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Good morning and welcome to In Our Range.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau.
This morning we're talking with Emily Fitting from Travel Ironwood to discuss the upbeat music festival happening the weekend of May 23rd to the 24th.
The upbeat Music and Arts Festival is a two-day Music and Arts Festival happening in downtown Ironwood.
The main stage will be at the downtown city square outdoor amphitheater.
There will be free entry to live music at several downtown locations.
The event will start at 2pm and end at midnight both days and features an amazing lineup of talented musicians.
Downtown Ironwood will come alive with the unique and eclectic sounds of these incredible artists, offering travelers and the local community a weekend filled with music and dancing.
Featured artists include Michael Glebicki of Rusted Root with Dirk Miller and Keaton Thandy, the Lowdown Brass Band, Quasi Kings,
Tall Tall Trees, the People Brothers Band, Salty Dog out of Duluth, the Rucksack Revolution featuring Adam Gruhl of Horse Shoes and Hand Grenades, and Sarah Voss of Dead Horses, and many other acts, and we can talk about those when we get into them.
Emily Fitting has been the marketing consultant for Travel Ironwood for four years.
She grew up in Ironwood and graduated from Luther Wright.
She got her master's in graphic and web design from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and she helped create the first Finder North Festival back in 2024.
Good morning, Emily.
Thank you for joining us on In Our Range.
Thank you for having me.
So the Find Your North Festival started in 2024.
This year, the festival has been rebranded to the Upbeat Festival, the UP Beat Festival.
We like to play with those words there here as Upers.
So what was the motivation for creating this festival and how did it come together?
Well, we wanted to create an event that
had a little bit of arts and culture for the area and to try to promote tourism, to try to get people from out of the area here just to see the special little piece of ironwood that is in the UP.
And we have a lot to offer not only with our outdoor recreation and amazing features for exploration in the wilderness, but also we have a lot of really beautiful
talented artists and musicians in the area but we wanted to attract people from outside the area so we have an eclectic mix of music that we want to provide and this year we are incorporating art vendors as well and some live artists that will be creating live artwork during the shows as well so that's a little bit exciting for this year.
Yeah, it's a wonderful way to promote art here on the range and music.
Some of these bands are coming from Duluth and a lot of these other places.
And, you know, a lot of people who are into eclectic music, wide varieties of music, also tend to be outdoor enthusiasts, so they get the chance to make a whole few-day run here to Ironwood, you know, not just for the festival, but also to enjoy heading up to the lake or getting into the forests, you know, it's...
little early for morels and things like that, but there might be some mushrooms and some foraging to do get out on the North Country Trail and just see all the beauty that happens here at springtime as the birds arrive and everything, right?
Absolutely, and the waterfalls and the
lakes.
So every day we'll start at 2 p.m.
and they'll be partying until midnight.
and the main stage will be downtown at the new downtown park.
It's been there a couple years.
What are some of the other venues around town where people can find some of these acts?
The art park downtown, which is across the street from the Ben Franklin area, just down the street from the art park, will be the first shows at 2 p.m.
And then the Midway stage, which will be over at the Midway bar in their back alley area, that'll be an outdoor stage.
So all of the stages are outdoors this year, and we're making it free to the public, which is something we haven't done in the past.
We're just trying to encourage people to come here and enjoy themselves.
So how did that come about being able to make such an incredible event with some pretty big names that you're drawing here?
How are you able to make that free for folks?
Well, it's solely sponsored pretty much.
by the Ironwood Tourism Council.
The Ironwood Tourism Council's goal in the community is not only to promote tourism, but to improve the community and give back to the community in ways that are so impactful that it helps with the structural integrity of Ironwood as a whole.
And so as a non-profit organization, it's their way of putting back into the community to promote not only
exposure to some new arts for the locals, but also encourage people to come here as a destination.
So not only are you making this available for people, but really the acts and the bands, we're spreading them around downtown.
People are getting to, we're getting to kind of show off the downtown a little bit.
Midway has done a wonderful job over the last couple summers of bringing some really great acts to that stage in that alley behind them right there between them and Muckovitz over there.
And I've been to a few shows over there in the last year and the smiles on people's faces and just the joy that we're getting these acts from out of town and midways bringing them.
And they're going to be part of this festival as well.
It's a really fun stage to get over there and do some dancing and just be with some good folks and have a good time.
And then the pocket park or the art park, right?
Between Contrast and Mattsons.
Yep,
the
art park.
Okay, wonderful.
So you're talking about 10 hours of bands, both days.
You've got Michael Glabicki, he's the singer from Rusted Root.
You
may remember the hit song they had, Send Me On My Way, back in the day.
And so that should be a really exciting show.
That band has been touring for a long time.
Did they break up and he's doing a solo thing or is he just...
Rusted Root is currently just on hiatus, but the other two members of his band will be attending, so they'll be playing a lot of the Rusted Root songs.
Okay.
Yeah, that's exciting.
And then...
There's some really great bands on here.
The Lowdown Brass Band, I'm assuming that's more of like a New Orleans style brass band?
Yeah, that will be really exciting to hear downtown Ironwood.
It's a full brass band with a hip-hop influence.
They're from Chicago area.
And we're excited because I think the the amplification of that will be similar to what you would hear from Marty's Golden Ears, but with like a pop culture element.
