Like swallows winging in spring back to Capistrano, Starfarm, the Starfarm ‘80s band will return to Saugatuck Friday night at Coghlin Park for the kick-off party of the 2023 Venetian Festival.
The Saugatuck-Douglas Rotary Club is new organizer of weekend events that make up the two-day festival.
Fun starts when gates open at the Kalamazoo River-fronting park on the Culver-Griffith streets corner Friday at 5 p.m. A tented bar with beer, wine, canned cocktails and other cold beverages will be offered to goers over 21 having bought advance tickets. Gate admission Fridays is also available at $20 per adults.
Drink ticket packages will be sold at the gate as well. Credit or debit payments are advised to cut admission wait times and ticket prices.
“We are excited,” said Rotary event co-chair Garnet Lewis, “to welcome back our friends from Starfarm. “They’re a perennial favorite and always give the crowd great shows.”
Last year, the Starfarm concert drew some 3,000 revelers to Coghlin Park. The band has headlined Saugatuck Venetian Fests “10 or 11 years in a row,” said group co-founder Dana Mirate. “We’ve done it so long I’ve forgotten exactly how long.”
The band started in 2002 with drummer Mirate, his brother Sean on keyboards, and lead guitarist Dan Mulner writing and performing their own tunes. They scored limited success selling a few songs used in episodes of the daytime TV drama “The Young and the Restless.”
Starfarm shifted their format to cover 1980s hits when they concluded that the royalties from selling music “wouldn’t even keep one of us alive, much less all three,” Mirate said.
The band now features five musicians decked out in authentic ‘80s garb, including woman lead singer Whitney Spotts. They will perform classic hits from artists as varied as Whitney Houston, Madonna, the Cars, Depeche Mode, Bon Jovi and the Eurythmics.
Food will be offered for purchase at trucks serving freshly-prepared meals from Chefeltron, Fruit Street Kitchen and Smoke’N Joes BBQ.
“Starfarm loves coming back to Saugatuck,” Murate said. “The city has a vibe of openness, welcoming people from every background. The Venetian crowd always reflects that and sends it back to us. It’s a big family party.”
On Saturday, July 28, the festival continues with another yearly tradition, the wacky Dinghy Poker Run. Crews compete on small boats to tour the harbor, making stops at seven locations for playing cards to assemble the best poker hand, all the while being sprayed with super soakers and hand-held water cannons by competitors.
Additional cards can be bought for $5 en route to increase odds of taking home one of three prizes of $100, $75 and $50. Interested captains can still register at saugatuckvenetianfest.com.
A lighted boat parade planned for dusk was scratched late last week with an organizers’ statement, “Sadly, due to a lack of participation, the Venetian Fest Boat Parade has been cancelled.
“There’s been a continued decrease in participation in the last decade,” it continued, “and we wanted to see if we could generate a bit more interest. Unfortunately, we were not successful.
“We remain focused on the Friday night event, Saturday Dinghy Poker Run and weekend grand finale: a laser light and projection show that night.
The laser event will close the festival from 9 to 9:30 p.m. with display of patterned lights from the south shore of Kal Lake, directly across from Coghlin Park. It will feature fog effects and images projected onto a 40- by 30-foot screen from the Safe Harbor Tower Marine site. It will be synchronized to a medley of popular music simulcast on the open FM frequency of 105.9 for boaters and others to enjoy.
All weekend proceeds will be managed by the 501c3 local Rotary Club to support projects aimed at protecting natural health of the Kalamazoo river, harbor and lake.
For more information, visit saugatuckvenetianfest.com
Saturday, November 23, 2024
