Nick Farkas had just returned from Osheaga’s revamped site on Île Ste-Hélène last Friday morning.

“It’s huge,” he said, with audible enthusiasm. “It’s really cool and beautiful.”

The 14th Osheaga Music and Arts Festival will be back on its old site, Aug. 2 to 4, after living in limbo for the past two years, having set up camp on the neighbouring Île Notre-Dame during a complete overhaul of its home of the previous decade.

Osheaga felt different for those two editions — equally big, overwhelming and awesome, but requiring some adjustment for longtime attendees attempting to navigate the elongated layout of the fest’s temporary digs to catch a carefully selected sequence of acts.

It’s about to feel different again, as Osheaga comes home — but its home has undergone a $70 million renovation, particularly the grounds of the Mountain and River stages, where the bulk of the Oshe-action takes place.

The area around those stages can now accommodate up to 65,000 people, instead of the previous 45,000, and promises to be more comfortable for three long days of standing in the hot sun. Among the tweaks:

“Instead of standing on rocks and gravel, you’re on this kind of hard-packed sand stuff, like a tennis court,” said Farkas, VP of booking, concerts and events for Osheaga promoter Evenko.

“The actual site is bigger. The hill has been backed up. They basically took out the whole hill and put in a new hill that is less sloped.

“The tiny river thing that was behind the stage — the stagnant pond — is gone. Now there’s more space; it’s way wider. It’s a big difference. It gives the production guys so much more room to work their magic. And they cleared out a bunch of the brush along the water, so you can see the city so much better. It’s pretty awesome.”

Some have complained about the 1,000 mature trees cut down during the process, while Evenko points to the 1.65 million people who have visited Parc Jean-Drapeau over the past nine years for its festivals. The economic boost for Montreal from Osheaga in 2017 was $19 million.

Despite the newly increased capacity, Osheaga plans to stay cool as it returns to its old stomping grounds. None of the festival’s three days are sold out yet, though sales have been ramping up over the past few weeks.

“We’re going to kind of play it by ear,” Farkas said. “We’ll see if we get (to the point where we have to make a decision). Our plan was to not go past 50,000 in the first year back. Generally capacity had been 45,000 on the old site.

“We’re concerned with flow. Even though the main site can hold that much, we want to make sure people can get to the other (stages) and still have a good experience.”

That experience — which Farkas calls “almost unparalleled” and “one of the nicest festival sites in North America” — is everything.

In Osheaga’s early years, the site was key. With attendance measured in the thousands as opposed to the tens of thousands, the bucolic network of tree-lined paths, hidden stages and laid-back outdoor fun was a big part of the festival’s appeal.

It’s kind of crazy how big Osheaga has become. Over the past decade and change, the little fest that could has morphed into a world-class celebration of cool music of all kinds, with a site that makes it feel like one giant (and very loud) summer camp.

It’s a testament to Osheaga’s organizing team that it has been able to grow so quickly — and for the past several years, maintain its heightened popularity — without sacrificing fan experience.

It’s also a testament to Montreal. Like at the jazz fest, our city’s laid-back, effortlessly hip vibe seems to permeate Osheaga, creating an atmosphere that is welcoming to female fans, who represent up to two-thirds of its demographic year to year.

Yes, there are exceptions. There will always be frat boys who have had a few too many and are out to par-tay in all the wrong ways, but with male attendees topping out at 35 to 40 per cent of Osheaga’s audience, their numbers are kept in check.

The festival’s programming has followed suit, with female artists being given increasingly prominent spots in the lineup. The past four years each featured one female headliner out of three: Florence and the Machine (2015 and 2018), Lana Del Rey (2016) and Lorde (2017).

This year bucks that trend, with no female headliners — something Farkas chalks up to circumstance. The top draws are folk-rock act the Lumineers (Aug. 2), British electronica throwbacks the Chemical Brothers (Aug. 3) and American rapper Childish Gambino (Aug. 4).

“If Rihanna was available, obviously we’re gonna put Rihanna in there,” Farkas said. “A lot of it depends on who’s touring. It’s a huge priority to be inclusive and have everyone represented. That hasn’t changed.”

It’s not all about the headliners, of course. Scrolling through the 111 acts in Osheaga’s lineup, Janelle Monáe pops out as a female artist who could well have taken top billing, and might have, had circumstances been different.

“We booked Janelle really late,” Farkas said, noting that by that point his headliners were already confirmed. “Headliner offers go in really early in the process. Once they’re locked in, they’re hard to move. You can’t move a headliner and say, ‘We’ve got something we think is bigger.’ ”

Though gender is important, Osheaga doesn’t use quotas when booking acts, according to Farkas, who explained that quality, popularity and creating a balanced lineup are key considerations.

“We just try to put on stage what our fan base wants to see. Historically, that’s an eclectic mélange of everything out there. The reality is that in the world of rock, there are more male-fronted bands still out there than women-fronted. So until the world catches up, we have to program (with what’s available).”

While rock remains the catch-all qualifier, Osheaga has thrived by expanding and adjusting its programming to keep up with changing times. And so hip-hop has gone from being a secondary category to a main attraction. This year’s offerings include Childish Gambino, Logic, Gucci Mane, $uicideboy$, Schoolboy Q, Jessie Reyez, Denzel Curry, Ski Mask the Slump God, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie and Young Thug.

The Lumineers lead the charge for indie pop/folk, alongside City and Colour, Hozier, Mac DeMarco and Dean Lewis. Female-fronted rock acts include Metric, Beach House, Sharon Van Etten, Mitski and U.S. Girls.

Latin music gets a spotlight with reggaeton star J Balvin and the Spanish flamenco reboot of Rosalía. Electronic music is ever popular, attracting swarms for sets by Flume, Charlotte de Witte, Sofi Tukker, hometown boy Kaytranada, Black Tiger Sex Machine, the Black Madonna and DJ Koze, and even prompting Osheaga to put one of the genre’s iconic acts in the top slot on Saturday night.

The Chemical Brothers may not be a known quantity to many of Osheaga’s younger attendees, but that’s all right by Farkas, who said programming the influential British duo sets his festival apart. With hardly any other North American dates booked — and with a nearly 20-year absence from Montreal — “we thought that would be really cool. We know it’s going to be epic.

“Are they as big as Childish Gambino? No. But Osheaga is not just going to be about current trends all the time. We’ve always wanted to be a music festival for music fans. The Chemical Brothers have influenced generations of electronic music.

“Bringing them, for us, makes a statement: we’re going to continue to do what we think is interesting, and have bands that we think represent the festival.”

Ultimately, Osheaga isn’t about any one act. With six stages operating in an alternating and often simultaneous procession, if you’re not happy with what’s going on at one end of the site, there is always an alternative on the other side.

Farkas brought up last year’s set by massively popular singer-rapper Post Malone, which drew seemingly everyone at Osheaga to the main stage area. That could have spelled disaster for veteran Scottish indie-rock band Franz Ferdinand.

“There were all kinds of stories, all over North America, of Post Malone playing festivals like Coachella and no one being at the other stages,” he said. “But sure enough, there was a great crowd for Franz Ferdinand.

“That shows that the Osheaga crowd is about music. It’s about exploring things, reliving the past and checking out the future.”

AT A GLANCE

The Osheaga Music and Arts Festival takes place from Aug. 2 to 4 on Île Ste-Hélène in Parc Jean-Drapeau. For passes and more information, visit osheaga.com.

tdunlevy@postmedia.com

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