Northern Lights Bluegrass and Old Tyme Music Festival

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Northern Lights Bluegrass and Old Tyme Music Festival

A home for bluegrass, old-time, and so much more in the heart of the Canadian prairies. http://www.northernlightsbluegrass.ca

08/17/2026

And just like that, our 20th anniversary music camp week and festival weekend are all wrapped up ✨

Folks, there are so many wonderful people who need to be deeply thanked for their work both year-round and especially during this week; Northern Lights is an entirely volunteer-run organization and hosting a full scale music camp followed by a weekend festival is no easy feat. But time and time again, the absolutely top-tier people who show up to give what they've got to support us are the lifeblood of keeping this thing going. Thank you to our camp & festival staff and coordinators, and Ness Creek personnel and site staff; our board members and current Chair, Nathan Ottenson; Artistic Director, Ryan Shotton; Music Camp Co-Directors, Tracy Lalonde & Aiden McRorie Wilson, and Camp Host, Linden Cooper; all of the volunteers working shifts this week in a plethora of areas; the folks who work behind the scenes to support our promotions and outreach, financials, audio visual, and more; to the musicians who taught as camp instructors all week long; the bands and artists who took to the stage this weekend during our festival; to our list of community partners & sponsors; and to all of you who showed up and continue to give us a reason to bust our butts and pull this dang thing off each year.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you. Here's to at least another 20 years, and to everything wonderful to come 💙

08/13/2026

We’re in the thick of it up here at Ness Creek with our annual Music Camp in full swing! With more campers than ever before, all 18 classes of students are working hard to absorb what their instructors are sharing this week; a mega-concentrated dose of Bluegrass and Old Time never hurt no one, and we’ve been around proving that sentiment to be true for 20 whole years!

Last night we celebrated the mid-week milestone with a dance, Bonnie’s Ball, where we encouraged everyone to get fully decked out in their western wear and vintage finery. A time was most certainly had!

Feel like you’re missing out on the fun? Getting hit with a bit of FOMO?? Festival passes are available on our website, and we’d sure love to have you come join us this weekend 😉

📷 - littlejackfilms

08/08/2026

This weekend, stop by Saskatoon's Western Development Museum (WDM Saskatoon) for some classic Northern Lights on-location programming during Boomtown Heydays! This weekend fest is free admission for all, and we're shining a spotlight on some of the programming we're on board for:

🗓 Sat Aug 8th, from 10 am - 12 pm
🚂 Train Song Jam & Instrument Petting Zoo
Bring your instrument and favourite train songs to join us for a jam by the Boomtown train platform! That's not all, are you curious about bluegrass and old time instruments and wanna give them a try? C'mon down and give a banjo, mandolin, or fiddle a whirl, and you'll be grinning in no time!

& Saturday afternoon will feature Toronto band, Duke Street Turnaround playing two sets at the Boomtown Stage! This five-piece bluegrass and Canadiana band showcases tight vocal harmonies and killer acoustic playing.

🗓 Sun Aug 9th, from 10 am - 12 pm
💃 Old Time Dance
Bring yer dancing shoes and swing on by to learn some prairie hall dances on the spot! Polkas, Schottisches, Two-Steps, and the Butterfly, alongside a few dances with a caller telling y'all what to do!

Sunday afternoon brings h***y tonkin' local heroes, the Lost Highway Navigators to the Boomtown Stage! With two sets from these gents directly following our old time dance, you'll be up on your feet dancing all day!

08/07/2026

Anticipate no longer, folks, the 2026 Mainstage Performance schedule has now been published!! The Festival kicks off at 5PM on Friday August 14th with an everyone-can-join jam in the downtown area of the site, please join us!! The more the merrier, especially on our 20th anniversary 🥰 🤠 Do you have your festival passes sorted yet? We really do recommend you snag them ahead of time, as Single-Day Passes (only sold at the gate day-of) will cost ya more than buying in advance!

This schedule will be featured in our gate program, which you can pick up at the Info Booth upon arrival! The program is chock full of messages from our staff & board, artist bios, festival workshop details, year-round programming info, 2027 camp & fest dates 👀, and more! Thank you to all of the community partners and sponsors who help us get this fest guide published each year, your support means so much to us and we couldn't do it without ya!!

08/06/2026

The 2026 Wildsky Forest Kids Camp is all filled up! We're so looking forward to welcoming your little kiddos for a week of adventurous programming next week ☺🌲🛝

A huge thanks to the Wildsky coordinators for partnering with us for another year. Having an alternative summer camp option for the youngins is such a bonus for siblings and the more wilderness-inclined!

📷 -

08/05/2026

For the folks interested in some of our more youth-oriented programming (or for the young-at-heart,) make sure you drop in on the "Let's Make a Show!" workshop on Saturday morning, and catch the roaming Dusty Road Show!

🎈Performed by Sherron Burns and Birgit Lessing, this new puppet show will have its premiere performance at the Festival this August. A 30-minute show featuring two traditional tales, as well as some twists that we won't spoil for you! The performers will travel the grounds with the show on their wagon, presenting the stories in various places across the festival site on Saturday, August 15th.

🎭 "Let's Make a Show!" in the Jack Milikin Centre on Saturday morning, from 10:30am - 12pm: Storytelling basics with the freedom to play and use your imagination. Come explore the creative process for building stories with simple materials. We will work in groups to develop ideas, build items, and tell stories.

08/03/2026

Tune in tomorrow morning for our monthly Music Hall with this month's host, Emma Finch! We've got a special segment for you this time around; with our festival just around the corner, our special guests today are the Stump Lake Slough Thumpin' Brothers, a young Saskatchewan band who will be playing during the festival weekend as a tweener act on the Main Stage 🤠

The group features the De Brujin boys: Raef on fiddle, Winston on guitar, and Burke on fiddle as well. These three brothers bring an energy to music similar to putting your boots into a spring puddle and splashing your best friend. You can’t help but get covered in a slough thumpin’ good time. Get ready to be stuck in the music!!

08/02/2026

The countdown is ON as we barrel towards our 2026 camp and festival week!! From August 10-16th, Northern Lights Bluegrass & Old Time Music Society will be living and breathing all things music up at the ever beautiful Ness Creek. For many of our returning campers and guests, this is the best week of the year! For all the new folks waiting in anticipation for their first camp or first festival weekend, we're so excited to welcome you into the jam with us! Happy 20th year of NLBOT!! 🥳🎻🌲

07/31/2026

We've only got a handful of spots remaining for this year's music camp - and we want to send out a huge thank you to everyone who has signed up so far! This summer will be one of if not our largest camp to date, which is such a wonderful way to commemorate 20 years of Northern Lights!!

Some classes are sold out, many have only one spot remaining, and these 4 classes have room for a couple more folks to sign up, if you're looking to come to camp with a pal:
🏹 Beginner Fiddle with Talia Aleksiuk
🌟 Métis Fiddle with Joseph Desjarlais
🏹 Beginner Clawhammer Banjo with Mark Boer
🌟 Advanced Bluegrass Flatpicking with Brant Garratt

07/24/2026

1-800-POLKA on Global Saskatoon! These folks went on a spree to a handful Saskatoon media outlets spreading the word about our upcoming festival, where they will be playing our Friday evening dance inside the Jack Millikin Centre !! Can’t wait to polka with you all 🥳🪗

Address

Big River, SK
S0J0E0

Telephone

+13063734190

Website

http://www.northernlightsbluegrass.com/

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