On Saturday, community members on the Key Peninsula in rural Western Washington gathered for the First Annual Madrona Music Festival. We at Yonlander were proud to organize the event.
At the festival, Neighbors met neighbors, folks made new friends, and everyone tried out contra dancing to great delight. The festival was meant to unite the local Key Peninsula community around our ethos of celebrating “the good life in the great outdoors.”
Photos from the 2024 Madrona Music Festival in Key Center, Washington
Madrona Fest was produced by local volunteers on the Key Peninsula and felt very different from the usual music festival. At the end of the fest, folks handed out free hot dogs, and in between bands, locals chatted with vendors and shop owners selling all kinds of eclectic wares.
Artists were pulled from across the region and had deep ties to the Pacific Northwest. Alessandra Rose’s Scandinavian family homesteaded on the Key Peninsula, and Nathaniel Talbot is a farmer on Whidbey Island. Dean Johnson, named “Seattle’s next great singer-songwriter” by the Seattle Times, headlined the event, playing a mostly new set of songs.
Additional featured performances included Ollella, Sera Cahoone, and Eli West. Flaming Fingers String Band, a local old-time string band group, started the festival with a contra dance, with Joe Micheals as the caller.
Listen to the official 2024 Madrona Music Festival Playlist on Spotify.
The festival also featured music workshops, including a Folk Guitar Workshop, Beginning Banjo and Bass Workshops, and a Jam Session with Flaming Fingers String Band.
Hosted at the Key Peninsula Civic Center, seven miles off Highway 16, just south of Gig Harbor, this festival featured old-time and alternative country music, community spirit, and the best local food trucks on the KP.
On Tuesday of last week, the festival announced that tickets had officially sold out after the Seattle Times deemed it one of eight festivals to rock the Pacific Northwest.
Organizers are already planning next year’s festival, hoping that this year’s festival will mark the beginning of a new chapter of live music on the Key Peninsula, which has a long history of community support for the arts.