Today, the organizers of the Homegrown Live Music Festival announced the schedule of local artists and venues participating in their annual showcase of Kingston music. This year's all-local music festival will see 23 musical acts give 45-minute live performances over six hours across four different live music venues in Kingston on Saturday, May 7, 2022.

What's different this year?

Unlike previous years' festivals, Homegrown Live will not be offering all-access wristbands in an attempt to limit the possible spread of COVID-19 by attendees travelling between venues. They have also intentionally chosen music venues that are distant from each other, instead of clustered closer together as they had been for previous festivals. “Our 2019 festival was our biggest, and we had 140 acts playing in 12 venues. It (involved over) 600 individual musicians and five or six dozen door staff,” explained Homegrown Live co-founder, Chris Morris, in an exclusive Kingston Live interview. “We want people to come out and enjoy music. We want musicians to have a place to play. We want to raise money for Joe's M.I.L.L. ultimately, but we really tried our best to reduce the likelihood of a super spreader event.” [caption id="attachment_6057" align="alignleft" width="1024"] Kingston singer-songwriter Erika Lamon performs live with Martin Bracken-Laforest and Max Nolet at Cajun on King during Homegrown Live Music Festival 2019.[/caption]

Distant venues, shorter concerts, fewer live acts.

In addition to selecting venues with greater distance between them, Homegrown Live organizers have decided to limit the duration of live music performances at each venue, which subsequently reduces the number of acts who’ll perform at this year's festival. “Past festivals started as early as 11 o'clock in the morning, and ran to last call. This year, we're bringing it down to like an evening start time and it'll all be over by probably one o'clock, maybe last call in a couple of spots,” explained Morris. “The downside is that we've reduced the number of acts from 140 in 2019 to maybe 20 or 25 this year. We received about 55 applications (from local artists), so more than half of them, unfortunately, have to get turned down.”

2022 festival schedule: Saturday, May 7, 2022

The lineup at each venue has been carefully curated by festival organizers to showcase Kingston's diversity of artists and their musical styles. Hotel Wolfe Island Blu Martini The Mansion Overtime Sports Bar Advance tickets for HomeGrown Live 2022 are $10 and are available for purchase online from Ticket Tailor here. A limited quantity of tickets will be available at the door of each venue on the night of the performances. Posted: May 3, 2023 Originally Published: Apr 18, 2022