The Iowa Rock n Roll Music Association will hold their Hall of Fame induction over labor day weekend. This year marks the 28th year of honoring achievements since the association was founded. Ralph Kluseman, president of the Iowa Rock n Roll Music Association says it’s a weekend to celebrate.
“Its become a tradition that people come out and they celebrate the talent that we are so blessed with you know the music is the soundtrack of our lives obviously but to be able to see the people that have done it for so many years in some cases decades and have done it so well and at such a high level. So we honor those folks with their induction to the hall of fame and of course we have special awards that we give out during this time frame and we recognize as many people as we can.”
Kluseman says it takes a lot of hard work to choose the inductees each year.
“It is a tough process and it’s probably the most misunderstood process so really what it comes down to, it’s very simple. We have a lot of volunteers. We have 16 different regional consultants around the state of Iowa. We’ve got 5 different zones if you will and each one of these regions people being nominated and on any given year we would probably see anywhere from three to 400 new nominations coming through for people to be considered in addition to the database that goes all the way back to 1997. It’s a lot of volunteers doing a lot of work and it’s a job that’s really important because we can’t forget these people.”
The celebration kicks off with an Okoboji Rocks Concert at the Roof Garden Ballroom on Friday night. The opening ceremony is on Saturday morning at 10 and then at 1:00 you can enjoy the finals of the statewide Iowa Rocks Talent Contest held at the Pearson Lakes Art Center. You can see a full schedule for the weekend and purchase tickets at iowarocknroll.com/events.
