PORT ANGELES — The 22nd annual Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts, with its scores of bands, art and food vendors around the Vern Burton Community Center, drew an especially healthy crowd, according to Dan Maguire, executive director of the Juan de Fuca Foundation.
Ticket revenue climbed 20 percent as about 4,500 wristbands — including 500 full-festival passes — were sold for the event, which ran May 22-25.
The festival reaps some $90,000 in earned revenue, Maguire said — but that alone doesn’t pay for the festival and other Juan de Fuca Foundation concerts presented throughout the year.
Sponsorships, not ticket sales, keep the nonprofit foundation in the black every year, he said.
Thirty-seven companies, agencies and families are listed on the www.JFFA.org website.
Turning younger
Yet while the festival was deemed a success, Maguire hopes to change it up.
“I’m always trying to skew the festival younger,” he said.
Amy McIntyre, who worked in the ticket booth all four days, saw the usual crowds of baby boomers.
“But this year, I saw more Generation X families, millennials and even Generation Z,” those born post-1995 or so.
Boomers came for Saturday’s performance by It’s a Beautiful Day, the San Francisco band famous for its 1969 song “White Bird,” and for Curtis Salgado, the 61-year-old rhythm and blues singer and harmonica player who closed out the festival Monday.
A mix of fans jammed the festival store after the Dusty 45s’ Friday night show to have singer and trumpet player Billy Joe Huels sign the band’s CDs.
The same thing happened Saturday evening for LeRoy Bell, the soul singer who, after delivering an encore rendition of his song “A Change Is Coming,” met a fresh clutch of fans.
From off-Peninsula
Festival-goers came from Seattle and the Puget Sound metropolitan area, Victoria and Portland, Ore., Maguire added, though he couldn’t give numbers yet.
For the first time this year, he advertised the event in Bellingham and Portland.
This may or may not have been the last Juan de Fuca Festival at the Vern Burton, the former high school gymnasium at Fourth and Peabody streets.
Maguire has spoken of moving the event under a huge white tent at Port Angeles’ waterfront park in 2016.
But things went so well this year, he said, that over the next several months, Maguire and the foundation board of directors will kick around the idea of staying put.
Maguire will start booking next year’s acts this fall. He said his budget runs about $50,000 for the 40 bands and other performers.
Less money
Jim Faddis, whose Sequim-based band Farmstrong did two shows at the festival this year, said band members were paid about one-fifth of what they earn at the June 12-14 Sacajawea Bluegrass Festival in Pasco.
Obviously, the money’s not the motivator here.
“You live here, you want to be involved, you want to contribute,” he said, adding that the festival experience was about a good sound and an attentive crowd.
“You rise up,” said Faddis, “for that kind of stuff.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
