How did this festival come to be – from inception, to now being an annual event?

Well the festival itself came together in 2008, which was the first installment.  It basically came to be as a means of supporting our loyal local concert goers, who are engrained in the hard rock/metal communities.  Montreal and the Province of Quebec for that matter has a huge following within those genres, so we definitely thought it would be a viable show to put together.  By “coming together” in 2008, I mean that that was the first Heavy show.  It actually come together in the early stages of 2007, putting a show of this magnitude together is a full time job to say the least and takes many hours and man power to get off the ground.  There are a large number of European festivals that take place on an annual basis.  We basically took that model and worked around a bit to fit for Montreal.  We certainly look forward to creating a true fan experience with Heavy for years to come.

 

How did you come up with the overall concept of the Heavy brand?

Well, like I said above.  We took a some elements of the European festival model and built our own unique Montreal flavour to the Heavy Festival.  The overall thought behind “Heavy” was to assemble some of today’s best hard rock/metal bands and package that with some of yesteryears titans and package them together for a truly unique weekend experience.  By all means we’re always looking for new and fresh elements that can be added to the weekend, to add to the overall fan experience.  Last year we had the legendary Megadeth play an intimate show after day two in a club in Montreal, we added a film night on the Friday where it was all about the genre.  You know, we just keep looking at different things and saying “is that something that the fans of Heavy would really get into.”  So far it’s been very well received.

 

When did the idea to expand into Toronto begin?

Well the Heavy T.O. idea came into play this year through our friends at Live Nation.  They’d seen the success we’d been having here in Montreal with Heavy MTL and had said this was something that they had been thinking of for some time.  So we’re actually partners with Live Nation for the Toronto show.  It just made sense.  Toronto is Canada’s biggest city, the population of Southern Ontario is just massive.  We looked at our attendance and approximately 5% of attendees at Heavy MTL were from Toronto.

 

How did this year’s current lineup come to be?  What is involved in assembling such a long list of bands on one bill?

Putting the Heavy weekend together is quite the undertaking.  It’s funny that this festival is over in 48 hours, being that it took the better part of a year to assemble.  As you can imagine, it’s a little nerve racking at times, but we’ve built a team that have done this many times before.  When I comes to booking all of the bands that make up Heavy, this can start to take place as much as a year before the show.   Some bands will not have their plans in stone for the year yet, so getting a commitment from a bands agent takes some time until they figure out the logistics of their respective bands.

 

Heavy MTL 2010 was a huge success.  Do you have any bigger plans for the 2011 installment?   What can the fans expect this year?

We are always looking to improve the fan experience, and listen to what our fans are saying on the social networks. This year we added a 3rd stage on a new part of the site. The Environment is important for us, so this year we are implementing more green initiatives.