Sean C. Morgan
The partners who produce the Willamette Country Music Festival in Brownsville have announced the creation of a new country music festival located on the Southern Oregon coast Aug. 1-3, 2014, the same dates as the Oregon Jamboree and two weeks before the Brownsville festival.
Both events are sponsored by Bi-Mart, which is building a new store in Sweet Home.
“We couldn’t be happier to announce that the Cape Blanco Country Music Festival will bring to Curry County what we’ve created in Brownsville,” said Anne Hankins of BootsNBeach, LLC. “We think the fans will make this the destination on America’s Wild Rivers Coast.”
Cape Blanco is the western-most point in Oregon and the second-farthest west in the continental United States. The concert venue is three miles from the promontory of Cape Blanco State Park. It is located approximately 205 miles from Sweet Home.
The Brownsville festival will provide an advantage on costs to produce the new festival, said Don Leber, Bi-Mart marketing director. “Routing is the reason we’re doing it at that time. We may share some artists we’re using in Brownsville.”
The festival also may share artists with other events in California, he said, and it will help keep costs down to keep resources in the area, such as the stage, spreading the cost over two venues.
The new festival grew out of connections at Brownsville festival, Leber said. People involved in the Brownsville festival know people in Curry County.
“That area really reached out to us to try to do something,” Leber said. They asked if it would be possible to put on an event like the one in Brownsville.
The Willamette Country Music Festival is produced by Willamette Country Music Concerts LLC, which, like BootsNBeach, is a separate entity from Bi-Mart. The two companies share the same partners.
Oregon Jamboree Event Manager Erin Regrutto said it is unclear what effect the new festival could have on the Jamboree’s operations.
“I think time will tell as far as what impact, if any, this festival will have on the Jamboree,” said Regrutto. “Hopefully, it won’t have the same kind of impact the one in Brownsville has had.”
The Oregon Jamboree is a three-day camping and country music festival held annually in Sweet Home to raise funds for local economic development projects.
The nonprofit Sweet Home Economic Development Group has owned and operated the festival since 1992.