Salmonfest 2021, featuring three days of music, food, art and family entertainment at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds in Ninilchik, is back on track, with ticket sales online already a hot item for the August 6-8 festivities.
Organizers are still lining up headliners and other bands who will play on four stages during the festival, including the larger stage at the new amphitheater under construction. Among the bands already booked are San Francisco soul, psych-rock and R&B band Con Brio, Provo, Utah’s folk/pop band The National Parks and Michigan singer-songwriter Lindsay Lou.
Even as the worldwide novel coronavirus pandemic continues, with fewer people testing positive in Alaska, the festival plans to meet or exceed all public health guidelines, while encouraging all those planning to attend to come vaccinated.
Salmonfest’s nonprofit steward organization, ARCHES Alaska, is continuing to prepare a new 40-acre campground behind festival/fairground, to open a limited number of campsites to ticket holders for the 2021 event. Plans are to allow those who like the campsite they reserve this year to have the option to keep it in perpetuity for future Salmonfests with a first right of refusal.
The festival began in 2011 as Salmonstock, to promote awareness of potential adverse impacts of large-scale mining on land in the Bristol Bay watershed, including the proposed Pebble mine.
Now as Salmonfest, the event continues to promote protection of wild salmon habitat. Festival sponsors include the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society and Cook Inletkeeper.
Now in its 10th year, Salmonfest continues to promote a weekend of music, and advocacy of salmon habitat and the Alaska ocean and streams these fish depend on to survive.
More information on ticket purchases, performers, volunteering, campground reservations and more is at salmonfestalaska.org.
