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Bluegrass festival celebrates with all-Canadian lineup

Sooke River Bluegrass Festival is June 16 to 18
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A lot of Canadian flavour is coming to this year’s Sooke River Bluegrass Festival.

The festival is celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday with an all-Canadian lineup that showcases some of the country’s and the West Coast’s best acoustic musicians.

“It’s about Canada’s birthday, and the low Canadian dollar as well. It’s just really hard to get American bands up with travel and costs to come here. So we decided to just stay Canadian,” said festival spokesperson Bob Remington.

Nine bands are featured at this year’s festival, which includes headliners Slocan Ramblers and Sarah Jane Scouten.

The Slocan Ramblers’ unique Canadian bluegrass sound is winning followers across North America. Singer-songwriter Sarah Jane Scouten’s countrified folk originals and edgy voice are drawing comparisons to some of the best female roots music performers of recent time.

The Victoria region is rich in talent that festival organizers did not have to go far to assemble a strong lineup of bands including the Unfaithful Servants, the Clover Point Drifters, Country Squall and the Riverside Bluegrass Band.

B.C. and Alberta musicians are represented with the new band Nomad Jones, with Vancouver and the Lower Mainland delivering the female duo Twin Bandit and Wooly Bear, who will have the crowd on its feet at the festival’s famous Saturday night Big Top Square Dance led by dance caller Craig Marcuk.

Among the celebrated musicians in the lineup are Juno Award-winning fiddlers Ivonne Hernandez and Miriam Sonstenes, banjo player Craig Korth and mandolinist Jesse Cobb and James Whitall.

Weekend passes for the June 16 to 18 event at the Sooke River Campground are $50 and children 14 and under are free.

For full details, please go online to www.sookebluegrass.com.

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