It's been a slow start to the fledgling 1000 Islands Music Festival.
The crowd for Thursday's acts was in the hundreds and the numbers were similar through the early part of Friday's performances.
There is a historic precedent. Forty years ago in northern New York State, the largest crowds to the Woodstock Festival on the same weekend didn't really coalesce at the beginning.
The comparison draws a laugh from Zoltan Varadi, spokesman for Watson Entertainment, during an interview behind the main stage early Friday afternoon.
He counters with a joke of his own: "But we're hoping a couple of babies are born here," says Varadi, referring to the famous (then infamous) birth of a child - on Max Yasgur's farm 40 years ago.
The same thing isn't likely to take place on the Dingman Farm minutes north of the County Road 32 turnoff from Highway 401.
And if it did, there would be paramedics to assist. Similarly, private and OPP security is pervasive. A lot of other things that happened in Woodstock won't be on the agenda in Gananoque.
Still, the music festival is drawing media attention if not the immediate spectator numbers in the range of 20,000 originally anticipated by organizers.
Varadi said a Rolling Stone reporter is expected to arrive Saturday and write a piece for the magazine. And a feature about the Thousand Islands area using the musicfest as the anchor event has been promised by a Toronto-based daily, he added.
Meanwhile, he was hoping for crowds to increase throughout the day Friday until the evening's feature acts Faber Drive and Simple Plan. And, indeed, the audience was building slowly into the early evening and had grown to nearly 1,000 by the time the up-and-comer Stereos hit the main stage about 5:30 p.m.
Varadi said promoters are hoping for the biggest crowds today when music starts at 11 a.m. and builds to a crescendo with successive performances by Kardinal Offishall, Akon and Snoop Dogg.
A special effort was made to advertise in northern New York urban centres to attract a larger audience for the hip-hop acts, he noted.
He said the plan for the first year is to establish the festival on the local entertainment calendar and build on it for the long term.
Friday's all-Canadian lineup seemed to strike a chord with local music fans. Spectators who spoke with The Recorder and Times were largely from the Kingston-to-Cornwall corridor and ranging north to Perth and Smiths Falls.
A group of four friends from Prescott arrived mid-day Friday with an open mind about the unfamiliar artists and a zeal to see their favourites, Simple Plan and Faber Drive.
Amanda Campbell said they saw Faber Drive before in Ottawa and were eager to catch another performance by the B.C.-based act.
Montreal's Simple Plan made it an even better plan to attend the festival, said Campbell, who was accompanied by Carrie Patterson, Angie Bernier and Rodney Mazur.
Kingston's Andrew Peterson was looking forward to a full day of entertainment. His Stereos T-shirt gave away one of his preferences while he showed another seeking an autograph from Gianni Luminati of Walk Off the Earth.
Peterson was pleased to see the reggae-hip-hop fusion band from Burlington perform and even happier after getting his copies of the band's CDs signed by Luminati.
The good mood of the crowd was evident by the absence of problems on site over the first two days, according to Ontario Provincial Police officers maintaining a presence on the festival grounds.
"There have been no issues. It's been good so far," said Rideau Lakes OPP Const. Doug Owen.
Early Friday evening, OPP conducted an impaired-driving checkpoint on County Road 32 near the junction with Hwy. 401. Results weren't immediately available.
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