Not every artistic director gets to say they sold out their first festival. But, then again, not every artistic director faces the pressures that come with programming one of the country’s most storied music festivals.
Spencer Shewen certainly isn’t a rookie when it comes to curating a music festival. Since 2014 he’s been artistic director for Riverfest Elora and had a decade of booking clubs in Guelph and Toronto before then.
But the Mariposa Folk Festival has been around longer than he’s been alive, and he hasn’t been on the job a full year yet. Still, anyone who saw him walking around Tudhope Park this weekend would be hard-pressed to see him without a smile on his face.
“The whole experience has felt really good,” he said in an interview midway through the mainstage programming Friday night. “I think I’m still very heightened right now. I think tonight, when the sun goes down, and I settle in a bit, I’ll have some emotions. But everything has been very positive, really great.”
Shewen was hired to replace outgoing artistic director Liz Scott in the fall, starting officially in November. With Mariposa Folk Foundation president Pam Carter taking the reigns in booking eight or 10 acts, Shewen was faced with filling out the remaining slots on the bill, totalling more than 50 additional artists.
Often, festivals of Mariposa’s stature are doing some of their booking for the following year before the current year ends. Shewen had about three months to get the names on the poster and the bands on the stages.
“It was a bit of a sprint. I started in early November, and we had to announce the lineup in mid-February,” he said. “It turned out great. For my first year here, to have the lineup we have, I feel like I’m dreaming half the time. I can’t believe it’s real.”
His move to Mariposa didn’t end his association with Riverfest, as Shewen remains as artistic director for the Wellington County music festival, running this year from Aug. 16 to 18 and featuring such acts as the Violent Femmes, Treble Charger and Fleet Foxes.
Riverfest also has three bands crossing over from Mariposa: Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Alex Nicol and the Fellow Camper Country Dance Band.
Shewen doesn’t see any conflict of interest in holding the same role at two different music festivals, two hours and six weeks apart.
“The two roles kind of work in tandem with each other in a lot of ways; I’m sort of paddling in the same direction,” he said. “Stylistically, the genres of the two festivals are quite different. There’s some crossover every year — there has been for years — but they don’t compete with each other in that sense.”
Building a lineup is a lot like putting a puzzle together, and while Shewen might have made his life slightly more complicated by tackling two puzzles simultaneously, he’s thinking ahead at how Mariposa and Riverfest can continue to be complementary during his association with both festivals.
Corb Lund made Riverfest work in 2024; he could easily be at Mariposa in the future. The same could be said for Saturday’s Mariposa headliner Band of Horses, who would be right at home on the Riverfest bill.
Which speaks to the ever-evolving make-up of folk festivals across the country. The crowds that populate Mariposa in its earliest years — and arguably even initially on its return to Orillia a quarter-century ago — would be lost among the likes of Dwayne Gretzky or Field Guide.
But folk music remains a broad genre, with various facets being able to circle around a core tenet of honest storytelling. While putting together any festival isn’t easy, Mariposa certainly isn’t exclusionary, giving Shewen a wide net to cast from.
“I think that’s the trick with booking a festival: you have to have some things for everybody,” Shewen said. “I think that people’s listening habits have become way more individualized in the last 10 years, because of Spotify and streaming services. You find things you like, rather than listening to the radio all the time and just hearing what’s on the radio. Some people don’t listen to it at all anymore and just listen to what they like.”
Which makes a festival such as Mariposa so important. For Shewen — like his predecessors — music discovery is the most important part of the weekend.
“That’s my favourite thing about music festivals — it’s been my favourite thing about music festivals since I was a kid — is the discovery piece,” he said. “You might go somewhere to see one or two bands you love, but you’ll leave the weekend with like 10 or 20 new bands that you now know or feel attached to and are in love with.”
A highlight of his job Shewen said is to put artists — such as BA Johnston and Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, who delivered sweltering sets to an already sweaty pub tent Saturday afternoon during workshops and returned for sequels after sundown — in front of engaged audiences who are eager to fall in love with new music.
It helps the engaged audience of Mariposa is one of the friendliest, more chill, collectives of 30,000 or so people around.
“I think people just walk through the gates and they exhale,” Shewen said. “They feel at home again. They feel comfortable. You can come and be dressed to the nines and be in your fanciest festival outfit or you can wear your track pants. However, you’re comfortable, everyone is just here enjoying themselves. It’s a really nice experience.”
Other highlights for Saturday at Mariposa included the return of festival favourite Irish Mythen, Overkill River and Noah Cyrus, who may have been single-handily responsible for the increase in the Gen Z contingent at the park during the weekend.
Mariposa continues Sunday with performances from Old Crowe Medicine Show, Bry Webb, Donovan Woods and 2024 Mariposa Hall of Fame inductee Bruce Cockburn.
