Music Festival Hoped To Help Recovery
Sonora, CA — Organizers of the Strawberry Music Festival hope to eventually bring the music back to Tuolumne County.
This year’s Festival will be held September 11-14 at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley. As reported previously, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department denied an application to hold the music festival at Camp Mather this coming September due to safety issues following the Rim Fire, and water concerns. The Festival, annually held at the camp, did not occur last September due to the Rim Fire. The Tuolumne County Supervisors sent a letter earlier this month urging officials in San Francisco to reconsider the denial. Several local organizations, and residents, also sent letters. However, it proved unsuccessful, so the Festival had to look for a new location.
“We need to produce a Fall 2014 Festival in order to compensate our customers from last year’s cancellation, and to survive as a business,” says Jodi Barnett, Marketing Director. “It was important to us to stay in Tuolumne County and produce that Fall 2014 festival here, so that we could be part of the economic recovery of that south county corridor. Unfortunately, there was no facility that could accommodate our people. But, we’re very loyal to Tuolumne County because this is our home and where we do business. We absolutely want to get back here at some point.”
Where the event will be held in 2015 remains unclear, but Barnett says, “We don’t know exactly what the future holds. There’s a lot of good possibilities. But regardless of what happens in 2015, we definitely want to continue producing music in Tuolumne County.”
Barnett she wants to thank the Tuolumne County Supervisors, Chamber of Commerce and other groups that came out and tried to work towards mitigating concerns regarding the Camp Mather site.
