Country music fans across Saskatchewan have no doubt already marked July 14 to 17 on their calendars.
Those are the dates for the Craven Country Jamboree. Director of marketing Kim Blevins and promotions director Lexia Chamryk were in North Battleford Tuesday to promote the event.
They have been going to various cities and towns across Saskatchewan to drum up interest in the event. They started off in southern Saskatchewan and went to Moose Jaw and Swift Current, Estevan, Weyburn and small towns in between.
Monday they made it north to Watson, Raymore, Naicam and up to Melfort to promote the Jamboree.
Part of the promotion is “spot the Craven hat,” so if anyone in these various communities spots Chamryk wearing the Craven Country Jamboree hat, you can just walk up to them and say hello and get some great prizes including tickets, meet and greet passes and others.
“We’re also leaving prizes in every community we visit,” said Blevins.
They are also leaving clues on social media using Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook.
“We’ve actually had people chasing us around different communities,” said Blevins. She says in Swift Current there was a young man who was “minutes behind us everywhere we went.”
The whole idea is to “start to generate a little bit of excitement for the show” and also show people that it’s really a provincial and interprovincial show, not simply a “Regina” event.
“We are also showing some of our fans from outside of the province different parts of Saskatchewan that they may not know anything about,” said Blevins.
The other part of their tour is to generate interest in the acts that are coming up to Craven this year.
The headliners include Alabama (with all the original members coming back) on Saturday night, Eric Church on Sunday and the Zac Brown Band.
Tracey Musgraves will open for the Zac Brown Band and Blevins calls that “kind of a coup for us, because she doesn’t play festivals. So we’ve been pretty lucky to get her to come to our festival this year.”
Other performers include classic acts like Marty Stuart and Kentucky Headhunters, some Canadian acts such as Chad Brownlee opening Thursday night, and up and coming acts such as Jerrod Niemann and Chris Young.
They will have their 10,000-person beer gardens open where local Saskatchewan acts will be performing, a junior bull-riding demonstration, a songwriter circle, a hypnotist and different activities.
One thing different this year is the jamboree is bringing up Randy Helm from Arizona. He’s described as a “horse whisperer” who is going to show his techniques for training horses that includes spirituality and other methods.
The show will go, rain or shine. Weekend passes are $205 and starting June 1 day tickets will be available as well for $100, to accommodate those who can’t be there for the whole show.
For more information on how to get tickets go to cravencountryjamboree.com.
The Jamboree itself has gone through several incarnations over the years, but has been a Craven tradition since 1983.
This year, the Jamboree is being held on the heels of the excitement surrounding the record-setting Garth Brooks concerts that took place earlier this month in Saskatoon.
Blevins agrees there is heightened interest.
“It’s been kind of an upward trend for the last probably 10 years,” said Blevins.
“I think there’s a real taste for country music, particularly in the summertime. It’s all real fun music, beer-drinking, sitting around with your friends.”
She says the Brooks show and other country acts that have come to the province “does nothing but help us, it gets people excited about the music.”
