Rain or shine, the summer festival season gets underway Friday with the 35th annual Willamette Valley Folk Festival.
Sponsored by the EMU Cultural Forum, the free three-day fete attracts more than 20,000 revelers to campus each spring to sample food, crafts and an expansive lineup of more than 40 musicians playing on three separate stages in and around the EMU.
Though folk music remains the backbone of the festival, it has evolved since its inception in 1971 to include music acts that are decidedly non-folk, and this year continues that trend with music ranging from world-beat to blues.
“It’s continuing to branch out,” festival coordinator Lisa Andrews said of this year’s music lineup, which is weighted more toward folk music during the day but features non-folk headliners at night. She said three headliners will appear Friday through Sunday nights, “which is new from years past.”
Beginning at 4 p.m. Friday and ending at 6 p.m. Sunday, the festival will feature 18 bands performing on the main stage, located on the EMU east lawn. Secondary stages at the EMU Amphitheater and The Buzz Coffeehouse will showcase additional performances, while workshops and activities will take place in the Fir and Ben Linder Rooms.
Headliners include rhythm and blues act The Shane Dwight Band, afro-beat group Aphrodesia, and rockers New Monsoon. Local acts, such as the Hershal Bloom Experience, Justin King, Laura Kemp and the Sugar Beets, will be playing the main stage throughout the day.
Andrews said the Sugar Beets always “draw a great Eugene crowd,” and the Hershal Bloom Experience bridges the festival to the past. “Hershal is in his mid-80s and he’s been around Eugene for a long time,” she said. “He definitely brings back all 30-plus years of the folk festival.”
Though it draws a fair number of students, Andrews said the folk festival is more than a campus event as it draws an impressive amount of festival-goers from all over Eugene. “It really is a community crowd,” she said. “The whole Saturday Market comes over.”
Andrews said she hopes to attract more students this year by featuring most of the acoustic acts during the day and the non-folk based acts at night. “At night I want people to be able to hear it and come over,” she said.
The constant rain over the past few weeks has left the east lawn a tad spongy, but Andrews isn’t worried about a repeat of past festivals, when rain turned the main stage area into a virtual mud bowl. In the past, after the crowd danced and played in the liquefied turf, groundskeepers were left with the expensive task of repairing the lawn. This year plywood will be placed on the ground in front of the stage to prevent that from happening again.
Local musician Peter Wilde, who will be performing Saturday with the Sugar Beets, said some of his best memories of the folk festival are when it has rained.
Eugene audiences are pretty forgiving of wet weather he said, which makes it pretty fun “playing in the rain and having no one really care.”
Along with avoiding expensive damage to the east lawn, Andrews has worked hard to avoid the financial problems that have plagued the festival in the past. Though the festival’s current funding level can no longer afford the national acts that were once a mainstay of the event, Cultural Forum leaders have worked hard to ensure it remains free and still features a strong lineup of regional musicians.
Andrews began planning the festival in September and secured a $5,000 advertising grant from Lane County in late fall, which freed up funds for securing the event’s extensive lineup of musicians. Even with the extra cash, Andrews said she had to ask most of the groups to take pay cuts. Andrews said the benevolence of the musicians and the opportunity to play in front of a large crowd convinced them to reduce their asking prices — which topped out at $9,000 — down to the forum’s maximum payout of $1,000. Eugene Weekly also pitched in by printing festival brochures at a reduced price, and local radio-station KLCC agreed to broadcast the entire event for free.
This year’s festival will also bring back the new song contest. Six of the contestants have already been selected, and three more will be picked beginning at noon on Saturday in the Ben Linder Room. At 3 p.m. judges will whittle down the nine finalists to three, who will then be featured on the main stage on Sunday at noon.
Workshops will be held Saturday in the EMU Fir Room, including a square-dancing class that will be new to the festival. Craft vendors will line the EMU breezeway, extending from the east lawn to the amphitheater.
Alexandra Hepp, who organized the craft booths, said a majority of the vendors are new to the festival. “It turned out to be a good mix,” she said.
The number of food vendors at this year’s festival will be consistent with past years. Alex Yellan, who helped organize the food selections, said many popular vendors, such as Bankok Grill and Ben and Jerry’s, will return. But more than half the food vendors will be new, including a Philly cheese steak stand, which students will recognize from the ASUO Street Faire, and the Golden Avatar, typically featured at the Oregon Country Fair.
One vendor not to be missed, literally, will be housed in a 35-foot bus with 10-foot wings. Among other things, the bus will sell Yerba Maté, an herbal fusion drink that Yellan said is very popular in South America.
Yellan, a senior, said he has attended The Folk Festival every year and summarizes its allure for students very succinctly: “It’s right in their backyard. It’s a good place to relax, listen to music and eat.”

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