The 25 th Anniversary edition of the Stony Plain Cowboy Festival took many turns from its predecessor. There were two major and obvious differences, as well as smaller less noticeable ones. One of the biggest changes when you arrived on site was that the Blueberry Stage was not being used. With the new Heritage Pavilion now on site and capable of holding up to 700, the main stage performances were moved indoors. Surprisingly, I found the sound to be pretty decent indoors. The design of the building is such that you might not think music would come across well, but it did. Some of that credit has to be given to Alan Boechler and his sound crew, but kudos to designers that were looking to make a multi purpose building. The obvious reason for moving indoors is weather. It was immediately apparent that some of the gathered missed the outdoors as they had set up lawn chairs and brought coolers into the building. Being indoors, it was a little on the dark side for this writer, especially for shows in mid afternoon.
The event had multiple stages happening at one time and organizers did their best to make sure that performers times and locations were varied so that you could catch your favorite regardless of time or location of their show. Long time favorites of the Cowboy Tradition lovers, BJ Smith, Doris Daley and Gary Fjellgaard, plus a whole host of others, played more than one show and appeared at both the main stage and over at the Pioneer Church.
The other noticeable change was the addition of a stand-alone concert in the old pavilion. Canadian country star, Aaron Pritchett and special guests, Topher Mils, were part of the anniversary celebrations and an attempt to bring some youth out to the event. The concert took place in the old pavilion which has always been hard to get good sound out of, Big shout out to the sound crew from Production World who were able to get what they needed and gave the best possible to both country artists. Mils, from Saskatooon, is a high energy, rock and rollin’ country guy. The crowd, as it goes, ate him up. Mils had a huge blend of covers and originals from his new CD. Pritchett did a meet an greet pre-show and brought his own energy to the stage. He has a long line of Canadian radio hits including three releases of his latest disc, The Score. His last release, When A Mommy’s Boy Meets A Daddy’s Girl, peaked at Number 5. The cliché we will use here is that they were dancing in the streets, if by streets you mean in front of the stage.
Some of the minor changes, yet to be determined if they were successful, included the addition of young country stars
to the main stage. Jennie Harluk, Olivia Rose and Sean Gristwood, each performed their own style of cowboy (country) music, ranging from pop to classic to western. The organizers also added full band closers to the main stage on both Friday and Saturday night with Roger West and Steve Newsome.
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