DAYTONA BEACH — After eight years and seven festivals that helped raise funds for women and infants impacted by the opioid epidemic, the Daytona Blues Festival will not continue.
"We'd like to think we increased awareness about opioid addiction and how it was affecting young pregnant women and their families," Pam Carbiener, a co-founder of the festival and an obstetrician, said Friday. "Nowadays, every single person in our community has an employee, a relative, a friend who is touched by addiction."
Over its history, the festival has raised about $300,000 to help Halifax Health's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the Stewart-Marchman-Act Women Assisting Recovering Mothers program. At last year's festival — following a cancellation in 2016 because of Hurricane Matthew — musical acts included Joe Louis Walker, Marcia Ball, Shakura S'Aida and Victor Wainwright.
However, competition from other festivals across the country has increased the cost of bringing artists to Daytona Beach, Carbiener said, meaning the festival would have to raise ticket prices to a cost that wouldn't be acceptable to local attendees.
"We just don't have the infrastructure to compete with these additional festivals and to pay these artists truly what they are worth," she said.
Going forward, the organization is looking at ways to continue serving the population in need through music, such as by having one-day or evening events that don't have the "expensive infrastructure" of a three-day festival, Carbiener said. She added the organization is connecting with other groups, like the Healthy Start Coalition of Flagler & Volusia Counties.
"A lot of the artists still want to come to our community and do something for this population," she said.
One of those artists is Wainwright, who studied at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and has been a part of every festival.
"The people that poured themselves into me and my career, the people that believed in me and what I wanted to do with music ... these are the same friends that selflessly want to see the healing power of music touch Daytona, and still do," Wainwright wrote in a text message to The News-Journal. "Music together with love is one of the greatest healing forces we have available to us in the world."
The piano-playing blues musician's work with the groups Southern Hospitality and Victor Wainwright & The WildRoots has reached the top 10 of Billboard’s blues albums rankings. He recently performed at Daytona Beach's Bank & Blues Club in support of his new album, “Victor Wainwright & the Train.”
He added that artists and musicians are particularly vulnerable to the dangers of addiction.
"The opioid crisis is real and opioid abuse in general makes it very hard for an individual to listen," he said. "You can 'hear' the music, but the journey it takes to reach your heart, to truly 'listen,' is sometimes made longer by the abuse of opioids in particular. This is a problem because the ones that need the love and experience of celebrating live music the most often don't receive it."