The 42nd annual Grand Marais Music and Art Festival was held once again last week and was considered a resounding success, despite slightly lower attendance and some unfavorable weather conditions.

“We are getting calls from a lot of festivals that this is the last year, it is a weird environment [for similar events],” Chamber of Commerce president Devin Lawrence said. “Attendance was down, but we were pretty happy; everything is paid for and we are already starting to build up for next year already. We are positive it is going to continue and the tradition is going to live on.”

The event was held Thursday through Saturday. Forecasts may have steered some away, but not enough to dampen the festivities.“ With the weather, people in our Facebook comments were saying that they bought tickets but looked at the gale force winds and the weather advisories and decided not to come,” Lawrence said. “You can’t fix the weather, and unfortunately that is two years in a row, we had rain last year too.”

What the event organizers could control was the quality of the bands. By all accounts they were received quite well. On Thursday, a single band performed for the event’s free evening, while on Friday and Saturday, six bands performed, including headliners Tarnish from Sault Ste. Marie and 28 Days from Chicago on Friday. Saturday’s headliner was country artist Michael Christopher.

“Our job was to continue it on, make subtle changes every year to make it better and we had an overwhelming response in the quality of music at the festival, which is nice to hear,” Lawrence said. He thinks that part of the continued success the festival has is pretty simple; giving the community a family friendly show with top of the line artists. “I think it’s pretty fun, it’s a laid back environment with the camping so close and it just turned into one of those things where you can go for a weekend and just disconnect,” he said. “Cell phone service isn’t the greatest in our town, so you are truly getting away. It is a very tight knit event, people are friendly and it has a real family-type environment. A parent could bring their family here and have nothing to worry about.”

As one of the biggest events in the area each year, the planning never ends for Lawrence and his fellow organizers. Plans for 2025 are already underway. “This was our 42nd year and I think that is pretty amazing,” he said. “I think the goal is to be even bigger next year and we are looking at some bigger headliners, possibly dual stages, we have a lot of positive things that are coming out of it and are looking at changing. I would expect our promotion to start this fall, or winter at the latest.”