Why was Treeline Music Fest canceled? Owners say reasons range from fuel to funding

Early Friday afternoon, a clock on the Treeline Music Fest website counted down until the first strains of its 2023 edition. Twenty-eight days, 3 hours and 35 minutes.

Scroll back to a message atop the page, however, and you find the time already run out on this year's festival. Treeline was officially canceled Thursday, with organizers citing "significantly higher than expected expenses" that kept them from holding the event "to the standard the community deserves."

The three-day affair in Stephens Lake Park was set to feature a lineup ranging from veterans Salt-N-Pepa, Jo Dee Messina and Robert Cray to freshly-minted stars MUNA and Japanese Breakfast.

That unintentional contrast online symbolizes a dissonance concertgoers might have felt at what seemed sudden, surprising. But talking with the Tribune Friday afternoon, co-owners Tracy Lane and Shay Jasper described a burden that was initially heavy for their independently-run festival to bear, and only grew more so over time in a challenging economy.

"It wasn’t a decision that we made lightly. It was a decision that we desperately wanted to avoid," Jasper said. "... The weight of that is going to be felt for awhile on our end, but it was a genuine effort for this community."

What led to canceling this year's Treeline fest

Jasper and Lane stressed that no single factor forced their hands. Across the live-music industry, costs have increased on what feels like a daily basis, Jasper said.

"Everything from fuel to food affects the touring industry," Lane said. "The cost of freight to bring each and every piece of our infrastructure into Columbia is significantly higher."

"We’re building a venue from grass," Jasper added. Even sourcing as much locally as possible, "hauling everything in — barricades, stages, port-a-potties, tents, lighting, generators ... the cords to connect the lights to the generators" grew "increasingly expensive."

And one weather front collided with another, they said, as higher costs met a downturn in sponsorship levels. That sponsorship money is key, Jasper said, keeping presenters from passing costs to the consumer at a prohibitive level.

Jasper and Lane were quick to say they feel supported by the broader Columbia community, and know businesses which couldn't give more were watching out for their own employees.

Advance ticket sales were more or less consistent with the past couple years, Lane said. An optimism that tickets would return to pre-pandemic levels went unfulfilled, she added.

As late as Wednesday night, the pair held out hope they would find a funding source to make up for higher costs. Once "there was no other path," they called this year's festival off, Jasper said.

From Roots N Blues to Treeline, how the festival has evolved

Buying the 12-year-old festival in late 2019 from Columbia live music pioneer Richard King, Jasper and Lane approached the business — then known as Roots N Blues — with clear eyes about challenges, real and potential, Lane said.

But the unexpected struck when they almost immediately encountered an industry-wide shutdown due to COVID-19. Despite certain successes, what tilted never fully came back right-side-up, they said.

"We have never been at a place of security, but this was so important to the community — and so important to us," Lane said. "A lot of people have been rooting for us and supporting this event but ... the post-pandemic environment is exceptionally more expensive than the world we bought into."

Returning to Stephens Lake Park in 2021, the pair fulfilled an initial promise to program female representation in every festival slot. That year's Roots N Blues featured the likes of Sheryl Crow, Brandi Carlile and Mavis Staples. This innovative swing toward equity earned Jasper and Lane industry attention, including a Women of Live honor from Pollstar magazine.

They pursued those ideals further, seeking a balanced and diverse lineup, greater accessibility and a more equitable wage for festival workers. Last year's event featured the likes of Wilco, Jon Batiste, Chaka Khan and Tanya Tucker.

As with other factors, the pair didn't blame their vision for this year's cancellation, but count it all part of the picture. Facing higher costs in 2023, they couldn't imagine embracing a different standard or "putting the objects of this before the integrity of it," Jasper said.

"One of the foundations of our vision for this was that everyone be paid equitably for their work. And those are not just words to us," Lane said. "When we can’t keep that commitment, we can’t produce this event."

What does the future of Treeline look like?

This year was set to be the festival's first under its new name, Treeline. Announcing the change earlier this year, Jasper and Lane pointed to their green, once-a-year home in Stephens Lake Park and the continued broadening of the festival's musical borders.

On Friday, both said they couldn't map out the festival's future just yet.

"I think we need to respect everyone involved in 2023 and commit all of our energy to making sure that we’re taking care of our community the best way that we can now before we put any energy toward what maybe the path forward looks like," Jasper said.

Whatever it looks like, it will be modified from their original hopes, she added.

"If there’s anything that 2020 taught us, it’s that change is inevitable. And we have a community that, for the most part, embraces change," she said. "That feels good."

Jasper expressed her appreciation for the locally-run Biscuits, Beats and Brews festival, which announced Friday it would move its event forward a week and book several Treeline artists to "fill the void." That move underlines the community effort needed to bring concerts alive and support artists, she said.

Artists and other people dependent on the festival came up often in Friday's conversation. Jasper took time to reject social media comments that the festival didn't notify artists before canceling.

"That statement particularly got to me because those are the hardest conversations that we’ve had and they happened. I was there," she said.

Jasper and Lane deflected concerns from themselves or how they would bear up under the weight of cancelling Treeline 2023.

"I don’t think we have had the bandwidth in our brains to think about the devastation on a personal level yet," Lane said. "But I will use that word because I can’t think about that right now. I don’t know what’s next for me."

She acknowledged the economic impact an event like Treeline provides and "our concerns are about all those other small businesses that count on this event," she added.

Jasper expressed gratitude for messages of support, but asked Columbians to think of the artists, volunteers, and contractors within the Treeline ecosystem.

"Check in on them. Take them to a show," she said. "Live music is hopefully forever, way beyond what we were able to accomplish or will accomplish in the future. Let’s keep that alive and realize that this is just so human. We just have to take care of each other."

Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter @aarikdanielsen.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Treeline Music Fest called off because of economic factors, owners say