Oscoda Rockfest V

While Michigan has numerous Blues, Bluegrass, and Country Music Festivals to turn up the volume on musical entertainment  populating  the state during the summer months, the annual Oscoda RockFest is one of the few truly Rock oriented musical showcases carefully designed to shine the spotlight on the very best Michigan-made Rock Bands that the Mitten State has to offer.

Poised to happen on Saturday, September 7th at Oscoda’s Furtaw Field, with this fifth festival organizers have designed a Modern Rock showcase by creating a destination event designed to attract visitors of all ages, while also introducing them to the splendor of Michigan’s Sunrise Side and Paddletown USA, with the festival located one block away from one of the most beautiful beaches in the state.

In addition to promoting and supporting Oscoda Township, organizers will also once again be supporting the Veterans Memorial Park Foundation  through this fund raising event, as they continue to expand the park to honor all of our Veterans who have served our country by providing a meaningful experience to visitors, veterans, and their families.

According to chairman David Iler, to date the festival has raised over $40,000 for this foundation, with surveys showing a majority of attendees coming from the Oscoda and Alpena areas, the upper lakes of Michigan, Detroit, and online pre-sales even coming from place like Los Angeles and Florida.

With a total of ten bands performing from 12:00 noon until 11:00 PM, this year’s headliner will be Josey Scott, the original voice from the band Saliva, rounded out by a sturdy musical line-up consisting of Defiant, Edge of Destiny,  ADABOY!, Saint Tragedy, Stretch, Apricity, Abaddon’s End, and William Patrick, who will be doing an acoustic duet.

“Most of these bands are signed with Curtain Call Records and many are relatively new, having formed over the last few years, but every one of them is amazing,” notes Dave. Defiant is out of Pennsylvania and they have this cool punk rock thing going on, Apricity is out of Toronto and features an amazing female vocalist, as does Edge of Destiny and the women in both those groups have a good set of lungs, and one of the really fun artists to watch is Stretch, who has own sub line and has been on the council in his hometown in Florida and is heavily into multi-media and all over the place.”

“One thing I’m really excited about is that we’ll be featuring IWE Wrestling wrestling entertainment with matches going on in between band set-ups, which will give people something to watch inbetween the musical acts,” explains Dave. “Plus this year we’ll be having Cornhole Tournaments all day long.”

“We also have a strong array of food vendors set up for this year’s festival, with Zackzilla’s back by popular demand and The Smoking Trolls, plus we have two interesting vendors lined up - one who features a portable cigar shop, and then we have a girl with a school bus that he turned into a bookshop,” adds Dave.

And finally, one of the big improvements being made at this year’s RockFest is that organizers are closing the performance area in a little more so it isn’t as spread out, meaning people won’t have to walk all over the place to get from Point A to B.

Admission to this all-day musical extravaganza is only $30.00 and information about the festival, including bios and performance clips from all the bands, places to stay, and much more, can be found on their website at OscodaRockFest.org.