ESCANABA, Mich. (WZMQ) – The Escanaba Downtown Development Authority (DDA) is gearing up for its second annual LogJam Music Festival, scheduled for Saturday, June 27.
“LogJam is a street concert,” said DDA Director Craig Woerpel. “The idea was to provide that in a community that we’ve never had, but we also wanted to focus on the timber history, the heritage of our community. That’s what Escanaba was founded on, shipping and forestry. How do we combine those?”
The answer to that question was a free event with live bands performing on three stages, food vendors, a flapjack eating contest, and much more. One of the highlights is a visit from the Great Lakes Timber Show, put on by Bruce Belanger, who was raised in Escanaba.
“It started in 1985,” Belanger said. “We travel all over the United States doing sport shows, fairs, festivals, theme parks, little get-togethers, all sorts of different venues. It gave me an opportunity to see a lot of historical sites and meet a lot of nice people. We do chainsaw carving, ax throwing, log rolling, cross-cut sawing. Sometimes we have audience participation, that’s always fun to watch people fall in the drink so I’m not the only one that gets wet.”
In addition to a lot of excitement and laughs, Belanger says the show brings a major part of the area’s history to younger generations.
“Logging, of course, was huge here in Michigan back in the 1800s and the early 1900s,” he explained. “The paper mill uses pulp for paper manufacturing, so that’s still used a lot. We try to put it all together. Last year, it was incredible. We had huge crowds. Escanaba’s really a fun town.”
With much of Downtown Escanaba under construction, the action is moving from mid-Ludington Street to a new location just down the road.
“Things are going really well,” Mayor and local business owner Mark Ammel said of the construction. “The streets are going to be beautiful, but in the meantime, the music must go on. We’re going to put a really nice main stage over here [the intersection of Ludington Street and Stephenson Avenue]. Then we’ll have a stage down this way on Ludingon and a stage… on Stephenson Avenue, so we’ll have a nice corner shape instead of a long stretch. There’s access to five different restaurants, and there’s a social district bar included in this area. I think it’s going to be a really great location, and if we get great weather, it’s going to be a fantastic day.”
With just over a week until showtime, the DDA is anticipating another exciting festival.
“Last year, people were really impressed, saying how much fun it was to have a real festival that’s separate from the parks but gets to show the vibrancy of our downtown as we’re putting a new face onto it,” Woerpel said. “I think that it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re really looking forward to this.”
The LogJam Music Festival will run from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. For a full list of activities and performance times, visit escanabadowntown.com/logjam.
