Photo via Salmon Arm Roots and Blues

UPDATE Nov. 10 – In a bid to avoid another wildfire-related cancellation, the organizers of the Roots and Blues festival have announced new dates for the 2024 edition and beyond.

The 2024 edition of the Salmon Arm-based festival will be held during the weekend of July 26 to 28.

“Its been something we’ve actually talked about for a number of years,” Marketing Coordinator Althea Mongerson  said, on the NL Noon Report.

“So we know that in July there is historically better weather and less smoky skies so that is part of the reason why we opted to shift the dates.”

While last year’s festival – which was set to feature Sarah McLachlan as one of the main headliners – had to be cancelled after one day because of the Bush Creek East Fire, Mongerson says it was not the only reason for the move.

“It also lets us overlap with a couple of other big festivals, and hopefully it will let us bring in some artists into our area with some more ease,” she said.

“We’re out on a bit of an island during the third week of August, so we’re hoping with this date move we can get in on some of those larger tours and bring our costs down a bit.”

While the line up for the 2024 festival – the 32nd edition – has not yet been announced, early bird ticket packages will go on sale on December 5.

“Part of why we wanted to get the dates out as soon as possible was because we know folks plan vacations around it, and may have had a vacation planned for many years in a row on that August date,” Mongerson said. “So we wanted to give people the opportunity as far in advance as we could to make those changes.”

“We wanted to take a look at what was coming up for 2024 and rather than being in the situation of having to react, we tried to get ahead of the game and moved our festival dates.”