Local music camp attracting artists from all over Saskatchewan
Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party
August 5, 2025, 11:26 am
Ashley Bochek
The Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party is an inclusive musical camp and festival that attracts local musicians and artists from all across Saskatchewan each summer.
Emily Dubois, an instructor and musician involved with the camp explains all the Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party has to offer, “The Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party in itself is a music camp that happens over the summertime. It is heavily fiddle and folk orientated, but over the past half a decade or so, it has also spread into a few other different genres. We have a little bit of a rock-based element to it as well now, we have an art element for those who want something visual, and over the years we have developed a dedicated portion of the camp specifically for kids.”
She says the camp offers music classes and activities for all. “The camp itself is all ages. It is not a kids camp even though there is that element of kids activities. It’s really curated for the entire family experience where there are things for adults and teens. Our rock portion of the camp that we now have is dedicated toward those teens that are more into the pop-rock scenes and fiddle-folk scenes.”
Camp during day, music festival at night
Dubois says the camp runs two weeks with music performances through the week.
“We have two separate weeks of the camp that run with a slightly different variety of instructors, but the same sort of activities. We have people who come for one week and we have people that come regularly for both weeks because you get some new experiences and aside from lessons, workshops, and jamming that happens during the day, in the evening there is also our Kitchen Fest Festival which is where all of the artists that were busy teaching during the day then get to put on a different hat and put on a collaborative concert experience that is open to the public.
“The music festivals happen during the evening and run Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday both weeks of camp. It kind of runs in conjunction to the Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party (KLKP), it is different—it was born from being part of the KLKP.”
Kids camp
Dubois explains the kids camp is an additional part of the Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party to help accommodate families.
“The kids camp runs inside of the regular kitchen party camp. It all happens at the same time—the kids camp runs on a slightly different schedule because we have found over the years that kids need slightly more breaks. Also with the kids camp to break it up more, we are doing more actual camp activities.
They have their music and art portion that happen during the day and early afternoon, and then for the rest of the afternoon they get to go with the camp counsellors and go canoeing, swimming, nature walks, and other things you would experience at a regular summer camp.
“Both of the camps run Monday to Friday August 4-7 and then the next week Monday to Friday August 11-14. For both camps (kids and adults) you sign up for one specific instrument, but we offer a whole bunch of the different classes. For the kids camp, we offer fiddle lessons, guitar/singing lessons, we also offer a ukulele option for the kids. We started with those options as it is a slightly smaller program, but we know if there are people who are interested in piano we may be able to expand into something like that and offer a piano class.”
Tradition from east coast
Dubois says kitchen parties are very popular in the Maritimes.
“The kitchen party name came straight from a type of social gathering that originated in the Maritimes, where at the time, it was a way to get together and hang out. Friends and family would gather at someone’s house with instruments and they’d all bring food in sort of a kitchen and living room setting—people would play music, sing, dance, and socialize. It is something still common out in New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia, and especially in Newfoundland. So the name kitchen party basically comes from the fact that they’d be basically be having a party in the kitchen.”
“It never really happened to the same extent on the Prairies, but we are bringing that same kitchen party element to the Prairies in the form of a camp where people can enjoy all of the best elements of the kitchen party as well as getting an educational setting on their interests—we do all sorts of workshops with music and dance. We are bringing all of those elements from the Atlantic Kitchen Parties into our own kitchen party at Kenosee Lake,” explained Dubois.
Musical gathering for many years
The KLKP has been a successful musical camp for the past two decades.
“This camp has actually been running for almost 20 years,” Dubois said. “My family has a cabin at Kenosee Lake and I actually was there the first year it was created back in 2005. It organically started very small as a one-week camp and then one year, it reached capacity, and they expanded it by adding an extra week.”
She says she attended the camp growing up to take fiddle lessons.
“I attended as a student pretty much every year up until Covid. I interned for the kids camp portion a little bit back when they first started it, but the camp itself has existed for almost 20 years—the reason it is not its 20th year anniversary is because they missed a year for Covid. So it is technically its 19th year running the entire camp in general.
