Gary Bailie’s Blue Feather Music Festival will be held at Yukon Arts Centre on Nov. 7 and 8
The blue feather is a symbol of hope, we wanted to provide a nice event for our community
Gary Bailie
Gary Bailie is nothing if not passionate. The born-and-raised Yukoner is known for many things, including his athletic history, work in stage production and community outreach. But one of his biggest undertakings over the past 25 years has been his annual Blue Feather Music Festival. Bailie established the festival in 2000 as a memorial event for his partner, Jolie Angelina McNabb, given the traditional name Blue Feather Eagle Woman, by Cree Elders, after her death by suicide. The festival has since grown into a yearly pillar of light and community in the Yukon, showcasing artists ranging from new local acts to established touring acts.
“Every year I feel pretty excited about it,” Bailie says. “It’s a good production … It’s challenging and it’s something that I really like to do. I’m a production guy, so being able to put on a big production for the community is a really positive thing for me.”
McNabb was driven by a desire to help youth, something Bailie continues on in her honour. He was part of a team that opened the Blue Feather Youth Centre, a shelter for youth in need. In 2000, Bailie put together a benefit concert to raise money to buy supplies for the shelter.
“It’s always sad when you see a promising young life leave before its time,” he says. “So I thought, Well, your dream doesn’t have to die. So that’s what inspired me, was her dream to help young people.”
The original concert was meant to be a one-off event. But Bailie realized, with all the lighting, sound and stage set-up that he and the other production volunteers had done, that they may as well invite some more artists to add a second evening of music, thus creating a two-day festival, the format Blue Feather follows to this day.
“I’ve been in lighting production for most of my life now, and I’ve worked at all the festivals in the Yukon—Dawson City, Frostbite, all of that—so I had all the experienced people to form this good team,” Bailie says. “Then it was just figuring out how we were going to do this.”
Blue Feather Music Festival became a non-profit society, which allowed the team to apply for funding. Originally, the focus was on local Yukon artists, but as the festival grew in attendance, it made sense to start bringing in travelling artists to make Blue Feather a full-fledged destination festival.
“The blue feather is a symbol of hope,” Bailie says. “We wanted to provide a nice event for our community.”
The Blue Feather Music Festival also involves opportunities for youth to be mentored, behind the scenes, in performance production areas such as lighting, audio and stage management. It also consistently features local youth performances, each year, along with sets from veteran artists. This year, local teenage rock band Cows Go Moo will kick off the festival’s second night.
“We’ve had some young people come back, year after year, and they’ve grown into the people they are now,” says Bailie. “We’ve had a lot of success stories, and to date we have a lot of young people still involved.”
Blue Feather Music Festival is still a volunteer-run non-profit, and even Bailie himself has been a volunteer for the past 25 years. Of course, the festival comes with production costs, and artists need to be paid and have their travel expenses covered, but Bailie is still committed to keeping ticket prices low.
“We’ve been successful every single year,” he says. “It’s been very rewarding. There are challenges along the way … nothing always goes exactly as planned, so we’re always learning and I’m always learning new things, but I have to say probably the biggest reason we succeed is because we have a really good team of people who are dedicated to being there and putting their best foot forward and just trying to do something that’s really good for the community.”
The two-day lineup of this year’s edition features a total of eight acts: four local and four travelling. Representing the Yukon will be Diyet & The Love Soldiers, Cows Go Moo, Matthew Lien, and a 25th anniversary reunion performance by Average Joe. Acts coming from afar to take part in the festival are Ottawa-come-Austin, TX blues guitar-slinger Sue Foley, Ontario-based Indigenous songwriting duo Digging Roots, Vancouver Island Eagles tribute band Eagle Eyes, and Saskatoon’s alternative pop/rock group Wide Mouth Mason. The festival, like always, will take place at the Yukon Arts Centre (YAC) on the main stage.
“I always have to give a shout out to the Yukon Arts Centre for their support along the way,” says Bailie. “Every festival has been there, and it’s a beautiful location and a beautiful venue.”
Having spent so much of his life dedicated to this festival, Bailie has begun to consider the future of the festival when he is no longer able to organize and run it. He wants to see the festival continue on, with limited involvement from him, eventually being taken over by a new team of successors and continuing to bring together the community long after his own time. Because he’s already accomplished so much more than he thought possible with the festival, no artist he wants to work with is too far out of reach.
“After Blue Feather on Nov. 19, I’m taking my granddaughter to the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver to see Robert Plant,” he says. “I fluked out … I don’t know how this happened, but I got front-row tickets. So I’m making a sign and then when he comes onto my side of the stage, I’m standing up and I’m holding it open.”
The text on Bailie’s sign? “Come to the Yukon: Blue Feather Music Festival.”
“It’s a mind seed,” he says. “He’s gonna see it, and it’s gonna plant a seed in his mind.”
Bailie says McNabb’s story that inspired Blue Feather resonates because she represents countless young people who never got to live their full lives, and he hopes Blue Feather Music Festival can serve as a sign of hope for all who can relate to his experiences.
“They had mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, and they all mattered,” he says. “I always thought about all of them.”
The festival has been the one constant over the past two-and-a-half decades helping Bailie to heal, and he believes it can do that for others as well. It’s already been 25 years of Blue Feather, but he’s looking forward to the next 25.
“I honestly had no intention of creating a music festival,” Bailie says. “We were just trying to do something good in the community.”
Tickets are on sale now for this year’s Blue Feather Music Festival. Visit bluefeathermusic.ca to learn more about the event and its artists, and to purchase tickets.
