(Above: Singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff headlines the Saturday evening concert at the Winter Music Festival that takes the stage on Jan. 28-29 at the Florence Events Center.)
A version of this story appeared originally on YachatsNews.com and appears here in its edited version, with permission.
By Jordan Essoe
FLORENCE — Undeterred by the surge of the Omicron variant, the Florence Events Center is ready to open its doors on Jan. 29 for the return of one of its marquee annual events, the Winter Music Festival.
During the year and a half closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the city-owned Florence Events Center had to skip commemorating its 25th anniversary in August 2021. But it has been slowly staging a comeback, with a small book festival in September and a couple of successful holiday concerts and fundraiser in December.
Winter Music Festival organizers are optimistic about inviting the public back inside. But due to many factors related to the pandemic, the institution is in flux and looking for opportunities to reinvent some of its operations.
“We’re restarting,” Florence assistant city manager Megan Messmer said. She stepped in to oversee the center’s operation in December 2020, after the facility had been shut down for nine months because of the pandemic and Kevin Rhodes, who had been FEC director for its entire 24-year history, took early retirement.
The year-long hiatus opened the opportunity “for some changes in vision,” Bettina Hannigan, executive director of the Florence Area Chamber of Commerce, agreed.
How broad and how quickly such changes come about remains to be seen. There is currently no active search to find a new director, and Messmer will continue in her temporary leadership role at least through the remainder of the fiscal year.
One thing that will be pleasingly familiar to loyal patrons is the highly anticipated return of the Winter Music Festival, which this year also serves as a kind of symbolic homecoming for Florence cultural life itself. The festival is Friday and Saturday, Jan. 28-29 with two full days of live music, jam sessions, workshops by festival artists, and a free community concert at Oregon Pacific Bank to kick everything off.
Divided between bluegrass music on Friday and Americana on Saturday, this year’s acts include festival veterans Kristen Grainger & True North, returning favorite and Portland-based Pritty Gritty, The Growling Old Men, Mary Flower, Friday’s headliner Appalachian Road Show, and Saturday’s headliner Karla Bonoff, a Grammy Award winner whose songs have been recorded by Bonnie Raitt, Wynonna Judd, and Linda Ronstadt.
Ticket prices range from $98 for a two-day pass to all shows to $49 for the Saturday night performance or $31 for Saturday afternoon.
The event was originally called the Winter Folk Festival until it was rebranded in 2016 to incorporate more diverse musical styles. The popular annual musical event is celebrating its 20th year, even though the 2022 event is only its 19th production because, of course, they had to cancel in 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Vaccines and Omicron
Since the pandemic began, Florence Events Center has been closed much of the past two years, used most recently for Covid-19 vaccine clinics; photo by Quinton Smith
Last year, it looked like plans for the 2022 festival might also be in jeopardy, but it became possible to proceed once public health and safety guidelines relaxed after availability of the Covid-19 vaccine became widespread. Even so, vaccinations do not eliminate transmission and surging Omicron variant cases in Oregon are expected to peak in late January – right at the time of the festival.
“We’re sitting on the edge of our chairs a little bit to see where this thing goes,” Winter Music Festival committee chair Kirk Mlinek said. Organizers are looking to the city, the state, and federal governments for guidance, and Mlinek admits the possibility that an unforeseen gubernatorial order could still be issued and make it impossible to hold a large public gathering.
“Is there some percentage chance this thing might not go at the end of January? I have to say yes, there is a chance that could happen,” Mlinek said. “But all systems are go right now and we’re selling tickets at a pretty good pace.”
Nationwide, other January cultural events are being rescheduled or moved exclusively online. The Sundance Film Festival has canceled all in-person aspects of its Jan. 20-30 event, as has the Slamdance Film Festival that follows it. The Grammy Awards have been postponed from their original Jan. 31 date. In Oregon, Broadway-type musicals are being offered to shoulder-to-shoulder audiences at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene and in the Keller Auditorium in Portland.
To help accommodate cautious patrons, the Florence center has partnered with Portland-based Afton Tickets to offer a new option that will allow people to livestream the festival’s concerts from the safety and privacy of their home.
Despite being less expensive, however, streaming tickets aren’t yet finding much of an audience. Mlinek said the percentage of sales for livestream tickets was “on the far right of the decimal point.” He’s not surprised by that. Undoubtedly, the community has some fatigue from entertaining themselves at home.
The festival previously had expanded to three days. This year it runs for two days, a decision which Mlinek described as being a strategic move to help position the event for a successful turnout.
To attend the festival, people get a “wellness wristband” by showing proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test within the previous 48 hours.
Masks will be required at all times, except in designated eating areas. Social distancing will be encouraged everywhere on the premises except in the theater itself, where there is no crowd capacity reduction. Workshops will be limited to 40 participants. There will be a nurse on site to answer questions.
Lodging tax support
While many privately-owned institutions suffered heavy financial losses during the lockdown, the Florence venue was able to stay financially afloat largely due to proceeds from the city’s lodging taxes. The events center also took measures to reduce overhead, such as furloughing staff, but also benefited from a grant from the Oregon Cultural CARES Act that helped offset lost revenue, helped finance ticket refunds, and pay for safety upgrades to the building, such as new touch-free fixtures in its restrooms.
