Oklahoma's spring calendar is blooming with festivals two years after COVID-19 pandemic
Oklahoma City's beloved "rite of spring" came back to when it belongs this year.
"It's a very welcomed thing for us. ... It's a bit of normalcy. It's a thing that we look forward to in the spring: The festival comes around," said Seth Lewis, director of the Festival of the Arts.
"Having it in June was great, to be able to have a festival. But it was summer. Arts festival is a spring thing: You think of the grass that's growing greener, the flowers are coming out ... and artists are emerging — and so is the community."
After it was canceled in 2020 and shifted to June in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, downtown OKC's long-running Festival of the Arts popped up in its usual April date and time this year. The 56th annual event showcased an array of visual, performing and culinary arts April 19-24 in and around Bicentennial Park, between the Civic Center and City Hall.
Two years after the coronavirus outbreak, Oklahoma's spring calendar is again blooming with a veritable bouquet of festivals, from Muskogee's Azalea Festival and Tahlequah's Red Fern Festival to Tulsa Mayfest and Norman Music Festival.
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"We're remaining hopeful. We've got our lineups together. We've got some really exciting partnerships and events ... that are going to happen during the festival," Norman Music Festival Executive Director Shari Jackson said.
"The refreshing thing — maybe the silver lining — is that when you take a break, you really have an opportunity to dig into what it is you do. And the longing for it makes you really focus on what's important about it. Then, some of the things you thought were really important, maybe they turn out to be bad habits it's time to let go of. So, we are really focusing on the joy of the festival."
Norman Music Festival returning after two-year absence
After canceling the past two years due to the pandemic, Norman Music Festival is set to make its long-awaited return April 28-30 in downtown Norman's Walker Arts District. The event annually showcases a variety of state, regional and national independent musicians.
Headliners for the comeback festival include New York acts The Drums, Wet and DIIV; Austin, Texas, alternative rockers ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead; Memphis, Tennessee, psychedelic rock band Spaceface; Houston rapper Fat Tony; and Dallas bilingual Latinx band Luna Luna.
"A lot of us that work in the arts, we've talked at length about whenever we can do something, we will do something, because the arts have an opportunity to bring people together to provide some healing, some relief," Jackson said. "Times are tough. Things feel divided, we have been dealing with a pandemic for over two years now, and we need the lightness that events like this can bring."
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As usual, NMF 2022 will showcase several acts based in Oklahoma or with Oklahoma ties, including Mothica, Rainbows Are Free, Husbands, Helen Kelter Skelter, Jabee, Jason Scott & The High Heat, Johnny Manchild & The Poor Bastards, The Ivy, Kat Lock, S. Reidy, stepmom, Mad Honey and more.
"We had gone ahead and opened up our open call for bands ... knowing we were staring down the barrel of an omicron surge in late '21, which meant we knew the festival was still a question mark. But were going to just operate out of hope that we were going to be able to do it," Jackson said.
"The day we put the headliners out ... my stomach was in knots. We were still in the middle of an omicron surge — although getting toward the back end — and you just never know how that's going to be received: Whether people are going to think you're nuts, there's no way you can pull it off, or whether people are going to cheer. And luckily for us, it was the latter. We got a lot of very excited feedback from people that we were coming back."
This year's event will be the first NMF since 2019.
"The night we decided to cancel the (2020) Norman Music Festival, we were actually sitting in our board meeting ... and it was the night of the Thunder game, when that game was canceled. The arena emptied, and the NBA announced they were shutting down. That happened about 15 minutes after we took the vote that we knew we weren't going to be able to have the Norman Music Festival," Jackson recalled.
"We just sort of all were reading the writing on the wall ... and we just knew, 'It's not gonna happen.' And it was heartbreaking."
Launched in 2008, the nonprofit, independent festival annually brings hundreds of acts and thousands of music fans to downtown Norman for three days of live music at several indoor and outdoor venues. Organizers initially planned to push the 2020 festival to summer, but ultimately canceled both the the 2020 and 2021 events.
"This a free festival for about 100,000 people, and it takes about a quarter of a million dollars to make that happen — almost all of that coming from our community that supports us so strongly. And we couldn't go to those businesses that in the middle of this pandemic were suffering and ask them to support a free festival," said Jackson, the festival's only paid employee.
"In 2021, when we did our smaller, scaled-down late summer concert, we had thought about putting on a full festival. But the thought of trying to put on a full-scale festival in August and then turn around and do it again in April if we were going to reclaim our spot just felt like too much. ... This festival has always run because it's a labor of love by predominantly volunteers, and you would burn them out."
