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“And I had no doubt when the Fringe called. Yeah, August is gone.”

Photo by Shaughn Butts / Postmedia

While Wickham knows people will miss the annual event stretching back to 1980 — over the years bringing in musical luminaries from k.d. lang to Buffy Sainte-Marie to Van Morrison to David Byrne to Joni Mitchell — he’s very clear here: “I don’t want anyone to worry about the folk festival. We’ll be OK through all of this. We have an endowment fund. We’re funded. The timing was good where we didn’t have to incur huge expenses; it’s not cancelling three weeks before.

“The nightmare scenario is if someone said in May, ‘You can go ahead in August.’ We ramp up and go, and all of a sudden there’s a spike at Heritage Days or something.

“We’re lucky because we’re fairly lean. We don’t have a lot of full-time people, a lot of three-month, six-month people. The city had already funded us, and the indications I hear is they understand.”

As for the musicians, “We will offer to bring everybody back next year and see who takes it. We’re not in a hurry, let us know in August how it’s shaping up for next year.”

Only one of the 2020 acts was so far revealed. “Well, John Prine was closing, but of course he’s gone,” said Wickham, who mourned the American folksinger after he died of COVID-19 complications April 7. “But I really want to keep a hold on it. There was a lot of up and coming new talent, some classic, people who have never been here.

“But I want to leave it open for them to come back.”

Photo by David Bloom / Postmedia

There will, of course, be many ideas coming out of the woodwork as August approaches. “I know it’s great and people need to reach out. But we need to do something different than an online concert,” said Wickham.