Stone Soup Music Festival & Street Fair

Each August the streets around Ramona Avenue and 9th Street in Grover Beach fill with food booths, craft tables, a beer and wine stand, and two stages. One stage stands in the street at Ramona and 9th. The other, the Park Stage, is in the amphitheater of Ramona Garden Park. The park was renovated before the 2026 festival, which gained a new stage and a large playground. Admission is free. The Clark Center for the Performing Arts runs the Stone Soup Music Festival & Street Fair and tells visitors to bring a lawn chair and dancing shoes.

Two stages, one band an hour

“The basic idea with the music is it switches back and forth between the two stages,” said Dave Pier, the Clark Center’s executive director. “Every hour there’s a new group starting up, then it just goes continuously for the two days.” In 2026 the festival fell on Saturday and Sunday, August 29 and 30. Saturday’s music ran from 10 AM to 9 PM, and Sunday’s ran from 11 AM to 6 PM.

The 2026 Saturday opened on the street stage with a youth dance showcase by FLEX Performing Arts. Hālau Hula Nā Mele O Ke Kai & Na Hoa Aloha followed. Their name is Hawaiian for “Songs of the Sea,” and their dancers and musicians are of all ages, sizes, and ethnicities. The afternoon then crossed back and forth between the stages:

• The Dusty Shoes Gospel Bluegrass Band, who have played bluegrass and old-time gospel around San Luis Obispo for more than 17 years and aim for “that classic ‘high lonesome sound.’”
• The Funk Junket, mixing Afro-Cuban, salsa, Afrobeat, merengue, cumbia and funk.
• Rosewood & Honey, a three-part harmony group formed in the summer of 2022 around Jenny and Danny Grasseschi, Jessy George, and a Panamanian rosewood guitar.
• Leslie & The Soul Shakers with Motown, followed by Nordic Daughter, Pismo Beach’s Summer Renegades, and the alt-rock Jampires.

At 7:30 the Ramona Avenue Stage turned over to a Saturday Night Madonna Dance Party with the tribute band Blonde Ambition, playing “Like A Virgin,” “Holiday,” “Into The Groove,” “Papa Don’t Preach,” and “Vogue” until 9.

Sunday ran on a different set of sounds:

• The SLO County Band with a 250th Anniversary Celebration Concert.
• The Friendly Neighborhood Big Band playing swing.
• Burning James Blues Band.
• Mariachi Mexicanisimo.
• Mestizo, playing Latin fusion.
• Ras Danny & The Reggae All Stars.
• B & The Hive, which closed the weekend with indie rock and alt pop.

Roasted corn and a dog in costume

The street fair brings vendors from across the Central Coast and beyond. Pier counted 56 of them in 2026. Food in 2026 included:

• Huatulco Tacos and Sanchez Roasted Corn
• Leciel Crepe Cafe and Sichuan Kitchen SLO
• Touch of Soul Catering and Heavenly Hotdogs
• Paradise Shaved Ice, G Brothers Kettlecorn, Crave Mini Donuts, and Butterfly Brittles

Among the wares were Peruvian imports, Mexican crafts, 3D-printed goods, books, and a booth for the Rancho Burro Donkey Sanctuary. The festival runs as a zero-waste event. Eco Club Five Cities collects the trash to be composted or recycled.

“We have all these different kinds of food vendors that come in, all different ethnic foods, and then also all the vendors’ booths,” Pier said. “There’re all sorts of crafts and all different kinds of wares, artwork.”

On the 2026 Saturday, children had several places to go:

• The Exploration Discovery Center set up at 9th and Ramona for a day-pass fee. It is a nonprofit play and learning space for ages 2 to 12.
• The San Luis Obispo Symphony ran an instrument petting zoo on the Park Stage plaza.
• The Grover Beach Community Library held storytimes on the Park Stage twice a day, reading the Stone Soup folk tale.

Sunday begins at 10:30 in the morning with the Mardi Paws Dog Parade at the Park Stage. “Is your poochie all dressed up? Let’s kick off Sunday!!” the festival posted on the morning of August 30, 2026. “There’s a costume contest, so the people dress up their dogs,” Pier said. “One of the prizes is the best matching costume between the dog and the person who’s walking the dog.” The prizes are Best in Show, Best Lookalike, Most Original, and Most Colorful.

From noon to 2 on Sunday, volunteers pack meals in the Ramona Garden Park Community Room. The Outreach Program is run with Rotary and the Arroyo Grande High School Interact Club, and organizers figure 42 cents feeds one person.

A stone in the pot

The festival takes its name from a folk tale, and its sources tell it in different ways. The Clark Center’s version has a stranger arrive in a starving village and promise enough soup for everyone. As he cooks and tastes, he asks each villager to add an ingredient.

In New Times San Luis Obispo, Glen Starkey wrote that many variations exist and gave a fuller one. Hungry travelers come to a village that will not feed them. They fill a cauldron from a creek and drop in a single stone. One villager brings carrots, another a few potatoes, another a pinch of salt. In the end the travelers lift out the stone and ladle soup for everyone, themselves included.

Pier draws the line to the festival directly. “Certainly, on the music front, all these different music groups come together to put on something much bigger than any one group could do,” he said. “That ties directly into the story.”

Peter Keith’s street fair

KSBY reports that the festival began in 1990. In August 2026, New Times dated the first festival to 35 years earlier. Former Grover Beach mayor Peter Keith was among the first organizers, and the idea came from his travels.

“My wife and I have traveled around the world many times, pushed the envelope of adventure, and met and talked with and had relationships with people from various cultures,” Keith said. Back home, he looked at Grover Beach’s Asian, Filipino, Black, white, and Hispanic residents. “I thought, ‘I saw all these other cultures, so why not put something together in Grover that reflects our various cultures?’” he said. “We initially named it the Grover Beach Ethnic Street Fair, a one-day event.”

Keith gathered a group to stage the first fair, then missed it because he had already booked a trip to Italy. That first fair drew some attendees but was not an overwhelming success. He and his core organizers kept at it.

The sources disagree on when the name changed:

• According to New Times, it became Stone Soup “early on,” because Cal Poly offered a grant on the condition that the event could be renamed.
• Grover Beach city records give 1998 as the year the Grover Beach Ethnic Street Faire became the Stone Soup World Music Festival, and name its founder as Peter Donald Keith.

For many years the festival was produced by the South County Chambers of Commerce. The city’s 2017 calendar sent inquiries to the Arroyo Grande & Grover Beach Chamber of Commerce and promised “plenty of international foods.” At some point the chambers asked the Clark Center to help program it. “Then after COVID, they said, ‘Why don’t you guys just run the festival?’” Pier said.

When Pier told KSBY the festival was 30 years old, it had 12 bands. That year the Stop Hunger Now food packaging event was new, and Ashlea Boyer, the Clark Center’s board president, said, “we’ve got more room to grow.” By 2026 there were 16 bands. The renovated park also changed the children’s corner. “We used to do balloon houses and things like that, but we don’t need to do that anymore,” Pier said.

Keith remains among its private supporters. “It’s a fun event,” he said, “and most people come back for the second day.”