The Tumbleweed Music Festival is a free, open-air, community acoustic music festival which is traditionally held on Labor Day weekend each year. Tumbleweed is sponsored by the Three Rivers Folklife Society, a small, 501(c)(3) community arts organization here in the Tri-Cities. The 2025 festival will be our 29th annual! We feature many kinds of acoustic music (primarily folk, blues, bluegrass, etc.) but are welcoming to all types of music and dance performances.
The festival begins Friday of Labor Day weekend with a free “Alternative Folk” concert, presenting (euphemistically) “higher energy” performers with different types of acoustic music than many of our attendees are used to seeing. Over the years, we’ve found some fantastic performers through this concert who have since become Tumbleweed family members, returning to the festival often to perform.
Saturday and Sunday of that weekend, from 11am to 6pm, we have a new performance or workshop on each of our 4 outdoor and 2 indoor stages, and 2 workshop rooms every 45 minutes; one stage becomes an open-mic stage at 2:00pm; it then keeps its own schedule. All performances and workshops are free except for the Saturday benefit concert and the Sunday evening Contra Dance – those are ticketed events.
One other feature of Tumbleweed is the annual “Jane Titland Memorial Songwriting Contest,” in which songwriters submit songs matching that year’s festival theme; selection of a theme for 2025 is is “Play Time.”
Performers (except for the three headline acts chosen for the Saturday evening Tumbleweed benefit concert, and the band and caller for the Sunday evening Contra Dance) are not paid beyond a travel stipend that is based on distance traveled to be here (and which maxes out at $150). If this works for you, we’d love to have you apply!
The folk music community lost one of its greats with the passing of Dan Maher on May 19, 2025 at age 72. Dan fought a courageous battle against terminal liver cancer since his unexpected diagnosis following a January 3 heart attack. A CAT scan that day revealed a stage 4 liver cancer which explained the extreme lack of energy Dan had been feeling for several months. Throughout the duration of his illness, Dan continued his internet radio show “Dan Maher’s Good Road” on FolkMusicNotebook.com, featuring music and his insightful commentary.
For 38 years, up until his retirement from Washington State University where he was a student activities advisor, Dan’s weekly radio program “Inland Folk” brought the best of folk music to his listeners throughout the Northwest. His insights and frequent exclamations of “AMAZING” and “DYNAMITE” were enthusiastic descriptors of his knowledge and feelings about what he aired. Dan selflessly promoted the Three Rivers Folklife Society’s Tumbleweed Music Festival on Labor Day weekend since its inception 29 years ago, and emceed the festival’s main concert each year.
Dan was at his best in solo performances at which he reveled in presenting Irish, Scots, English, and American traditional and modern folk music. But where he really excelled was his incredible ability to engage his audience through encouragement and exhortation to join him in singing old and new choruses. Pete Seeger could not have done it better. Though Dan has now passed, his music remains with us in the form of five albums, four of which are available through BandCamp for free. Dan Maher’s Good Road internet radio program will continue to grace the internet through 72 archived programs at MixCloud.com. The program will continue as “Good Road” with his producer, Katrina Knight, carrying on in Dan’s spirit.
Dan is survived by his twin sister Nelle Maher-Clark of Spokane and his faithful service dog K.C. who at Dan’s direction has joined the family of Gene and Susan Carbaugh (Richland). Special friends who will particularly miss Dan include Eunjeong Hshin (Rome, GA), Katrina Knight (Kennewick), Micki Perry (Kennewick), and Isaac Wright (Moscow). Dan was a believer in Jesus Christ and walked under his grace as a Christian. A memorial service will be held in Pullman at a June date still to be determined. You may read Dan’s obituary here.
Rest in peace, Dan. You’ve led us down many good roads and we wish you a safe, eternal journey.
The application period to perform (or host a workshop) for the 2024 Tumbleweed Music Festival is now closed. Performer applications for the 2025 Tumbleweed Music Festival will be available in late September or early October. The application will be downloadable at that time using the button below. As we will be having BOTH a live festival in Howard Amon park AND a Virtual element for our “Distance Performers,” be sure to check the appropriate box to indicate which you are applying for (and “Both” is also an acceptable answer!)
Tumbleweed RUNS on Volunteers! We are organized and staffed entirely by volunteers. We literally can not put on our festival without volunteers! Would you like to help us out? Please click the button below to get a copy of our Volunteer Application!
If there’s something in particular you’d like to do, we’ve probably got a checkbox for that – or, you can enter a suggestion yourself!
Tumbleweed also runs on money from SPONSORS!! We receive funds to put on our festival from a variety of sources, but one of the most needed are donations from SPONSORS, who go a long way to make it possible for us to continue to operate! If YOU would like to help us out and become a SPONSOR, please take a look at our SPONSOR FORM using the button below, choose your level of sponsorship, and send it in!
© 2024 Tumbleweed Music Festival – Sponsored by Three Rivers Folklife Society & the City of Richland | Co-sponsored by Northwest Public Broadcasting, Battelle Memorial Institute, OneWorld Telecommunications, Tumbleweird, Pasco Chamber of Commerce, Pilgrim Media Services, Print Plus, and Artmil Design.
