LouFest organizer Brian Cohen says he and his fellow music festival's organizers were disappointed and frustrated when headliners the Roots were unable to make it to the Forest Park event last month because of Hurricane Irene.

"Our obligation was to salvage the day," Cohen says. "We had to put those emotions aside and focus on how to come up with a solution, how to move forward."

Moving forward is what LouFest and St. Louis Bluesweek, two of St. Louis' newest homegrown music festivals, have been doing since both made successful debuts last year.

LouFest faced the challenge of scrambling to find a replacement for the Roots after the band canceled a day before its appearance.

"Bands of that caliber aren't available on a moment's notice," Cohen says.

Roots' drummer Questlove, who is also a DJ, was in Chicago prior to LouFest and managed to make it to St. Louis, where he performed a DJ set at LouFest. The Hold Steady got bumped up into the Roots' slot.

"Moving the Hold Steady into the headliner position seemed like a good decision," Cohen says. "It seemed natural to move them up, and they were certainly capable of pulling off that headlining slot, and they did."

Still, Cohen knows some Loufest ticket holders were upset with the Roots' cancellation. What he says he hopes they understand is that a festival is "larger than a single day or a single band. It's an entire event."

LouFest drew about 4,500 fans on each of its two days, on pace with last year. Single-day ticket sales for the first day of the festival took a hit as a result of the Roots announcement, but Cohen reports an increase in two-day ticket sales. LouFest 2012 presale tickets will be released in December with band announcements expected in April.

"I think we're getting better at what we do," he says.

Mike Kociela, whose Entertainment St. Louis helps organize St. Louis Bluesweek, says that event came off better than expected during its Aug. 25-Sept. 4 run downtown and in Soulard.

Bluesweek included a blues festival, a "blues cruise" to blues clubs and an awards program that honored Chuck Berry, among others.

"We wound up doing very well," Kociela says. "We definitely saw increases" over last year.

Attendance at the Bluesweek Festival was about 15,000 over two days, up from last year's crowd of about 10,000, Kociela says. The Blues Cruise also saw more traffic this year.

The festival, held in front of the future home of the National Blues Museum on Washington Avenue, helped show "how intertwined Bluesweek and the museum will be," Kociela says.

Organizers will add a second stage to next year's festival, to feature other styles of music linked to blues, such as R&B, jazz or rock. They are considering moving Bluesweek to spring and possibly adding an admission price. Kociela says the latter will happen only if "we wind up getting a huge act."