Paseo Arts Festival gets back to Memorial Day weekend
While the Norman Music Festival was canceled again in 2021, some events like the Festival of the Arts and Paseo Arts Festival carried on last year, but in later time frames to allow more time for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Most of the state's spring festivals that shifted to later in 2021 are returning to their usual time slots in 2022. One notable exception is Rocklahoma, which moved from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend last year and will stick with that time frame this year: Rocklahoma 2022 is set for Sept. 2-4 in Pryor.
After canceling in 2020, the Paseo Arts Festival returned in 2021, but also shifted to Labor Day weekend from its traditional Memorial Day weekend slot. For Paseo Arts Association Executive Director Amanda Bleakley, the change meant working grueling 12- to 14-hour days to pull off the event over a different holiday weekend.
So, no one is more relieved than she to see the 45th edition return this year to Memorial Day weekend — May 28-30 — in the historic Paseo Arts District.
"I'm thrilled. It's not quite as hot as September, and a lot of the artists that couldn't be here for Labor Day can be here for Memorial Day. So, we're going to have the core of our artists back. It just kind of falls better with our yearlong programming. We have our awards dinner in November, so it just made it really hard to turn around and do another fundraiser right after Labor Day," Bleakley said.
Although admission is free, the Paseo Arts Festival is the largest annual fundraiser for the Paseo Arts Association, with beverage and merchandise sales supporting the nonprofit organization's year-round programs.
"In 2020, not having a festival at all was a huge hit, but we were fortunate to get some of the COVID relief funds. So, that covered our losses. Then last year, our numbers were down: We didn't sell as much beverages mostly, and we didn't have as many artists. ... But I think the attendance was still really strong, and the artists all did really well. So, it was still a success for us. But every year, there's less and less space down here because of all the development that has happened, so it gets harder and harder to plan. And our expenses keep going up ... so it's quite tricky to set something up like this and try to make a profit in three days," Bleakley said.
"It's a community art event first and a fundraiser second. And we love getting people to come down to the art festival to experience the arts that they might not otherwise experience."
This year's Paseo Arts Festival will help mark the unofficial start of summer by featuring about 90 visiting artists, plus dozens of neighborhood artists, along with 50-plus Oklahoma entertainers, 20 food vendors, children's activities, free parking and shuttle service and more — all on Memorial Day weekend.
"Unless we just can't help it, no, we do not want to shift it again. ... Everyone knows about the Paseo Arts Festival and that it's always Memorial Day weekend. They count on it, they plan on it. It's always the month after the Festival of Arts downtown," Bleakley said.
More: OKC artist's kinetic sculptures keep blowing in the wind at Festival of the Arts
2022 Oklahoma spring festivals
Azalea Festival: Through April 30, Honor Heights Park, Muskogee. www.muskogeeparks.org.
Bare Bones International Film Festival: Through April 30, Muskogee. www.barebonesfilmfestival.org.
Bob Childers' Gypsy Cafe songwriters festival: April 27, Stillwater. www.reddirtrelief.org/gypsycafe.
Norman Music Festival: April 28-30, downtown Norman. normanmusicfestival.com.
Tumbleweed Calf Fry Festival: April 28-30, Tumbleweed Dance Hall, Stillwater. www.calffry.com.
Woolly Weekend: April 28-30, Shepherd’s Cross sheep farm, Claremore. www.shepherdscross.com.
Downtown Edmond Arts Festival: April 29-May 1, downtown Edmond. downtownedmondok.com/downtown-edmond-arts-festival.
Red Fern Festival: April 29-30, Norris Park, downtown Tahlequah. www.tahlequahmainstreet.com/red-fern-festival.html.
Steamroller Print Festival: April 30, Artspace at Untitled, downtown OKC. www.1ne3.org/steamroller-festival-2022.
Oklahoma Renaissance Festival: April 30-June 5, Castle of Muskogee. www.okcastle.com.
Tulsa May Fest: May 6-8, Tulsa Arts District and Historic Greenwood. www.tulsamayfest.org.
Bethany 66 Festival: May 28, Bethany. www.bethanyimprovementfoundation.com/bethany-66-festival.
Chuck Wagon Festival: May 28-29, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, OKC. nationalcowboymuseum.org/annual-chuck-wagon-festival.
Paseo Arts Festival: May 28-30, Paseo Arts District, OKC. www.thepaseo.org/festival.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma spring festivals return two years after COVID-19 pandemic
