Eaux Claires Music Festival will not return to Foster Farms in Eau Claire, Wisconsin next summer. The niche music event has typically taken place in early July for the past few years, but will plan on taking a year off in 2019 before it returns in summer 2020, according to the statement shared by producers via the event website on Tuesday. The festival was founded in 2015 as a collaborative event between The National guitarist Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver‘s Justin Vernon.
A portion of the statement shared by the event on Tuesday reads:
In the last four years we have grown together as patrons and organizers; these experiences are perfectly focused within our own collected memories, and feel something like going through four years of high school – the growth, the mistakes, the energy, but most of all the searing, stumbling beauty of becoming one’s self.
After our Senior year, we find ourselves wanting to move out, change things, and take stock of who we’ve become. In order to manage this transition, we are going to take a year off. While it will be hard for us to break the chain of momentum and the positive impact the festival has had on our community, we have fresh, clear ideas of how to make it even better.
The statement can be taken to mean that the overall goal of their one-year break will be to re-evaluate how their event fits into the heavily oversaturated festival market here in North America. However, the note did make sure to leave fans and annual attendees with the confirmation that Eaux Claires will return in 2020, with a production that “will be more focused, fun, and internal.” The producers also reassured fans that local patrons will be able to enjoy some smaller “public events” scheduled in the coming winter months, to be held at Pablo Center at the Confluence in the heart of Eau Claire. Those events will include both “performance and dialogue” about what out-of-town fans and locals can expect in from the event throughout the coming decade.
One of the big strengths of an event like Eaux Claires is that niche festivals tend to have a stronger community feel to them. That intimacy and fan-to-artist connection allows for both attendees and performers to feel like they’re a part of something more meaningful than just another enormous pop festival surrounded by 55,000 people. This past summer, artist/producer Justin Vernon held the event’s lineup a secret until the day of the festival before hosting an event that featured The National, Dirty Projectors, Sharon Van Etten, Moses Sumney, Pussy Riot, and more.
Back in 2016, many of the artists who appeared on the Day Of The Dead tribute album would perform some of their Grateful Dead covers as part of a day at Eaux Claires fully dedicated to the famous band. Justin Vernon is no stranger to the world of the Grateful Dead. This past summer, he was invited to join Dead & Company on stage at Wisconsin’s Alpine Valley Music Theatre to help them perform “Bird Song”.