Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival's growth credited in part to technology

Technology has changed and helped Fredericton's Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival grow from 25 acts to 150 over the last 26 years.

The no selfie-sticks policy was one of the rules that wasn't around when the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival began in 1991. 

But in the festival's 26-year history, the growth of the festival and society itself has changed how its run.

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Hailley Fayle, a student in Fredericton, produces her phone that has a QR code — or bar code — on the screen.

"It's as simple as scanning this bar code and they paste it on the back of your little ticket so you can get in right away," says Fayle, flipping over her pass to show the code. 

Then she records a video of the passes and sends them to her friends via Snapchat. They immediately text a reply.

David Seabrook, one of the festival's founding members, said in the 1990s those first days of tickets sales would see a big line right around the block.

"It was a big celebration and that's a little sad that that's disappeared because it had a bit of rock and roll edge to it, people camping out overnight and that's all gone because people go online and bam, it's done," Seabrook said with a sigh. 

"But it's a lot more convenient."

Festival's growth continues

Convenient especially as the festival has grown from around 9,000 patrons, to 85,000 last year.

It has also grown from 25 acts to 150, and that growth has changed other things. When they started it was at local bar venues.

"Now we have massive tents that hold over 2,000 people. That is something we wouldn't even have conceived of in the early days," said Stephen Seabrook, David's brother.

Seabrook began volunteering in the pre-cellphone days, when volunteers kept in touch via bicycle.

Cellphones also changed the rules around photography.

Big cameras are still prohibited, but small cameras and cellphones became too ubiquitous for outside venues to restrict.

"I think now the industry have adapted and realized they cannot control every cellphone in the house," said Seabrook.

What hasn't changed about the Harvest Jazz and Blue is that it continues to bring of some of the greats of jazz and blues, and those who travel here for the tunes.

In the shadow of Fredericton City Hall, Mark Cosh sits on his guitar case as he plays a tune along with his friend, perched on the passenger seat of their parked car.

They came from Pictou, N.S., to hear their favourite artist, Justin Townes Earle.