The hillbilly hard rock band known as The Wild! performs at the third annual Tralapa Music & Sports Festival on July 27-29 at Tramping Lake Park. Several musical acts hit the stage over two days and the festival included slo-pitch and beach volleyball tournaments.
Kenneth Brown
of The Crossroads
The former regional park at Tramping Lake is a quiet place for 51 weekends of the year. The park has been awakened yet again after an annual music festival.
The third annual Tralapa Music & Sports Festival took place on July 27-29 at Tramping Lake Park just west of Kelfield. The festival includes a two-day music festival, beach volleyball tournament and a slo-pitch tournament during the jam packed weekend.
There is more fun to be had at the former regional park. There were three separate food vendors and a beer gardens to keep festival goers from going hungry or thirsty. There is also a miniature golf course at the park and there were fireworks on Saturday night, so there was lots of fun to be had at Tralapa.
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A total of 22 slo-pitch teams and eight volleyball teams battled for supremacy in the festival’s two tournaments. Festival organizers added a fourth ball diamond for this year’s event, so the tournament wrapped up on Saturday night instead of on Sunday.
The winner of the ‘A’ side final was Cans of Corn, a team that defeated No Glove, No Love in the final. The winner of the ‘B’ side final was Illiterate Cats while the winner of the ‘C’ side final was Slider Inside. The winner of the beach volleyball tournament was Bumpin’ Uglies.
There were five musical acts on Friday night followed up by seven musical acts on Saturday. There was also an Open Microphone session at the stage in the afternoon on Saturday. Friday and Saturday nights ended with a DJ performance.
The headliner for Friday was The Wild!, and the headliner for Saturday was The Lazys, a band from Australia now living in Toronto. The line up on Friday also included Mitch Larock and the 4:54 Band, Better Than Nothing, Bombargo and DJ Kidalgo. The line up on Saturday also included Taylor Lang, Matt Davis Band, High Kicks, The Pistolwhips, The Dirt Rich Band and DJ Mikey Dubz to finish it off.
Festival organizers also hold the Applause for a Cause contest on Saturday night. The Tralapa Rangers, a group of eight main organizers, call out the names of communities from the area and proceeds from the event go to the community that cheers the loudest. The joint community of Dodsland-Plenty moved the decibel meter the highest to win.
The festival’s organizing committee has worked hard over three years to make the festival happen. The former regional park is on private land purchased by Keith and Wayne Charteris, so they were asked if the park could be used for the festival.
Devin and Trina Charteris, Wayne’s son and daughter-in-law, are two of the eight Tralapa Rangers. Wayne was spotted several times throughout the weekend taking in the sights and sounds of the music and sports festival.
The other six rangers are Ryan Neumeier, the president of the organizing committee, Mike Aldous Russell Charteris, Garret Smith, Chad Tetzlaff and Ashton Tetzlaff. The group cleaned up the park by removing 13 years of grass, weed, tree and brush growth and creating ball diamonds ahead of the inaugural festival in 2016.
New to the festival in 2018 were the additions of a DJ pit at the beach volleyball courts, new food vendors to have three separate venders instead of only a single vendor, and a truck with portable shower facilities.
Neumeier, who is also a nephew to Wayne, said the organizing committee is pleased with the result after the weekend and the festival was a success. He said everything ran smoothly and people had several nice things to say about the third Tralapa Music & Sports Festival.
“It definitely went good,” the committee’s president said, recognizing that people performing in the music festival were all excellent to work with and a great group of guys. “I don’t think we had any complaints. The weather was phenomenal.”
He noted that the weather has been great for all three Tralapa festivals so far, so organizers could not ask for much more. The festival doubled in size from year one to year two. The event has grown each year, but Neumeier said the committee was hoping for even more people this year.
Regardless of the growth, there were more slo-pitch teams than ever before and organizers are pleased with the result, he said. Neumeier said the committee would look at other ways to get the word out about the event.
The president said the goal is to reach a total of 24 slo-pitch teams and cap it at 24 teams. He said his favourite addition this year was the DJ pit at the volleyball courts as “there was some pretty good vibes over there” with three DJs performing all day.
Neumeier said he enjoyed the weekend even though it was a busy time for him and his fellow rangers. The committee even had some fun by initiating a ninth Tralapa Ranger, a guy from New Zealand who works on his uncle’s farm and helped out with the event, he said. The Tralapa president said it is nice how music brings people together.
“I’m always a fan of multi-genre festivals,” he said, recognizing that he has already started to look into musical acts to bring in for 2019. “I like to bring different people together with different types of music.”
He noted that the lead singer of the Lazys even got on stage to perform with one of the DJs at one point. He said he wanted to thank event sponsors and everyone who helped out in some way. Campers left the park in pretty good shape after the weekend, so organizers are thankful for it, Neumeier added.
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