New Orleans rock band The Revivalists and LA’s Allman Betts Band – with their blues, Americana and southern soul music – will headline Salmonfest 2025, Aug. 1-3 at the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds at Ninilchik.
Also on tap for Salmonfest, with four stages and non-stop music during the festival, are virtuoso mandolinist Sierra Hull, funk, rhythm and blues band The Dip, big band musicians High Step Society, San Francisco rock band ALO (Animal Liberation Orchestra), folk music from Portland’s Bridge City Sinners, the Hawaiian Islands band Po and The 4Fathers, and more.
While the event itself runs for three days, making it happen is a year-round effort for the Stearns family in Homer, including David Stearns, who serves as assistant director for the event.
“We start a year in advance,” said Stearns.
A lot of factors go into the musicians Salmonfest seeks out to headline and fill all four stages for three days.
“It’s by no means a science,” Stearns said. “You get some wrong. You get some right. More and more we get artists reaching out to us and bigger artists.”
Headliners at the main stage, an amphitheater, attract upwards of 7,000 people who enjoy listening and dancing with the beat everywhere – from the mosh pit to blankets spread on the ground to wooden benches created from felled trees.
While the top bands sell 90% of the tickets, there are Alaska bands like Blackwater Railroad Company and Hope Social Club, adored all over the state, that come back every year, to the extent that it become somewhat of a reunion.
“It wouldn’t be Salmonfest without them,” Stearns said.
Coming to Alaska is an attraction for a lot of the Lower 48 bands, often the last checkbox so they can say they have played in all 50 states.
Salmonfest, originally Salmonstock, began in 2011 as a music festival to raise awareness and funds for salmon conservation, particularly in the face of the proposed Pebble mine abutting the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, and has since evolved into a major event in Alaska.
In 2016 the festival’s name changed to Salmonfest and the stewardship transitioned to the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society and Cook Inletkeeper, while retaining its focus on conservation of and protecting salmon habitat.
Purchase Salmonfest tickets at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/salmonfest-alaska-2025-tickets-1031209313817. Reservations for the adjacent Arches Campground, which always sell out early, are open only to ticket holders.
This year Salmonfest organizers are also adding a music component to the Mermaid Festival in Seward, expanding that event into a new Seward Salmon and Song Festival on May 17-18 at Miller’s Landing south of downtown, with a lineup of national and local musicians. The Mermaid Festival winds down on May 17 and the new festival will continue on through May 18, Stearns said.
The lineup of musicians includes The Brothers Comatose, Dustbowl Revival, Martin Kerr, Blackwater Railroad Company, Rachel Monae and Dig Sista.
