PORT ANGELES — Four stages — including a free outdoor venue — plus dozens of bands and performers and a street fair are all part of 2022’s in-person Juan de Fuca Festival, for which tickets go on sale today.
“The biggest thing for us is the reunion,” said Kyle LeMaire, executive director of the Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts (JFFA), presenter of the festival on Memorial Day weekend, May 27-29.
The traditional venues will again be the settings: the Vern Burton Community Center, with its two indoor stages and its grassy outdoor space at 308 E. Fourth St., and the Naval Elks Lodge Ballroom, 131 E. First St.
At JFFA.org, people thirsty for live music can view the festival lineup and schedule so far, even as that roster grows.
“There will likely be a few more and then lots more when we announce our outdoor stage [lineup],” said JFFA administrative manager Kari Chance.
LeMaire, who began researching and booking performers as soon as he took the foundation helm last September, sought to mix the well-known and the emerging, the traditional and the twists.
The 2022 lineup features:
• Local groups including Backwoods Hucksters, Twisted Roots, The Shift, Chandra Johnson & the Homeschool Boys, the Port Angeles Symphony String Quartet, Brother Townsend and True Reckoning;
• Acts well-known to festival-goers including Rose’s Pawn Shop, Ranger and the Re-Arrangers and Ballet Victoria;
• Northwest artists David Jacobs-Strain, John Craigie, Shook Twins, Country Lips and Seattle blues singer Lady A;
• Blues, rock and world beat artists Christopher Worth, Budapest West, Professor, Hiroya Tsukamoto, Jacqueline Tabor and Eden;
• Americana bands the Black Feathers and Jimbo Scott Trio;
• Folk artists Champagne Sunday, the Michal Palzewicz Trio, Abby Posner, Karima Walker and Maiah Wynne;
• Performers in other genres, such as Kron, which calls its material “comedic funk pop joyride,” and Billy Brandt and his band, who specialize in “hip-sway lounge.”
Links to music and information about each act, along with which days they’re playing during the fest, are found at https://jffa.org/festival/schedule-lineup/.
A little under two weeks before the big weekend, San Francisco’s The Sam Chase and the Untraditional will join local performer Scott Sullivan for the “Prelude to a Festival.”
That May 15 party, with a concert, door prizes and JFFA merchandise, will happen at the Naval Elks Lodge; tickets go on sale at noon today for $25 for adults and $10 for youngsters 14 and under.
The street fair, a gathering of artisan and food vendors from around the region, will return to the parking lot outside the Vern Burton Community Center main stage and chamber stage at Fourth and Peabody streets.
Handcrafted wares are encouraged, and potential vendors are invited to apply by the April 15 deadline. Forms can be found at https://jffa.org/festival/vendor-application/.
Full festival passes, meantime, are on sale now: $100 for adults, $50 for students 21 and younger with valid student ID and free for kids 14 and under accompanied by an adult. The two ticket outlets are JFFA.org and Port Book and News, 104 E. First St. in downtown Port Angeles. More information is available by phoning the foundation office at 360-457-5411 or emailing contact@jffa.org.
Those prices won’t change between now and festival weekend, when tickets will be $5 more at the door.
JFFA continues to present two other concert series on stages indoors and out.
Its Season Concerts this spring include the Ballet Workshop of Port Angeles’ production of “The Sleeping Beauty” on April 23-24 and Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles, a trailblazing, all-female mariachi ensemble, on April 27.
All of these performances will be at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave., where the proof-of-vaccination requirement has been lifted and masks are optional.
This summer, JFFA will bring the free Concerts on the Pier back to a 10-week schedule. Bands will play, rain or shine, at City Pier from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays from June 29 through Aug. 31, with no admission charge. The announcement of the Concerts on the Pier lineup will come around late April.
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Jefferson County Senior Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.
