Doors Closed On Open House & Chillifest

Despite my recently passing by a billboard advertising this years Chillifest for June 23 and 24, it seems the ad's were premature.

Open House have announced this morning that there will be no Open House or Chillifest this year.

This is very sad news.

The full statement from Open House is below, here's hoping it does indeed return next year.

Hornby

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Riders On The Storm

Brothers and sisters, this is not an easy piece to write. I’ve rewritten it too many times so I’m just going to come straight out with it – there will be no Open House shows on Custom House Square this year, nor a 2012 ChilliFest. That’s no marquee, no open air gigs and no hot chilli pepper eating competition. Damn it - no late night jam sessions in the festival hotel either.

As a small but fiercely independent specialist music festival operating in the ultra-competitive world of the music industry, this year has been especially hard. In fact it’s been tough as hell. In this harsh economy there is increased competition for headliners from festivals and music promoters in Ireland and Europe. The bands we know you want are simply not available to us for a summer festival or the fees being sought are out of our reach and would make ticket prices out of your reach. Several festivals have already gone to the wall or are taking a year out. We suspect many more will struggle this year.

But we’ve some good news. Instead of the usual Open House Festival over one long weekend, we’re going to bring you a programme of concerts, with our usual funky festival vibe, throughout the whole year. We don’t want to risk the future of Open House, or cobble together a sub-standard line-up just to run a weekend festival. Open House exists to bring you the very best in folk, traditional and Americana. So, if we can’t bring you the best bands when we want them, then we’ll bring them when we can. In short, a festival line-up all year long.

Our new programme will feature a series of quality folk, traditional and Americana gigs throughout 2012 and into the spring of 2013, such as Josh T Pearson, Lucy Rose and The Civil Wars. And there will of course be a top-notch programme of Irish traditional music concerts taking place throughout the year too. So there are some great events to come – we hope to make a few exciting announcements soon. Join our Facebook page for updates and early releases.

This is not the beginning of the end. The resourceful Open House team have found what we believe is the best way to ride out the storm this year. We will be back with a strong line-up of Open House acts in June 2013.

Thanks for continuing to support Open House, and for supporting all the independent live music in this city. See you at a show real soon.

Kieran Gilmore, Festival Director
& all the critters at Team Open House

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