This summer's only island music festival features a bill of exciting local indie bands and the chance to sleep under the stars.
Do you remember the idyllic days of summer music festivals on Toronto Island?
Virgin Fest may have died a slow death, and the Broken Social Scene crew couldn’t manage to get their almost-annual island shindig on the schedule for 2011, but Toronto Island will indeed have a music festival this summer, and we have the ever-industrious organizers of legendary concert series Wavelength and the Whippersnapper Gallery to thank.
Artscape Gibraltar Point, located at the southernmost tip of Toronto Island, is once again the setting for the ALL CAPS! Island Festival, a two-day extravaganza featuring some of the city’s most artful indie acts. The fest, which goes down August 13 and August 14, is proudly all-ages and will feature Julie Doiron, The Wooden Sky, Monogrenade, Steamboat, Muskox, Rich Aucoin, Dog Bus, More or Les, Evening Hymns, Moon King (ex-Spiral Beach), Jennifer Castle and DD/MM/YYYY. A few of the bands will team up with three visual artist collaborators (Yuula Benivolski, Scott Cudmore and co-directors Joshua Barndt and Adrian DiLena) for an island-themed exhibit called Land Lake Land.
But the most exciting development this year is that the festival has secured approval for concert-goers to camp out on the grounds of the remote space the night of August 13. Festival organizers are billing it as “the only time you can camp legally on Toronto Island without being a member of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts of Canada.” The best part of camping out? No need to wait for the ferry home.
