Folk festival to debut in Soap Lake

SOAP LAKE — Soap Lake will spread its cultural wings this weekend with the first-ever Soap Lake Food and Folk Festival. The festival, which goes all day Saturday at Smokiam Park, will feature musicians from a variety of traditions, as well as food and craft vendors and periodic raffle drawings throughout the day. It’s put on by the Friends of the Lower Grand Coulee. “We've got Mexican music, we've got country music, we've got contemporary folk music, we've got southern folk music, we've got Delta blues,” said Kim Anderson, a lifelong Soap Lake resident who came up with the idea for the festival. “So we're all over the place.” Musicians include conjunto band Tejano Skyz, singer-songwriters Carl Tosten and Billy Stoops, country singer Myra Pearce, blues musicians The Delta G Band and Leif Totusek, whose compositions blend jazz, blues and soukous, a dance music style from central Africa. Many of the musicians have ties to the area, Anderson said; Pearce and Tejano Skyz are based in Moses Lake, and several members of the Delta G Band graduated from Soap Lake High School. Tosten also grew up in eastern Washington, according to his online biography.