Let the party of the summer get underway.
The 35th edition of Dauphin's Countryfest kicks off Friday and runs throughout the weekend.
Countryfest Board President Duane McMaster says he is looking forward to seeing the crowd that will flock to the Selo Ukraina site over the course of the weekend.
"I love going out there on a Friday or Saturday night and looking up at that huge crowd in the ampitheatre and just knowing that I was part of the crew that managed to put this together and part of that long history of bringing all of these people from all over the place to our little town and showing it off."
McMaster is extremely happy to see a rise in ticket sales conpared to the last two years.
He says festival attendees will notice one change this year, as they have dropped the food tokens system.
"We talked to a few different festivals that do food tokens and we did try it out for two years. It did not go very well the first year but we thought we would do it twice just to make sure. We thought we had worked the kinks out, but after two years, nobody was really a fan of it and it just was not functioning well on the logistics side on our end, and it was a lot of work for no real benefit."
It is a largely "90's Country" lineup this year, with headline acts including Clint Black Friday night, Alabama on Saturday, and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on Sunday.