The building has also been used for mass vaccination clinics organized by the state and Lane County, including on New Year’s Eve when people lined up outside not for entertainment, but for a Covid-19 shot. Now, the center is being used as one of the Oregon Health Authority’s mass clinics right up until the date organizers of the Winter Music Festival begin unloading their equipment.
Pandemic a struggle for arts groups
Among the local organizations that did not survive the pandemic is SEAcoast Entertainment Association, which has had the most salient impact on the future of the events center. The all-volunteer nonprofit was responsible for bringing live entertainment to Florence for 40 years, delivering an average of eight programs of mostly classical and popular music a year. Their board of directors voted to cease operations in September 2021, creating a void in the cultural programming landscape that Mlinek described as “a kick in the shins.”
The center has always relied heavily on volunteer groups such as SEAcoast to fill the lion’s share of its public events calendar. In its absence, the center will have to begin producing more shows themselves or turn to organizations such as Florence Arts, Culture & Entertainment, which is producing the Winter Music Festival, to deliver even more content.
The Florence group has worked hand-in-hand with the center since its inception, mostly as a sponsor to help other nonprofits bring their work to the stage. But it is unclear if they alone are in a position to fill the large vacuum left by SEAcoast’s closure.
Aleia Bailey, the center’s acting operations manager, says they are excited by the opportunity to produce more events themselves.
SEAcoast left half of its remaining assets to the Children’s Repertory of Oregon Workshops (C.R.O.W.), which traditionally puts on a high caliber Broadway-style show at the events center every April. After cancelling their 2020 production of Mary Poppins, they also shelved their plans for an ambitious 2022 Cinderella show.
“We switched to a concert style of Disney’s Frozen Jr., a little shorter and a little simplified,” C.R.O.W. artistic director, board president and founder Melanie Heard said. It is in the casting stage, with performances planned for April 22-24.
While the center was closed, C.R.O.W. was creative in the ways they tried to let the community know they were still active and present, including window displays and radio theater. They continued to accept donations and help from sponsors, but without the Covid relief grants they received, Heard does not think they would have survived.
“We need a theater,” she said. “We need the FEC.”
Without access to the events center, the local theater group The Last Resort Players also remained closed during most of the shutdown, but it eventually delivered four small, sold-out performances of The Vagina Monologues in August 2021 at City Lights Cinema. They will be returning to the events center in March with a modest production of John & Jen, with hopes that a new, full production can be undertaken in the fall.
The events center is an important asset to Florence, particularly its 455-seat professional proscenium style theater, which is rare for a town of Florence’s size, pegged at just under 9,000 in 2019. Many people involved in the cultural landscape of the area, including Mlinek, Heard, and The Last Resort Players’ president, Jim Wellington, moved here specifically because of it.
“We’re hopeful that the lights are going to stay on,” Mlinek said.
He predicts they will have a successful music festival, get through Omicron, and that patrons will come back to “whatever that new normal looks like.”
“There are a lot of other places you can go, but this is the one that has to take everybody — it’s owned by the city, and it’s open to everyone,” Rachel Pearson, president of the Florence Arts, Culture and Entertainment group, said. “It’s our gathering place.”
Jordan Essoe is a Waldport-based freelance writer. He can be contacted at alseajournal@gmail.com.
Winter Music Festival at Florence Events Center
When: Friday and Saturday, Jan. 28-29, 2022
Where: Florence Events Center, 715 Quince St., Florence, Oregon
Schedule:
- 7 p.m. Friday Night Bluegrass — Growling Old Men; Appalachian Road Show
- 1 p.m. Saturday Afternoon Americana — Pretty Gritty; Growling Old Men; Mary Flower
- 7 p.m. Saturday Night Headliner — Kristen Grainger and True North; Karla Bonoff
Tickets: available online at https://www.aftontickets.com/wintermusicfestival
- Two-Day pass for all shows, $87/$98
- Friday evening, $35/$42
- Saturday afternoon, $25/$31
- Saturday evening, $44/$49
- Livestream available for $55 both days, $20 each for Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday evening shows
Workshops:
- 1 p.m. Friday — Beginner’s Bluegrass Jam with Linda Leavitt
- 9 a.m. Saturday — The Origin of a Song Songwriting Workshop, with Kristen Grainger and Dan Wetzel of Kristen Grainger and True North
- 10:30 a.m. — How to Play as a Duo Workshop with John Lowell and Ben Winship of Growling Old Men
- 11 a.m. — Blues and Rags Guitar Workshop with Mary Flower
Covid Protocols:
COVID-19 protocols are in place for all performances and workshops, including 1) proof of vaccination or 2) evidence of a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours of arrival at the FEC. Already received your wellness wristband? You’ll be able to waltz right in after a volunteer checks your wrist.Social distancing is required and masks must be worn. Thank you, in advance, for your cooperation. Persons unwilling to comply with these requirements will be asked to leave the building. Click here for detailed Covid-19 FAQ’s.
Information: 541-997-1994, eventcenter.org
Kathy Kallick Band with John Reischman and the Jaybirds performed at the last Winter Music Festival, which took place in 2020 before the pandemic shut down the Florence Events Center; photo by Kathleen Wenzel