Yeah, yeah, some dropping some beats and getting your boogie in.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, wonderful.
And there's so many other
great band some regional acts and some national acts.
Salty Dog is coming from Duluth.
We had them here on a first Friday I think the last couple years and they played Midway last year.
A wonderful band out of Duluth.
They jam but they also got country music influences and pop music influences.
They're an impressive band.
It's exciting to have them here.
Will there be a daily schedule put out?
Yep, we'll be releasing a schedule of the daily acts for those that want to plan their trip accordingly.
That'll be releasing next week on our website, travelironwood.com for more information.
Another exciting thing is we've added an emcee to our lineup this year, Adam Grohl from Horseshoes and Hand Grenades.
He will also be with his band Rucksack Revolution in the festival, but he will be emceeing all day on Saturday and if anybody knows...
him.
He's been doing some fun shows around the country with Charlie Barron lately.
So he's a great, soul, exciting person to be around and we're excited to have him.
That's really excellent.
So he'll be on the main stage doing the MCing, or will he be running between all the different stages?
He'll be popping
around to all the venues, so you'll see him all over town, hopefully on Saturday.
Yeah, so this is an opportunity.
These folks will be coming to play, but even the bands themselves are going to be checking out Ironwood and seeing what we have, and might get a chance to meet some of these folks walking around, eh?
Yeah,
absolutely.
Like regular people.
Yeah, expose them to our little nugget here.
Yeah, wonderful.
Maybe that'll just encourage more bands to come when they have a...
a good time.
Yeah, everybody's really enjoyed coming here and one of our feature, one of our trademarks for this festival is we provide all of the bands with classic UP pasty and we get such great feedback from the bands and they're so excited to come again and have a pasty when they come back.
Yeah, I think touring bands are probably like minors in a certain way where they just need something to fill their belly with.
That's a little wholesome that's easy to carry and not going to make a big mess and they can eat with their hands because musicians are kind of like animals.
Wonderful.
And so Adam Gruhl will be emceeing.
We've got Sarah Voss of Dead Horses.
The other bands on the lineup are Twine, Driftless Revelers, the Dandelion Delivery Service, the Turkey Buzzards and Sunset Rooster.
And this is incredible.
So will the artists, I'm assuming there'll be artists and vendors?
Yeah, in the City Square Park, we'll have vendors set up, artists, vendors, so all vendors are required to make their own art to sell it.
So it'll be handmade artists there.
And then we have a couple of live artists that will be creating something near each stage in live time.
So you can watch music and art being made all at once.
And we're excited about
that.
You've never seen that.
It's pretty incredible because these these artists are they're super talented on their own.
But when you see them kind of vibing and grooving along with the music as well, it's not just representation of what they're painting, but they're also sort of painting
the live music as it comes across the band it's coming through in this visual art form and it's a pretty exciting thing to watch.
So is registration closed for vendors?
Registration is still open.
We add you to the waitlist once your area gets filled up with your genre because we're kind of curating the genres to make sure we don't have too much of one type of style.
But we do encourage you to reach out.
It's info at travelironwood.com.
If you'd like to email your inquiry or go to our website and inquire directly through the contact form at travelironwood.com.
But we are still taking live art.
centuries we still have a couple of slots open there and then we do have a VIP section this year that
We can talk about a little bit.
Sure thing.
Yeah.
So for $40, you're offering a VIP package for folks and what's included in that.
So we'll have some rain and shade options for the VIP experience in the park, some tended heated areas for people to shelter in case of, you know,
mild
inclement weather, but also underground.
We have a little bit of a speakeasy situation set up with some underground music performer where you can pay the ticket price.
and you go into the alley and you can go through the underground and have that experience.
Very cool.
kind of like being in Hurley back in the 1920s or something like that.
Yeah, the Al
Capone style.
How exciting.
Well, I assume it takes a lot of people to pull off something like this.
So there's probably an army of volunteers and other folks.
Are you in need of volunteers to help this?
Absolutely.
We have our steadfast volunteers that have been sticking it out with me for the past three years that are going to continue that we're so happy to have again.
But we really would love to have a few more.
if not more than a few.
We've got some amazing help with the Midway.
They've been pitching in a lot to help us out quite a bit.
And a couple of other local businesses and personalities in the area have been wonderful.
The downtown art place, they've been wonderful, giving us some space to use and exchange for collaboration.
We just want to collaborate with everybody as much as we can, since this is really for the community, including the DIDA.
They've been a big...
support for us as well.
So we're just trying to bring everybody together as best we can to make this happen.
And so if folks would like to volunteer, they can email info at travelironwood.com.
Yes, please.
And get involved in doing that.
All right.
Excellent.
Well, Emily, I think that's about all the time we got this morning.
Great.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for joining us on In Our Range.
Thanks for having me.
And good luck with the upbeat festival.
And thanks to Travel Ironwood and everybody for putting this on for us.
This is going to be an exciting event.
Yep.
excited.
My guest this morning was Emily Fitting with Travel Ironwood and she came here to talk about the Upbeat Music and Arts Festival happening on May 23rd and 24th, 2026.
For more information you can go to travelironwood.com.
If you'd like to volunteer or register as an artist or vendor you can email them at info at travelironwood.com.
This has been In Our Range.
I'm your host Mike LeBeau.
We'll see you next week.