Nick Blasko on what to expect from Rifflandia 2024

Rifflandia’s 2024 edition will land in Victoria Sept. 13-15, jamming live music, food, and fun into a single weekend—and no one is more excited than Rifflandia president and CEO Nick Blasko.

“We're doubling, if not tripling, down on this year,” said Blasko. “It will be an absolute feast.”

Blasko’s had a busy year: He was an executive producer for the film Knox Goes Away, starring Michael Keaton—his first production credit in more than a decade—and next month, his team will organize Victoria’s Canada Day main stage.

But Rifflandia is the main passion project he’s worked on since it first launched in 2008—though he had dreamed about it long before that. Blasko first began envisioning a local summer music festival for the South Island as a teen growing up in Victoria, though “it took him another decade or more to get up the nerve to do it.”

Artists for every listener

Rifflandia’s artist lineup was released in full last week, with big names like TLC, Feist, and The Beaches scheduled to perform this year.

Blasko says booking a festival is never “a straight line.” Some bookings, he says, take years to nail down and others get booked closer to the festival date. But the main goal he and his team have in mind when selecting bands is diversity in genre, sound, and generation.

“We try and put together a lineup that truly has something for everyone,” says Blasko. “Whether they're stylistically different, whether they are from a different era, a different audience, all of these things—we love to orchestrate what we call ‘the tight turns’ in our programming.”

Their goal is for Rifflandia’s programming to mirror the listening habits of the streaming era, where people can easily jump between genres and decades. This is one of the characteristics that Blasko says sets Rifflandia apart from other festivals. And he should know—as a former manager for artists Tegan and Sara, Bedouin Soundclash, and The Librarian, he’s attended major festivals like Glastonbury, Coachella, and Lollapalooza, gathering inspiration from each.

“There's been, literally, 100 different festivals around the world that I've been to, and you learn something from going to all of them because they're all different,” said Blasko. “All the ones that I liked the most are the ones that have unique attributes all to themselves that don't maybe make sense on the surface, but they become traditions.”

Blasko considers Rifflandia an ever-changing fest, where they keep what’s working and tweak what’s not.

One weekend, one location

Last year's festival was a major success, with two weekends of shows at different locations and record-breaking attendance. But for Blasko and his team, it was more exhausting than in previous years, leading to the decision to host one weekend of music at the same location.

This year’s fest will take place at Matullia Lands at Rock Bay—where the Electric Avenue weekend took place last year—and Blasko says they’re looking forward to hosting a new iteration of Victoria’s most prominent music festival.

This will be the first time Rifflandia will not be held at Royal Athletic Park (RAP), a switch-up that surprised local music fans. But Blasko says the Matullia Lands site is a place Victoria’s music industry should invest in. He calls it “one of the most important opportunities not only for Rifflandia, but for large-scale live music in Victoria.”

Attendees can expect the same food and drink offerings as in previous years, with a layout that encourages people to explore the full site and different stages.

“Part of what keeps a site exciting is that you can move around it and find something new,” said Blasko. “There's not many festival goers who want to spend their whole day in one spot.”

For those hoping to make the weekend a family affair, a massive kids zone— Kidlandia—is in the works, with Blasko calling it “a village” for families.

A new feature this year is an a-la-carte VIP experience, where people can purchase different VIP options—such as backstage catering (Blasko says it’s like a mini food festival), side stage and pit viewing, and private seating areas for groups or families—instead of buying a full VIP pass.

Set times are also expected to run later this year, without the 10pm curfew imposed on the festival while at RAP.

Blasko said he’s heard the queries about the lack of grass at the new site—while he hopes the site will have some real grass growing there one day, this year the team is focusing on laying down an “inordinate amount” of artificial turf to reduce the pressure of cement on attendees' joints.

The festival map will be rolled out in the coming weeks and Blasko says “a lot of the questions people have, I think, will be immediately answered once they see our plans.”

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Correction: An earlier version of the story identified Blasko as the producer of Knox Goes Away. He was an executive producer on the film.