Six Years Ago This Past Weekend, the One and Only Nateva Festival Happened in Oxford

Maybe you were present for the big four day event that went down July 1-4, 2010 up at the Oxford Fairgrounds. The Nateva Festival drew in 15,000 people from all over the country. With lots of great bands, plenty of camping space and great weather most would call the one time event a success. It was a bit on the hot side but if you kept yourself hydrated, you were good. Bands like Flaming Lips, Sound Tribe Sector 9, Passion Pit, moe., John Brown's Body and our own Rustic Overtones were on tap for the weekend long festival. Here they are performing along with artist Isobell, also from Portland.

A second year was looking promising. A line up was announced and tickets went on sale for a brief amount of time. Festival founder Frank Chandler was having doubts.

According to the Portland Press Herald, Frank cited "We have a very thin margin, it’s still a difficult economy and a competitive environment. I don’t feel we can go out there and do it right. We brought a world-class event to Oxford, Maine, last year. But if I can’t do it right again, I have no business being in the game. It’s going to compete with a lot of festivals and suck up a lot of money.” Here's the full article from the Portland Press Herald. 

With that being said, the second year lineup that included Gregg Allman Band, Bob Weir, Thievery Corporation and Peter Wolf, among others didn't happen.

Here's some more great footage that sums up the weekend quite nicely.

Back in May, I was informed by a friend that they updated their cover photo and profile pic on Facebook. That lead us and lots of others to believe that maybe something was in the works. It turned out to be nothing, unfortunately. Why hasn't there been any attempts to do this again? The first year was a big success. From the lineup, the location, the camping and attendance. How about the return of Nateva in 2017? What do you say, Frank?!