BANGOR, Maine — When our newsroom heard that the plug had been pulled on the American Folk Festival after nearly two decades, at least a couple of people said out loud, “Oh, no!” They were surprised—and genuinely saddened.
The decision to end the festival, one of the biggest draws of the year in downtown Bangor, was driven by money. “Revenue was just not coming in at the level that we needed to maintain the festival—the diversity, the scope, the quality,” says Heather McCarthy, the executive director of the festival since its founding in 2001.
Attendance had slipped in recent years and with less revenue coming in, fewer acts were booked on fewer stages. There was also mounting competition from other entertainment venues in eastern Maine, including the waterfront concert series that now draws tens of thousands of people. “When the Folk Festival came to town,” McCarthy says, “it wasn’t up against a lot of other options. Now there is an amazing amount of choices for people to consider spending their summer time on.”
When McCarthy came on 207 to talk about the festival and its legacy, she had an interesting answer to a final question: Is there any chance the festival might be revived somewhere down the road? Her response, in its entirety: “Wouldn’t surprise me.”