Staff WriterMontbleu Resort and PR Entertainment present the 2nd Annual Lake Tahoe Reggae Festival on Saturday, June 29 featuring SOJA, Alpha Blondy, Passafire, Stick Figure, Tomorrow’s Bad Seed, Island of Black & White and Squarefield Massive. MC J Ras will start this day of fun-in-the sun at 1:00 and the last band, Soja starts at 9pm.
The venue is the new Live at The MontBleu Outdoor Event Center in South Lake Tahoe. Bring a blanket to sit on but leave high back chairs, outside food and drink, umbrellas and tall hats at home. Food and beverage vendors are available as well as arts & crafts vendors with irie reggae accessories and clothing.
Fun for the whole family! General admission tickets are $40 (plus tax & fees), while kids under 12 are only $10 and little ones under 6 are free! Purchase tickets at www.montbleuresort.com, or by calling 1-775-588-3515. Plenty of tickets will be available at the gate.
SOJA ~ Over the course of the past few years, SOJA has sold more than 150,000 albums, headlined large theaters in more than 15 countries around the world, generated over 20 million+ YouTube views, amassed more than a million Facebook fans, and attracted an almost Grateful Dead-like international fan base that grows with each tour, with caravans of diehards following them from city to city. Most impressive of all, they’ve accomplished all this on their own. This 7-piece band has spent the past year and a half grinding it out from venue to venue, playing more than 360 dates, including headlining sold-out tours of North and South America, as well as opening for O.A.R. and sharing stages with everyone from Dave Matthews Band to Matisyahu.
ALPHA BLONDY ~ Among the world’s most popular reggae artists with his 12-piece band “Solar System”, Blondy offers a reggae beat with a distinctive African cast. Some of his best-known songs include ‘Cocody Rock’, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Apartheid Is Nazism’. Over the years, the man who put Ivory Coast on the reggae map by proving the genre was not exclusive to Jamaica, has remained close to his mission to dispense a message of peace and reconciliation (he has been nominated Ambassador for the peace in Ivory Cost by the United Nation).
Born Seydou Kone in Dimbokoro, Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Africa, Alpha Blondy is a truly international reggae artist. His mix of cultures and musical styles carried him to the top of his profession. Along the way he has recorded with The Wailers, headlined international venues and released a series of albums that argue for a multi-cultural understanding, preach peace and address political turmoil and social strife. Though recently sidelined by a serious case of malaria, his latest album retains the world-spanning vision that helped establish him.
Anyone who saw him live in the late eighties witnessed one of the most amazing performances in all of reggae, as Alpha Blondy swept across the stage, sometimes literally with a Bible in one hand and the Koran in the other. At his shows he would sing a message of hope and peace in multiple languages that tried to cut through the confusion of Middle East complexities and get to the core necessity of people of all creeds and colors learning to live with each other. If only the rest of the world had been listening.
PASSAFIRE
The Savannah, GA-based Rock outfit is truly injected with energy from a new member (keyboardist Mike DeGuzman), a freshly formed band-owned label (FlameGuy Records) and a new producer, Paul Leary (Butthole Surfers, Sublime, Meat Puppets. “We always wanted to have a good balance of organic and synthesized sounds and we finally have the chance to make that happen.
Passafire was formed in 2003 by students attending Savannah College of Art and Design. Throughout the years they have become a perpetually touring band playing hundreds of shows a year with bands like 311, Pepper, Rebelution, Matisyahu, Michael Franti, The Wailers and many more. Bowne doesn’t mind the grueling schedule and adds, “Touring is the best way to keep the buzz about the band going. What keeps it fun and exciting is the people we meet and places we get to see. We are in a new city every day so there’s always something to go see or do. If we didn’t tour constantly, we wouldn’t be doing as well as we are. That’s a fact.”
Other special guests include Stick Figure, Tomorrow’s Bad Seed, Island of Black & White and Squarefield Massive.
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