Merritt Mountain Music Festival folds its tent
This is a dark day if you like country music, especially the Nashville-sanctioned strain. Organizers have announced the cancellation of the Merritt Mountain Music Festival, an event that once attracted concertgoers the way that steer shit draws flies.
Over the course of its nearly two-decade run, the festival, staged in the small town of Merritt, British Columbia, attracted some of the biggest names in country, from icons such as Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn to upstarts like Keith Urban and Brooks & Dunn.
Around the turn of the millennium, it also became known as one of the best places in the province to catch a venereal disease, as frat boys, sorority girls, and every loogan who’s ever dreamed of starring in a beer commercial started making the festival their favourite summer party destination. It wasn’t known colloquially as Merritt Mountain Fuck Fest for nothing. Trucked-in couches, hot tubs, and refrigerators and all-night parties made the site's Campground C one of the summer concert circuit's most notorious animal shows.
Organizers took steps to reclaim it from the province’s 24-hour-party people in 2007, the festival making a concerted attempt to turn the attention back to country music. Dwindling attendance, however, caused the cancellation of the event in 2010.
The fate of this year’s festival was announced on the MMMF’s website with the following: “It is with deep regret that the management of the Merritt Mountain Music Festival has come to the sad decision to cancel the 2012 edition of Mountainfest. The reason for the cancellation is the low ticket sales. Although ticket sales had shown the promise of a solid attendance number when going on sale back in October of 2011; sales slowed down considerably from then on, and have not rebounded thereafter causing for the organizers to re-think going ahead with the event with a poor turnout.”
So, if you were planning to knock back a fifth of Jack and then get a scorching case of the clap while some redneck sang about his dog dying and his wife running off to fuck the pickup-truck, you’d best start making alternate plans. Here’s a suggestion: find out where Kid Rock is playing.
Follow Mike Usinger on the Tweeter at twitter.com/mikeusinger.
Comments
9 Comments
R2
May 23, 2012 at 7:44am
My wife can fuck the pickup truck as long as she doesn't go do something stupid like fall in love with it!
out at night
May 23, 2012 at 9:26am
Another casualty of too many people staying in and playing video games, watching their big screen TVs, noodling around on Facebook, and just generally losing the habit of going places and doing things. Ah well, other people suck anyways. We're all safer and happier if we stop interacting with one another and just keep our eyes down, our headphones in and our mouths shut.
Boohoo
May 23, 2012 at 1:41pm
...or maybe it's just because country music sucks ass(?)
SPY vs SPY
May 23, 2012 at 6:53pm
I can only guess that after staging a drunken, red neck, beer bash, head bashed-in, fuck fest, that a lot of music fans just got
TOTALY FUCKIN PISSED OFF AND SAID "FUCK THE ASS HOLE WHOLE SHE-BANG.
Had the Festival organizers made Music the Real Star,kept the Shit Heads in line, kinda like line dancing, The Show might have still gone on.
Cry me a river, OK now who's got a tune that would go with that.
Ian G62
May 23, 2012 at 7:06pm
My advice to Merritt is to re-invent the event, you have the expertise and talent, HOWEVER something other than country though, we don't want all those Albertan's coming back in to BC :-)
Dale Campbell
Jun 10, 2013 at 12:32pm
A lot of people seem to have a narrow minded attitude towards the shutting down of the Merrit Mountian Music Fest!! One of out of sight out of mind---- then turn on a dime to lay the blame on someone else, the city or township of Merritt has gained a ton of free advertising billing themselves as the COUNTRY MUSIC CAPITAL AND having a walk of fame for tourists --- but have they come to the table and helped to find a solution to something that they keep using as a front to bring in other tourists? Even if a small company tried to say they were the best at something they better be able to prove it to the city of Merritt or be shutdown in a heartbeat by a City Council that relys on false advertising for extra income, but maybe not? So Merritt i will drop off 500 Bussiness Cards with my company name as well as a Coverpage explaining what we do and i fully expect to see an increase in profit P.S. A big thankyou for they support and advise on they free addvertising YOU GUYS ROCK with a bit of COUNTRY!!!!
anonymous
Jan 8, 2014 at 5:14pm
why doesnt somebody bring it back i would love to
Pat
May 31, 2014 at 3:37pm
I don't know if lending his name to the MMMF will do it any good but rumor has it the the organizers of Sturgis Canada may be bringing it back.
Humpalot. :)
Aug 6, 2014 at 4:56pm
Merritt Mountain Festival was the best place to go and meet and party hardy with all the degenerates. Making new friends and meeting all the gals, this is one party ground I'll never forget. Especially Camp ground -C ah yes the memories. Only hope that it does come back.