Tag: festival

Ask festivalgoers who show up by the thousands every year what attracts them to Salmonfest at Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds, and they’ll say it’s the music. But the undercurrent is the promotion and conservation of healthy salmon habitat. “You can’t build an event around a cause,” festival producer Jim Stearns told Fishermen’s News. “People don’t (care) about the cause. It has to be all about the music first, but even opponents (of the cause) come because it is so cool, and then you get your message out.” That message -- about the importance of sustainable salmon habitat in the ocean and Alaska’s rivers and streams -- is provided each year at Salmonfest by a number of nonprofit conservation and other activist entities, plus speakers, including Native Alaskans, on four stag...

Salmonfest, Alaska’s annual weekend of fish, love and music, with a focus on the importance of preserving healthy salmon habitat in Alaska, has some of the nation’s top bands lined up for the festivities, which are scheduled for Aug. 4-6 at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds. Headliners include Old Crow Medicine Show, whose biggest claim to fame is their song “Wagon Wheel,” country singer Sierra Ferrell, jam band Leftover Salmon and psychedelic funk group Pigeons Playing Ping Pong. In all, some five dozen bands are scheduled to play on four stages during the festival. Events include the Smoked Salmon Super Bowl competition, presented by Salmonfest and Catch 49, a program of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, that sells wild, responsibly harvested seafood harvested by small b...