Blue Ridge Rock Festival recently made headlines thanks to a 2024 ticket sales page on their website despite zero announcements about bands, location, or a resolution to all the 2023 refunds and issues. Blue Ridge Rock Festival executive producer Cara Fischer then provided a statement to WDBJ7, saying no tickets are on sale and that organizers are still working on providing a resolution to fans who attended the ill-fated 2023 edition.
Now Jonathan Wilkofsky, an attorney for the Blue Ridge Rock Festival, has provided comment to WDBJ saying Blue Ridge Rock Festival organizers are still waiting on an answer from their insurance company.
“There were just a lot of moving parts to the events and the cancelation of the weather and the ticketing, and there’s just a million moving parts to it,” Wilkofsky said.
Wilkofsky continued, adding that the insurance company is trying to determine if the storm was reason enough to cancel Blue Ridge Rock Festival: “It absolutely seems to apply under these circumstances, but they [the insurance carriers] are entitled to look at every aspect of the concert to see if that’s true.”
On the seemingly-always-coming refunds, Wilkofsky mentioned that nobody has just up and run away with the money.
“There’s been a lot of rumors out there that somebody’s run away with the money and we’re stiffing the fans, and that’s absolutely untrue. There’s been no payment. There’s been no denial of the claim, we’re in the process of the investigation.”
To recap – Blue Ridge Rock Festival 2023 was cancelled midway through (the September 9 and 10 dates never happened) due to what organizers called “continued severe weather.” Though a report surfaced a few days later suggesting that stagehands working the festival were planning to walk out on September 9 due to poor working conditions. The report alleged that stagehands presented a list of demands to organizers the evening of September 8, saying conditions need to be improved or a strike would happen.
Blue Ridge Rock Festival attendees then complained about not getting refunds from organizers, an issue that stretched into January 2024 (and beyond). This was all compounded by the fact that Blue Ridge Rock Festival was also under investigation by the Virginia Department Of Health after people reported gastrointestinal issues in the days after the festival.
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