A recap of the 2023 Festival at Sandpoint

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

For two weeks every summer, the Festival at Sandpoint builds a small village at War Memorial Field and hosts the biggest musical concerts in Sandpoint, only to break it all down and pack it away for the next year. The Reader reached out to Festival Director Ali Baranski for a post-game discussion of the music series, and what concertgoers can expect in the future.

“It was a really phenomenal season,” Baranski said, highlighting the addition of three new full time staff members who had not experienced a full season yet. “It was also the first time I’d experienced a full staff since I joined the Festival.”

Baranski said it was a banner year for sales, with Michael Franti, Train and REO Speedwagon all drawing capacity crowds. Despite last year’s Festival containing one additional show, the 2023 Festival still sold more overall tickets due to an increase in capacity of 500 tickets per night.

Photo by Racheal Baker.

Another factor contributing to increased sales was the earlier announcements of concerts, which gave the Festival a competitive edge to market alongside shows in nearby cities like Spokane and Missoula. Baranski said the lineup announcements will continue to be rolled out as they come, instead of all at once, as the Festival did before the pandemic.

“Essentially, the biggest misconception is that we are the venue, but these are not our shows,” Baranski explained. “Doing a strategic rollout is not normal in the industry. If we can get on a tour announcement, we want that because it really just comes down to when the artist is ready to announce.”

The goal, according to Baranski, is to announce 2024 artists as soon as they are able; and, with the booking process already up and running, those announcements could come earlier than ever.

“Now that we’re getting bigger acts, we don’t have as much leverage in wanting something done a certain way, so we have to go with the industry standard,” she said.

One of the biggest changes this season involved the iconic white tent that has been the brand of the Festival for decades. Due to its age and the safety issues with tensile tents, the Festival was forced to change it out at the last minute, renting a new style of tent, which Baranski told the Reader allowed for higher levels of production.

“The new tent is more turnkey for tours,” she said. “There’s more production value and space for video walls, and we get to use the entire stage. In the past, it was 40 feet by 40 feet, but because of the back of the tent angling down, it wasn’t usable space.”

Due to a six-year waiting list to purchase the new tent design, Baranski said the Festival would likely continue to rent.

“We have a dream of getting our own venue at some point, so whether or not that happens, six years is a little unknown for us to make that big of an investment,” Baranski said, adding that a study measuring the feasibility of moving the series away from its location at War Memorial Field is currently underway.

She cited an increase of usage fees, as well as uncertainty each year renewing the lease with the city of Sandpoint, as factors contributing to a contemplated change of venue.

“It seems more difficult than it needs to be,” Baranski said, when asked about the process of working out logistics with the city of Sandpoint prior to each season. 

“Post-COVID, our city park fees were raised 60% per ticket and we get a wad of complaints about fees on top of tickets … fees are a nature of the business, but … what we pay to be there seems unnecessarily high for the usage compared with other entities that use it,” she said. “There are a lot of hoops and rules that get changed at the last minute that make our job a lot harder, so it would be great to invest in our own permanent stage so that we don’t have to pop up and tear down every time.”

Baranski told the Reader the Festival was also investigating the idea of shifting from a concert series to a fuller season, with concerts spread out over time, rather than back-to-back over two long weekends.

“It’s really hard to book artists routed in such a small window of time in such a rural area,” she said.

Having a more flexible concert season also might mean opening the venue to other community events, such as Montana Shakespeare in the Parks.

“We’re looking at our 100-year plan, if you will, trying to commit to something that will be salable and flexible for a very long time,” she said. “Right now, every year at Memorial Field the rules change and we’re not really in charge of our own fate.”

One change that ruffled a few feathers this season was the absence of the national anthem before each show — a tradition that started in 2002 after 9/11.

“Again, these shows are not ours, they are the artists’,” she said. “One thing we weren’t able to negotiate was more time before the shows for announcements and the national anthem.”

Baranski said the decision not to include the national anthem was made with “heavy hearts” due to logistics and artists’ contracts not allowing for that time.

“The national anthem before a show isn’t industry standard, so we had to go out of our way to push for it each year,” she said. “We started losing that battle more and more … because artists have contracts to control everything from house music to lights and ticket prices. … 

“We’re committed to giving our community a world-class concert experience and the Festival has to evolve,” she added. “We understand that it wasn’t favorable for all, but it had nothing to do with politics or patriotism.”

Baranski said that despite record sales, the cost of operations continues to increase each year — especially with added costs like spending $150,000 to protect the artificial turf at Memorial Field, renting the tent each year and dealing with stricter contracts from artists due to safety concerns.

Season passes for the 2024 Festival at Sandpoint are expected to go on sale Oct. 1, and Baranski said not to delay as they often sell out fast.

For more information about the Festival at Sandpoint or to purchase season passes, visit festivalatsandpoint.com.