Rock the Park overcomes pitfalls to draw record crowds in 20th year

From a late headliner cancellation, to near record rainfall, organizers of the 20th edition of Rock the Park (RTP) say they are “proud of their team.”

The festival at Harris Park in downtown London, Ont. drew a record 44,000 people over the four days.

Cleanup is underway, after an epic finish Saturday night.

“Bryan Adams with The Sheepdogs, Alan Doyle and the Odds coming out doing a little tribute to Neil Young,” said Greg Jones, of Jones Entertainment Group (JEG), the organizers of RTP.

“They did Rockin’ in the Free World. It was it was magical and everybody there was witnessing something that they'll never see again”.

The tribute to Young came just 12 days after he had to cancel his headlining performance due to illness. Adams replaced him.

JEG also had to deal with rapper Sean Kingston being denied into Canada, and near record rainfall on opening night.

“Who would have thought London, Ontario was going to get hit from a partial hurricane,” says Brad Jones, co-organizer of the event.

“It's not for the faint of heart and a lot of stress, but we put 13,000 people in here in the rain for eight hours with Nickelback. We then literally, we put a call out to social media to tell you how great Londoners are and music fans, we had 50, 60 volunteers that came out the nowhere. They cleaned that park up from, you know, the record rainfalls and, we were able luckily we were able to continue with the weekend”.

The festival has reached 20 years, and was recently voted Canadian Music Festival of the Year by industry peers.

“(Councillor) Steve Lehmann, and (Mayor) Josh Morgan, were downtown on Wednesday and Thursday night and they said to me, ‘Brad, the downtown was booming for four nights.’ If Alfredo (Caxaj) is not here with Sun Fest for his days, and we're not here for our four days, like, there's not a lot going on downtown. You couldn’t get a hotel for four days, and the economic spinoff is like $20-25 million. It’s great for the City of London”.

As the Jones brothers continue to age, they are looking at different artists to bring in. When RTP started, it was a classic rock festival, but has progressed to add Country, Rap and Hip-Hop.

“We’re already been talking in the office and putting offers in for next year,” said Greg.

Brad expects his team to continue to adapt.

“Agents came in with their artists, and they have other artists that would love to play Rock the Park,” said Brad.

“We’re working on 2025 and you’ll see a lot of the same, but you’ll see quite a few changes as well.”