Country at the Creek (Sarah Wallace/paNOW Staff)

By Sarah Wallace

Music to fill the air at Ness Creek site

Jun 20, 2019 | 3:06 PM

The eighth annual Country at the Creek festival kicks off tonight at the Ness Creek Festival site in Big River. The four-day event runs until Sunday.

Jeanette Wincinski-Dunn, event coordinator for the festival, said despite rain in the forecast for the weekend, the schedule will go on.

“We’ve gotten used to it. We’ve only had sunshine the whole weekend the very first year. We’ve just learned to kind of accommodate more festival goers, we’ve put up tents wherever we can,” Wincinski-Dunn said.

According to Wincinski-Dunn, around 70 per cent of their attendees are from out of town, which means they’re coming into town to purchase things like groceries, ice, gas or just taking in the sights.

“I like to think (the festival) makes a huge economic impact to the community. It shows what the North has, lots of people don’t realize what all there is in Big River so I believe it brings people back to the community,” Wincinski-Dunn said.

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The festival can draw upwards of 700 people or more each year.

Every year the festival tries to grow by bringing in something new. Last year it was a mechanical bull.

New this year will be horseshoe tournament and a SHERP all-terrain vehicle. A SHERP is kind of like an enclosed side-by-side ATV with inflatable tires so it doesn’t leave any prints on the land and floats in water. Horse and wagon rides will also be back for another year.

The Sunday Morning Gospel Show is also new this year.

The Amundson Family from Debden will be performing the gospel show at 11 a.m. on the closing day of the festival.

L to R: Ira, Darryl, Nate and Sonora Amundson (submitted photo)

Darryl Amundson said the family group consists of his 17-year-old daughter Sonora (fiddle and mandolin), 14-year-old son Ira (banjo and guitar) and 10-year-old son Nate (mandolin and base).

Ira is also a part of a group with 16-year-old Jake Vaadeland (banjo and guitar). Both will perform in the show as well.

Darryl said this will be the family’s first time performing at Country at the Creek after previously performing at the Ness Creek Bluegrass Festival several times.

“We often been involved in the Sunday Morning Gospel Show at the bluegrass festival so the organizers asked us if we would do that same thing at the Country at the Creek,” he said.

Gospel music is a lot of what the family plays so Darryl said it wasn’t a stretch to take part in the show this Sunday.

“We play a lot of traditional bluegrass music and gospel is really infiltrated throughout traditional bluegrass music,” he said.

On Saturday Jake and Ira will be doing a workshop on traditional bluegrass and country music and showing different instruments at the festival.

The workshop will be at 10 a.m. in the Jack Millikin Centre.

For a full list of performances you can check out the Country at the Creek website. The festival is always looking for volunteers as well.