Salamander Fest brings summer vibes

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This article was published 24/07/2023 (1041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rideau Park was blessed with consistently sunny weather for the inaugural Salamander Summer Music Festival, which invited artists from all over Westman and beyond to usher in this new community event over the course of three days.

From Friday to Sunday, more than a dozen Manitoba musicians representing different genres — including folk, EDM, reggae and classic rock — took to the stage for this laid-back affair, where attendees were free to roam the park grounds and indulge in the vendor’s village or various local food trucks at their leisure.

The easy-going atmosphere was a nice change of pace for local singer Julianna Moore, who had just performed at Dauphin’s Countryfest earlier this month in front of a decidedly different crowd.

“Being in Brandon … everyone’s super friendly. There’s no pressure,” Moore said on Saturday afternoon right after completing her set. “You’re just there to enjoy yourself and that’s how I feel up on stage. So it was really nice.”

Salamander Fest organizer Jenn Watson told the Sun that cultivating this kind approachable event was her team’s objective from the start.

“A big part of what we wanted to do was make this as accessible to as many people as possible,” she said.

“So we wanted to make sure that we had things for children, that we had family-friendly activities, that our acts were diverse and that there was a little bit of something for everyone.”

When planning began roughly a year ago, Watson and her team used the now-defunct Brandon Folk, Music and Art Festival as a rough template, with several former organizers from that decades-spanning event lending hand.

However, as things moved forward, the planning committee began to carve out a unique identity for this new music festival, eventually finding their mascot in the flaming salamander located on the top of Brandon’s city crest.

This amphibian was chosen because of its association with rebirth and its imperviousness to fire, with organizers hoping to establish a brand new annual event out of the ashes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of course, this project was a lot easier said than done, especially without any major built-in brand recognition to boost the event’s marketing or fundraising campaigns.

“As a first-year festival, we started out with a bank account of zero,” Watson said. “So many things, including getting the word out, cost so much money that we were really going from a grassroots [approach of] ‘how do we do this on such a small budget?’”

Luckily, the team’s hard work eventually paid off, since Watson was immensely pleased with how Salamander Fest rolled out this past weekend, with good weather, an active crowd and engaging performances from all the musicians involved.

Local librarian Michelle Boudreau was similarly complimentary with how everything came together, especially since organizers went out of their way to make room for groups like the Western Manitoba Regional Library to set up shop and conduct community outreach near the stage.

“Being the second-largest city in Manitoba we need to have more festivals like this,” said Boudreau, who was scheduled to perform Saturday night alongside her self-titled band.

“We need to infuse as much culture into our wonderful city [as we can] and give people, artists and community groups an opportunity to share that vibe together.”

Moving forward, Watson and her team aim to turn the Salamander Summer Music Festival into an annual event and have even begun generating ideas for 2024.

“We’ve already started looking at making a list of what we liked about the way we did it this year and things that we might change,” she said. “But this has been so wonderful that I can’t imagine not doing it again.”

The line-up for the inaugural Salamander Summer Music Festival included performers like Kilusan, Lyon-I, Young Pixels, House of Hex, DJ Red, DJ Dirt, Full Flannel Jacket, Vertigo/Matt Cory Band, Friday Kitchen, Mitchell Makoons, Shameless Folk, Jan Ek, The Chris Ghidoni Band and Attica Riots.

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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