Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the 2021 virtual Homegrown Music Fest!

The Homegrown Music Festival is returning in virtual form this year, with an in-person return slated for 2022. Graphic by Karley Graves

It has been over a year since the classic Homegrown Music Festival was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Although things are still not completely back to normal, the Homegrown Fest is back with their eight-day music festival in a free virtual format taking place throughout the first week of May. 

Homegrown executive director, Melissa La Tour, is ecstatic that the fest is even happening this year but acknowledges that a virtual medium is not the ideal way to hold a music festival. 

“We’re doing virtual this year. We know it sucks, but it is for everyone’s safety,” said La Tour. 

Last year before things started shutting down, La Tour explained that everything was planned and ready to go for the 2020 Homegrown Festival. This made it even more unfortunate when the time came to cancel in February of 2020.

"We pulled out of the festival shortly after South by Southwest canceled … We kinda used them as a marker…” La Tour said. 

It might not seem like such a big deal,  but a year without town festivals like Homegrown really brought down Duluth’s economy. 

La Tour observed that bars and other local businesses struggled last year and continue to struggle because of one dead summer. 

Not only have the surrounding businesses been impacted by the absence of town get-togethers and festivals, but the Homegrown Music Festival itself has been highly affected by having to cancel last summer. 

This is the second year for the Homegrown Festival to not have any ticket sales, and La Tour said that took a huge hit to the budget of the festival. 

“We run on about [a] $120,000 budget per year,” she said. 

They have created a GoFundMe page, which will be used to plan and support the Homegrown Music Festival of 2022. La Tour and other fans of Homegrown hope this to be a huge in-person event. 

Even though it has been a hard year, Homegrown Music Festival has brought back their festival, which will be taking place virtually, starting on May 2 and going until May 9. 

Just like a normal year, the virtual Homegrown Music Festival will be an eight-day festival with over 200 bands, but instead of holding shows at bars and other venues throughout the city, most things will be pre-recorded and edited together to be live-streamed throughout the eight days. 

This year, the festival has also been lucky enough not just to gather local bands, but to partner with The Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra and The Minnesota Music Coalition, who will both be providing musical content to be live-streamed throughout the week of the festival. 

It might not be a normal year for the Homegrown Music Festival, but La Tour believes this virtual experience will allow the festival “[to] come back even stronger next year.” 

The full schedule for the Homegrown Music Festival is on their website — links to the live streams will be coming to the website throughout the week. 

Here is the GoFundMe page for the Homegrown Music Festival of 2022. All proceeds go to help the festival and to ensure many more years of Homegrown to come.