Sask. music festival Ness Creek to be held online this weekend

The music festival Ness Creek was cancelled in April due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but its manager says festival goers can still get their dose of music and workshops.

The festival changed course for 2020, shifting its offeringsonline. VirtualNess kicked off on Friday and festival manager Carlie Letts called in to Saskatchewan Weekend to talk about the changes of this year's festival.

"It's a little surreal looking out over our downtown area ...it would normally be packed by4000 festival goers right now, and seeing not a soul out here, just birds flying around and that's it," Letts said of the Ness Creek site at Prince Albert National Park.

Letts said there is no other place like Ness Creek, which is known not only for the musical acts but for the workshops and arts and crafts as well.

"The people that are up here are just so wonderful, the community surrounding this creek is just a wonderful thing to be part of." Letts said. "It feels more like a family reunion every summer with people getting together."

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This summer would have marked Ness Creek's 30th anniversary, and even though the in-person festivities have been postponed until 2021, Letts saidstill live music and workshops are still offered online.

VirtualNess started on Friday and runs until Sunday withlive performances happening on the festival's Facebook page and workshops being offered through Zoom.

"We even have a performance from our famous stage of Aquarius, which is our floating stage at the lake out here." Letts said, "We have evening concerts from a bunch of past performers that have been at the festival before, as well as some of the bands and artists that were supposed to be headliners at our festival this year."

Musical acts at this year's festival include This Way North, The North Sound and GLIEM.

"We have a lot of other events that take place throughout the course of the summer that we're all pretty involved in putting on and making happen and those have all been cancelled," Letts said, "So [it's] just kind of looking like 2020 is the year that wasn't."

"It's been a lot of winging it and learning as we go."