Mike Dubue despises music festivals. So much so, in fact, that he’s organizing his own.

As a member of the Canadian band Timber Timbre, and of many bands before that, the Quyon resident of eight years has spent a lot of time touring, which often involves playing festival circuits throughout the summer months. 

“I really hate music festivals. [ . . . ] I don’t like the way artists are treated. I don’t like big crowds for music, I think that’s such a stupid thing,” he said.

“From an audience perspective, I’m sure it’s whatever it is, but that’s not my perspective. My perspective is that I like intimacy, that kind of vibe.” 

This affinity for intimate performance spaces is in part what drew Dubue and his partner to Quyon nearly a decade ago, when they purchased the St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church on rue de Clarendon and transformed it into a music recording studio. 

“I walked in here and I heard this room right away, and we were like, ‘Yep we’ve got to get this place,’” Dubue recalled. 

“There’s no close reflections,” he said, clapping three times to make his point. “Nothing [no sound] comes back at you in the room. It’s very well beautifully acoustically designed. Someone in the 1800s figured this out. And I think it’s because the arches are completely open and more or less there’s enough rounded out spaces and not too many corners.” 

Last year, after returning home from a particularly grueling festival tour, he decided to try his hand at putting on a festival that was to his liking, one that would enable him to share the beauty of his home’s acoustic design with the wider community.

“I was like, ‘I’m going to f-ing do a festival and I’m going to do it in my own way.’ And I threw it together really quickly and it was great,” he said. 

The product of his frustrations was Quyon’s first Festival Fantôme – a three-day event dedicated to what Dubue calls “outsider music”, hosted over Halloween weekend.

“All the music is pretty niche and avant-garde . . . I never know what to call it,” he said. 

Some 600 people showed up for the live shows he organized at both Gavan’s and the smaller venue in the church – Studio Cimetière. Some drove themselves, while school buses brought others in from Ottawa and returned them to the city at the end of the night. 

There were even some superfans of Timber Timbre, which played last year’s festival, who flew in from the Netherlands and Germany specifically for the band’s show.

It was such a hit, according to Dubue, that he is bringing it back for a second year, this time expanding it to include two full weekends of programming, with shows starting Oct. 31 and wrapping up Nov. 8.

Based on ticket sales so far, he’s predicting the event will bring in over 1,000 people. 

This year’s headliners include bands like Secret Chiefs 3, NT Fan, The Flaps, Empiricals, and The Sadies. 

The evening of Saturday, Nov. 1 will see a trio of what Dubue refers to as noise comedian performance artists cross the stage, including headliner Neil Hamburger (the stage name for Los Angeles-based entertainer Gregg Turkington). 

The outsider-ness of the music and entertainment acts selected, Dubue admits, is part of the appeal for him. Every band booked is a band he likes to listen to. 

“There is a method to the madness, behind the programming,” Dubue promised. “A lot of it is personal.
[ . . . ] I’m mostly booking music that I like, that’s definitely the main factor of the whole thing.”

A lot of the music he enjoys and wants to share with others, it turns out, is music played by his friends, some of whom live as far as Detroit or Los Angeles, who he’s convinced to make the trip to Quyon to play a show. 

Dubue is hoping that even if some of the names are not familiar to local audiences, the community will still turn out for a show at Gavan’s or Studio Cimetière over the course of the two weekends. 

“I think if people came out to the festival, they’ll have a lot of fun. Nothing is very typical. If you don’t know the bands, you’re going to be thoroughly entertained,” Dubue said.  

“I hope that the more that people take risks and try things out, the more things will grow. That’s kind of what I watched happen with the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield. Paul [Symes] built this thing that nobody was into, and no one really understood, and he [helped] turn Wakefield into the booming tourism village that it is. A lot of the revival of Wakefield was stemming from the Black Sheep Inn. So I’d like to see something like that for this area.”

Dubue pointed to Quyon’s many stages [Gavan’s, Studio Cimetière, and the Quyon Legion, to name a few] as evidence of the town’s dedication to its musical inheritance. 

“There’s a long, rich history of music in Quyon and the area,” he said, emphasizing he believes this history holds plenty of potential as a development tool for the town. 

Dubue said he’ll likely only organize the festival for one more year after this, at which point he’ll be ready to pass the torch to someone else with a vision for what it could be. 

“If you can grow music culture, you’ll help the community, you’ll help the society. That’s what I believe. [ . . . ] I’m just doing it the way I know how to do it. But I’m sure there’s other people who know how to do it better. And they should.”