“They didn’t have the kids portion of the camp when it first began. When I was six and attended my first camp I was in fiddle lessons with my mom since we took the same class together. There is a kids camp that runs within it now, but the whole camp is something that a huge demographic of people enjoy, and you can start with basically no experience or you can come with a lot of experience.”
She explains her role now with helping run the camp during the two early weeks in August.
“I started as a student and then I worked my way through to become an instructor at the camp. This year the second week I will be teaching the kids camp. I am on site both weeks as an operational hand. They’ve had some funding for summer student positions through the government and I’ve been hired to specifically help promote and expand the evening Kitchen Fest as a whole—how can we add to this music festival to make it more of a music festival that appeals to a larger audience—so that has been my role over the summer. I am onsite both weeks assisting with the experience of the Kitchen Fest in the evenings, but I am onsite as a musician, as a teacher the second week, and probably as a teaching hand if people need me.
“I live in Regina currently. I grew up 15 minutes from Kenosee Lake originally, but I am a fiddle teacher. I run the Flatland Fiddling Studio out of Regina so during the year I teach full time and gig on the side playing for myself and other various bands. When I am not doing either of those I am trying to jam with people.”
Fiddle musiciansfrom all over world
Dubois says the camp is heavily fiddle and folk based music and lessons.
“It is fiddle-based so we always have a huge variety of fiddle artists that we bring in from across Canada, from the States, from Ireland, and Scotland, all different places at different levels.
“Another thing about a kitchen party is the instrumentation. At a kitchen party music you would hear would be fiddles, accordions, guitars, pianos, or maybe a banjo. That is why those specific instruments are used at kitchen parties and why kitchen party music is focused around is folk.”
The Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party offers many music classes for beginners and experienced musicians from all over Saskatchewan.
“We run fiddle classes, guitar classes, piano classes, we’ve expanded over the years to run things like banjo classes, mandolin classes, cello classes, voice classes,” Dubois explained. “We have Aleksi Campagne who is coming in this year as an artist to have some amazing classes in the evening, but also do like specific classes based around accompanying yourself with a fiddle, like she is a fiddle singer. There are lots of different things. We’ve even had someone come in to do accordion a couple of times over the years, but the camp is mostly adults that bring their kids. Then, we have developed this kids camp to accommodate those adults on vacation with their family.”
KLKP Music Festival open to public
Dubois says the artists are showcased during music performances in the evenings that are open to the public.
“The KLKP Fest which is the festival portion that runs in conjunction with the Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party, those concerts happen each Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night both weeks. The concerts start at 7 pm and are roughly about two and a half hours with an intermission.
“Then, after Monday and Tuesday night concerts we do a little bit of a dance maybe a couple of waltzes, two-steps, or pattern dances like a Virginia reel. The Wednesday night we don’t dance afterwards, but we do extra jamming, extra campfires, and the reason we do that instead is because we run a slightly longer artist concert that night. Then, on Thursday night we also run a show, but it is completely dance-based. So we do half of the night old-time dance, it is still open to the public, you need no experience to come, we teach you all of the dances there, and then after that intermission we bring all of our rock artists on.
“We have people like Rob Skeet who does Elton John covers and stuff like that. They basically do a rock show for the last half and we have got the floor cleared so people can dance on those Thursday nights.”
Background of Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party
Dubois explains the founders’ connection to fiddling and her reasoning for the kitchen party at Kenosee Lake.
“The director, organizer, and creator of this camp, Michele Amy, who originally lived in Carlyle, grew up listening to old-time fiddle music with her parents. She played piano growing up, and she didn’t really play the fiddle until she had kids of her own.
“One of her tween daughters, at the time, expressed interest in playing the fiddle and so she looked into it, and was interested herself. There used to be a fiddle camp in Emma Lake it was called the Emma Lake Fiddle Camp. It ran for many years until it ended in 2008, but it was the first fiddle camp in Canada to ever run. It was in Saskatchewan and they’d bring artists from all over Canada and beyond. Fiddle players like Jerry Holland were brought to Emma Lake Fiddle Camp—it really cultivated more of a fiddle feeling in Saskatchewan and it pushed it out to other communities as well. She was able to attend camps like that and once she started to learn the fiddle, she got help from Fred Easton, who was an old-time fiddle player and senior living in our area of small town Saskatchewan that she reached out to for advice and help. He gave her all these resources, and sent her home with all kinds of old-time fiddle records.”
