Farewell to Hoxeyville and Earthwork Harvest Gathering

Two long-time festivals to cease operations, citing low ticket sales, high costs, and other factors

By Art Bukowski | Sept. 14, 2024

Northern Michigan’s music scene was dealt a considerable blow in 2024 when organizers of two popular and long-running music festivals decided to call it quits.

Hoxeyville Music Festival in Wexford County and Earthwork Harvest Gathering in Missaukee County will both come to a close this year. Hoxeyville’s last hurrah was in August, while the Harvest Gathering will give festival-goers one last spin on Sept. 20-22.

Northern Express checked in with leaders of both festivals to find out more about what led to their decisions, along with what’s next.

Hoxeyville Music Festival

Hoxeyville had its roots in informal parties hosted by Jake Robinson at his cabin in the community of the same name starting in 2001. It grew into a ticketed event, with a permanent stage built in 2012 and many thousands of guests descending on the festival grounds to see dozens of performers in late summer.

Putting on the festival was always a stressful endeavor, Robinson says, but the good vibes (usually) made it worth the effort. This year, Robinson tried a spring edition for the first time, but ticket sales were lackluster. And despite a strong showing in 2023, ticket sales for the traditional summer festival this year were also well below where they needed to be.

Robinson believes inflation and other factors contributed to the drop in ticket sales.

“There’s rising costs for all of us at the gas pump, at the grocery store, insurance premiums—basically everything has gone up 20 or 30 percent, and that’s really put people in a pinch,” he says. “And I think frankly that the political environment, especially in an election year like this one, is very volatile and people are very anxious. They’re holding their cards and their money a lot closer to their chest than they had been.”

Regardless of the causes, the back-to-back financial hits were too much for Hoxeyville to bear, Robinson says. Robinson announced on Aug. 9 that the 2024 Hoxeyville would be the last, and the spring iteration will also not return.

“Events like these are pretty much one financial loss away from catastrophe, and when you have two in a row this year like I did that didn’t perform and lost a lot of money, it puts you in a bad position, because there’s no bailout plan,” he says. “And it’s unfortunate that it’s so tied to finances, but at the end of the day, it’s a business.”

In the week leading up to this year’s festival, several artists—including funk band headliner Galactic, pianist Holly Bowling, mandolinist Sam Bush, and others—posted on social media that they would not be attending the festival, with some mentioning breach of contract or lack of payment on behalf of Hoxeyville. On their Facebook page, Galactic wrote, “Unfortunately we will not be playing Hoxeyville in Michigan on August 10. We have tried our best to work with the promoter putting on the show, but after many unfulfilled contractual promises, they have decided to not move forward with us playing.”

Robinson says he approached Galactic to back out of that particular contract within the time frame allowed in the contract, and that once he did, it made artists “skittish” about getting paid. As a result, several others backed out of the show.

“My choice to fall on my sword with Galactic triggered this chain reaction of sorts,” he says. “Three of the five [that backed out] had been paid their deposits, but based on that trigger, they wouldn’t come and play because they were worried about getting paid.”

Aside from financial difficulties, Robinson had also grown tired of the grind. It was a “labor of love,” but it was still a lot of labor.

“It had evolved into something that became difficult to manage and very expensive, and it had sort of a ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ effect, where I felt like we had to outdo ourselves each year, go a little bit bigger or put a little more sizzle to it somehow, whether that was talent or production,” he says.

But there’s plenty about the festival that Robinson will miss, not the least of which are the people who came to jam out over the years and the community they built while doing so.

“What brought me the most joy over the years has been the joy it brought other people and the sense of community they gained,” Robinson says. “All the friendships and marriages and children and so on that have come out of that community is really special and touching.”

Robinson says he can’t rule out some form of Hoxeyville returning, but likely not any time in the near future.

Earthwork Harvest Gathering

This beloved festival also dates to 2001, when Seth Bernard and his family first welcomed guests to the Earthwork Farm near Lake City for a three-day “cultural celebration.”

Bernard, a musician who grew up going to Blissfest, Wheatland, Spirit of the Woods, and other “first wave” Michigan music festivals, could not be more proud to have brought the festival together for so many years.

“Harvest Gathering is a dream that I had as a kid that came true, and it’s been a really big part of my work in my adult life,” he says. “It takes place on the farm where I was born and raised… and we’ve done some things that have really improved my quality of life, especially meeting and networking with people who share common goals and inspire me as activists and musicians.”

A variety of personal and business factors led Bernard and family to decide to bring the Harvest Gathering to a close. Ticket sales slumped since the pandemic, he says, likely due to a combination of reasons.

“A lot of people don’t want to be in crowds as much as they used to, and that’s very understandable. And then there’s also the fact that working-class people are really being squeezed economically,” he says. “They can’t afford rising costs of living, they can’t attend multiple music festivals every summer…they’re prioritizing what they need to prioritize.”

A drop in ticket sales coincided with ever-rising costs for the festival itself, which made things challenging from a business perspective. Add to this some significant personal matters, and the time seemed right to bring the Harvest Gathering chapter to a close.

“My dad will be 80 this year. Our family needs to really focus on what succession planning looks like on our family farm,” Bernard says. “I got Lyme disease last year and my capacity isn’t what it used to be. It’s a time for us to focus on our family and our healing.”

Rather than pull together a scaled back version of the festival, Bernard chose to go out on top, so to speak.

“I felt like the right thing to do was to bring this to a close while it’s still going really well and it still is a strong version of itself,” he says.

Bernard’s goal is to allow people to continue to interact with his farm in different ways in the future, but what that will look like is not entirely clear right now.

“We’ve done family weekends in smaller groups, and we’ve done a lot of artist residencies and retreats. We’ve had men’s retreats, women’s retreats, groups come up from Detroit and New England to do retreats here. Harvest Gathering has helped all of those things happen, and those things will continue on without Harvest Gathering,” he said. “But in terms of some gatherings that we haven’t done yet, those conversations will pick up after the dust has settled.”

For now, Bernard hopes as many people as possible come on out for the final Harvest Gathering in its current form. Knowing that the festival is ending ahead of time may let attendees find peace—and extra enjoyment—in the last edition.

“It gives people the opportunity to come in with a different kind of intention knowing that this will be the last one of its kind,” he says.

For tickets, head to earthworkharvestgathering.com

Pictured: The Hoxeyville crowds gathered one last time in August. Photo by On the DL Photography