All aboard!  This year is a little bit different. With our public health emergency, Edgewater’s Steamboat Mountain Music Festival had to chart an alternative course for 2020.

Instead of our outdoor porch parties, main stage, tweener stage, and workshops on July 3-4-5, we will be offering an on-line festival.

We have set up a recording studio, and we have been making short (15 minute) videos of each of our local bands, one-by-one, on various days, during the month of June.

Our studio is a spacious environment where we can easily maintain social distancing. We have devised a safety plan with time between recording sessions to do the necessary sanitation.

We got started June 2 and plan to have all the recordings completed by June 22. We intend to stream the video clips over our festival dates, July 3-4-5, and have them available on a Steamboat channel on Youtube after that. Each band will get a DVD of their session, which they can use to help them get more opportunities for gigs.

Anyone wanting to watch our virtual festival will be able to do so with no ticket or paywall. Just follow the link from www.steamboatmtnmusicfest.ca

Musicians and artists have been hit hard this year, with most of their shows having been cancelled. We want to help as much as we can. We will be paying all our performers a flat fee, which for most, is equivalent to one-third of their festival performance rate – but for a fifteen, rather than a 65-minute set. Not all the performers we had booked will be able to participate, but we’ll definitely present our local acts. Also, we will be paying our sound and video technicians at their usual professional rate.

Because we were not able to do our local business sponsorship campaign this year, we have to keep our expenses as tight as possible. We are grateful to major sponsors, who have come on board despite all the uncertainties.

We appreciate the generous support of the Arnie J. Charbonneau Foundation, the BC Arts Council, Gaming & Lotteries, Columbia Basin Trust, Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, Columbia Valley Community Foundation, and the Regional District of East Kootenay Community Initiatives Program.

And, of course, we are eternally thankful to the dozens of local businesses who have supported us for all eight of our previous Steamboat festivals.

To keep the Steamboat spirit strong, we are still holding our Duck Race to raise funds for our annual Steamboat Mountain Music Society Bursary. Duck Tickets can be purchased at Edgewater Post Office or Edgewater Legion.

The real-live Steamboat Festival in Edgewater Park will be back up and rollin’ for July 2-3-4, 2021, which will be our 10th anniversary. For this year, though, we’ll see you online.

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