She says the demand for fiddle musicians and lessons didn’t decrease after the closing of the Emma Lake Fiddle Camp in the early 2000s.
“When Emma Lake Fiddle Camp closed down Michele knew there was a demand for another place because it was something that people missed, and they happened to have this area to test if there was still a demand for it at Kenosee Lake. The first couple of years were small, but it has worked really well, and as much that we do it around our area and for the people interested, it is also here so local artists can come and show their talent.
“We are really committed to making sure we are supporting local Saskatchewan artists and giving them opportunities—job opportunities, and giving them the chance to play with each other for the concerts and feed off each other where they may not have other opportunities to meet up and play with these other artists in any other capacity. They can learn from each other. It is exciting because the public can come and see all combinations of amazing artists that you may never see perform again together.”
Local artists part of KLKP
Dubois says the committee is committed to showcasing local talent during their camps.
“We definitely make it a priority to hire a certain amount of local artists like local to Saskatchewan as well as bringing out people to intermingle from near or far. In terms of people that are campers themselves, we have seen people that have been coming back for years and years, and I am an example of that. I went almost every year to camp maybe missing one or two years. We have people that grew up going through the camp and if they happen to have time during the week, even if they can’t make it for the full week, we will probably see them come at some point for a concert and coming to camp for a day. We get a lot of the same people and a good amount of the same faces every year as well, but people that come back again and again every year that I may not see at all the rest of the year, I see every year in August.”
What to expect
Dubois explains the Kitchen Fest concerts that are open to the public Monday through Thursday nights.
“For the public, the music festivals are outdoor concerts. We also tell people since we have campers there and we usually have 150 people that are on site already so the public does need to bring a lawn chair usually because the seating is limited, expect to have a show of really mixed genre music, it is a little bit more heavily into the fiddle and folk, but there is definitely a lot of other stuff happening. Expect to maybe dance or watch others dance.
This year we are trying to incorporate food vendors and artist vendors, not a whole lot, but one food and artist vendor each night as well. You can expect to look through all of the art from art students that are on site. We keep their work up during the week so people can see what they are working on, and just expect a super good time!
“The camp prides itself on, we are a super inclusive space, if we can help it no one is ever turned away for any sort of reason, if finance is a barrier, we have financial aid and bursaries we can offer to people. We want people to come and experience it. We don’t want to gatekeep this community. That is part of the people coming to these concerts they get to see what happens, we want people to be able to know that this exists. It is crazy to me that people don’t know it exists because it has been around for so long. If you are someone who is curious then come to a concert this year and see what it looks like because our registration opens in March and the last two years when registration opened we completely sold out both weeks which is unheard of for a fiddle camp, but I think after covid people have really wanted to get back into things and back into the experiences they missed.
So, we have limited space, we have about just over 100 registrants for the actual camp and we do offer a waitlist. If you’re interested too, follow our social media because we post lots, and we post in the weeks leading up to when registration opens so people can be ready, so follow us on Facebook at Kenosee Lake Kitchen Party and Instagram to stay in the loop.”
Dubois wants to encourage everyone in the area to come out for an evening of music and fun at the Kitchen Fest through the early weekdays.
“Come out, look online, look at the line-up, see if you recognize any names, and I always recommend that people come out to one of the concerts to see what its like if they have never been and they live in the area.”
The camp dedicates their passion for teaching fiddle lessons and keeping fiddle and folk music alive in Saskatchewan to Fred Easton, who was a local fiddle musician in the Carlyle area.
“Michele talks about Fred Easton every year at camp, he is one of the reasons she started playing and got more into it because of a local fiddler who wanted to spread it to younger people and that is what we are really trying to do—keeping this pocket of Canadian fiddling alive,” said Dubois.
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