CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Snowshoe ski resort wants you to come a little early and stay a little longer when you come to play in the mountains of Pocahontas County.
David Dekema, director of marketing for Snowshoe Mountain Resort, said while they rely on the weather to help make their resort a must-visit winter wonderland, Snowshoe is trying to sweeten the deal. Through the winter, the resort will host a series of free weekend concerts for guests.
“We wanted it to be a regular event for people to anticipate and maybe encourage them to make plans to come to Snowshoe,” Dekema said.
The list of acts scheduled to appear on the series includes Passafire, Keller Williams, Rusted Root and The Dropkick Murphys.
“We’ve got some pretty good touring acts coming,” Dekema added. “These are bands that fill paid venues in bigger cities. We want people to come see them here and make it part of their ski getaway weekend.”
Live entertainment at Snowshoe isn’t new. The resort has frequently hosted musicians at different parts of the resort village, but the idea of offering a more coherent schedule of shows began to snowball two years ago after Snowshoe booked The Wailers, a reggae band formed by the remaining members of Bob Marley and The Wailers.
“We had a number of concert events that seemed to make people get here a little earlier,” he said.
That was good for Snowshoe and has encouraged them to do more.
Dekema said what kind of acts they bring is still a work in progress, but they try to mix it up between popular regional acts and well-known bands from the summer touring scene.
“We’re really trying to appeal to that 35 and under crowd who has the energy to stay up past 10 p.m. on a ski day and charge onto midnight and beyond,” he said.
They’ve had some success, but Dekema acknowledged that they’ve had some misses, too.
“We had Biz Markie,” he said. “That was an all-around odd event and he sort of invited some odd challenges.”
Dekema wasn’t specific about what those challenges were, but didn’t regret having the rapper at the resort.
“We want to keep some surprises in the mix,” he said.
The season will conclude the weekend of March 20, with a Homegrown Music Festival that will feature musicians from the region, but it won’t be the end of music at Snowshoe.
“We’ve really expanded our calendar to include live music, as well as lifestyle and music festivals year-round,” he said. “We had a great year last year with events like our Free Fall Festival and we’re working on even more events for this year.
“We definitely want to kick it up a notch.”
Dekema said that outside of winter, places like Snowshoe are always competing with fun in the sun at the beach.
“But what we’ve found is that if we offer things regularly, people will turn their cars around and come to the mountains to play.”
For more information, call 877-447-4386 or visit www.snowshoemtn.com
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Information from: The Charleston Gazette, https://www.wvgazette.com
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