible, because there are so many great artists that are working and creating right within Comox Valley and the surrounding area,” she said. 

While Tomek joked that Woodstove is known as the “FOMO” or “Fear Of Missing Out” festival, with so many stages running at once, people who were unable to secure tickets don’t need to fear missing out entirely; more tickets will be released before the November festival.

“What I recommend is people go to our website, www.woodstovefestival.ca, and subscribe to the email list as that is a really good way to find out about ticket releases,” she said.

Woodstove organizers also encourage the secure transfer of tickets, but warn of scammers taking advantage. More information about safe ticket exchange can be found on their website.

But tickets aren’t the only way to enjoy the Woodstove Festival:

“And there are also some free events too. There's the CUBspace is going to be open to the community, which is the DJ stage, there's gonna be some different sort of jam spaces around town. So even if you don't have a ticket, it's really fun to walk around and there's always artists playing music on the street and sometimes those are the best performances you're gonna see,” she said.

Tomek said the unplanned jams that strike up around town are one of the things she is most excited for. 

“It's always so nice to just get to hear people playing in a jam setting. And I just love the jams. The jams are so great. Like there's always a jazz jam on the street. And it's really just cool seeing musicians collaborate, maybe that haven't even played together before, and coming together to just play their favorite music and share these traditional art forms all over the community,” Tomek said.

A few of the out-of-town acts that will be lighting up the Woodstove Festival’s stages this year are Aerialists (Toronto), Banitsa (Montréal), Cat Clyde (Ontario), Garret T. Willie (Alert Bay) and Bučan Bučan (Victoria).

The Woodstove Music & Arts Festival will take over the Village of Cumberland November 7th to 9th. More information about this year’s lineup is available online. Join the mailing list, or follow the festival on social media, for more information about further ticket releases.

Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada. Reporting done in the Comox Valley is done in partnership with DIG FM.