About the festival

What

The Dawson City Music Festival is a multi-disciplinary, multi-venue music festival, taking place in Dawson City, Yukon each July. Christened "Canada's tiny, perfect festival" by the Georgia Straight, our festival has been successfully run by volunteers since its inception in 1979.

Past acts include: Bruce Cockburn, the Good Brothers, The Sadies, Joel Plaskett, Jane Siberry, the Barenaked Ladies, Crash Test Dummies, Final Fantasy, the Skydiggers, Quartette, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Bell Orchestre, Old Man Luedecke, the Handsome Family, Justin Rutledge, Rheostatics and Natalie MacMaster.

Some festival patrons like to book a few extra days to go fishing on the Blackstone River, hiking in the Tombstones Mountains or to take an evening paddle down the Klondike River under the midnight sun.

When

This year's Dawson City Music Festival will take place July 16-18, 2010.

The festival officially begins late Friday afternoon with a free concert at the Gazebo on Front Street and continues through out the weekend in venues all over town, closing late Sunday night at the Minto Park main stage tent. Kids Fest begins Saturday at 11:00 am in Minto Park, offering games, crafts, and music for children of all ages.

Where

The main festival site at Minto Park is the central hub of activity from Friday evening to Sunday midnight. The park site features a beer garden, a wide variety of food and craft vendors, an information booth, a festival merchandise booth as well as tonnes of music in the main stage tent. Concerts and workshops take place in venues all over town, including the historic Palace Grand Theatre.

Artist's Eye View

"In the summer of 2004 we played the Dawson City Music Festival. We arrived in a small plane. The town, recently surrounded by forest fires, smelled of smoke. As can happen at festivals, we were divided and scheduled into various workshops. I was put in a songwriter workshop called "Songs I Wish I Wrote," which for me might have better been called "Out of My League." Some of the other guys were placed in mix and match bands with other musicians for a workshop on the main stage. A very tired Dallas showed up late and found himself unexpectedly and perhaps unhappily performing "Big Yellow Taxi." Our own shows went well. During our headlining set, we were happy to see the mother of the family we were billeted with crowd-surfing. I celebrated my 25th birthday at the big closing night party.

We stayed for a few days after the festival and were booked into the Pit Bar in the reportedly haunted Westminster Hotel. During the day we fished, with little success, in the mighty Yukon River. At night we played the long, multi-set rock shows for which we'd been hired. The final night we slipped out during the break to a cocktail bar down the street for a round of Constantinis. Will was nowhere to be found. Hiding out, he thought the band was upset with him for having had more than his due amount of the bottle of whiskey we'd been given. At the end of the night, when we'd all but run out of memory and songs, it was decided, with questionable clarity, the only appropriate finale would be "Rockin' in the Free World." Drinks were drunk and spilled, dances danced, random parts of the bar wantonly and joyously destroyed. We started home the next day."

- Steven Lambke of the Constantines, as notated by the Toronto Star