July 23-25, 2026
A gathering of great songwriters in one of the Pacific Northwest’s most beautiful natural settings at the historic Robin Hood Village Resort on the shores of the Hood Canal.
WITH SUPPORT FROM: Morgan Hill Law Firm, Alderbrook Resort & Spa, Alderbrook Golf & Yacht Club, Hood Canale, 2 Margaritas, Union Square Deli Olympic Mountain Ice Cream, Radio Trop Rock, Kya Glen Ayr, & Fjord Oyster Bank
The 2026 Edition of the Peace Love & Union Saltwater Songwriters Festival promises to be as magical and memorable as ever, with a lineup of amazing singer-songwriters from the local to the legendary, performing in the charming intimacy of the Robin Hood Village in the devastatingly friendly and welcoming beach town of Union. It’s an experience unlike any other for both performer and listener, brought together for an extended summer weekend in this beautiful town on the only fjord in the lower 48.
The festivities begin with Tuesday’s epic music pub crawl. Wednesday’s “Spirit of 76” concert at The Pointe, overlooking the Hood Canal with spectacular views of the Olympics, features various artists performing the hits of 1976! The official festival begins Thursday afternoon and runs through Saturday night, and the festival concludes with Sunday’s brunch concert at The Pointe featuring the debut of songs co-written by featured writers of the festival and local veterans in partnership with the Alderbrook Golf Club and Operation Song.
Late night and daytime music in Union and nearby Hoodsport, plus lots of great dining and drinking and recreational activities round out this amazing week in Union.
Location & Lodging
The Peace Love & Union Festival takes place at the Robin Hood Village Resort just outside Union, WA on beautiful Hood Canal.
Robin Hood Village Resort boasts 16 one-of-a-kind cottages available exclusively for attendees to book and stay in for the entire weekend of the festival! Set in a forested oasis situated in the foothills of the majestic Olympic Mountains, Hood Canal offers breathtaking views and activities like hiking, kayaking, clamming, fishing, & many other classic PNW adventures to explore.
Lodging packages are paid at the time of reservation but remain fully refundable through May 31.
2026 Concert Lineup
The 2026 Edition of the Peace Love & Union Saltwater Songwriters Festival promises to be as magical and memorable as ever, with a lineup of amazing singer-songwriters from the local to the legendary, performing in the charming intimacy of the Robin Hood Village in the devastatingly friendly and welcoming beach town of Union.
The songwriters:
Mary Gauthier
Mary Gauthier is a Grammy-nominated American folk singer-songwriter and author, known for songs that blend emotional resonance, depth of character, and lyrical insight. Her storytelling—raw, honest, and unwavering—has established her as one of America’s most compelling voices, offering beauty in sorrow, healing in loss, and perspectives only an artist of profound empathy can provide. Gauthier’s songs have been recorded by artists including Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Kathy Mattea, Boy George, Jimmy Buffett, Vince Gill, Bettye LaVette, and many more. She has received honors from the Americana Music Association, International Folk Music Awards, the Independent Music Awards, the GLAMA Awards, and the UK Americana Association. Her work has appeared extensively in film and television, including Yellowstone and ABC’s Nashville, and her memoir, Saved by a Song, was published by St. Martin’s Press. At her Peace, Love & Union performance, Mary will be accompanied by her singer-songwriter partner, Jaimee Harris. In what promises to be an extraordinary gift to the festival and to our community, Mary has volunteered to coach and mentor the songwriters and military participants in this year’s veterans co-writing song project in partnership with Operation Song.
Kim Richey
Kim Richey was selected last year as one of the “Titans of Americana” by by Brandi Carlisle, who cites her as a “formative influence.” Emerging as a force in Nashville in the 1990s, she quickly established herself as both a recording artist with hits on both country and pop charts, and a sought-after songwriter for others. Her songs “Nobody Wins” and “Believe Me Baby (I Lied)” were Number One hits and country music staples for Radney Foster and Trisha Yearwood respectively, the latter earning Kim a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song. She’s had four other top ten hits, with songs recorded by Brooks & Dunn, Patty Loveless, the Dixie Chicks, and others. Over a career spanning more than three decades, she has released ten critically acclaimed albums, most recently the 2024 release Every New Beginning reaching the Billboard Top 10 on the Americana/Folk Album chart.
Pete Droge
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Pete Droge is a songwriter’s songwriter who’s shared bills with the likes of Tom Petty and Neil Young. Since rocketing to early acclaim on the strength of his 1994 debut, Necktie Second, Droge has released a series of critically lauded solo albums, appeared in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous; teamed up with Matthew Sweet and Shawn Mullins to form the Americana supergroup The Thorns; co-produced records for Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and Chris Ballew of The Presidents of the United States of America; recorded three collections with his wife, Elaine Summers, as The Droge and Summers Blend.
Pete’s 2025 albumFade Away Blue reflects on the loss of his birth mother, who he missed meeting by months, and the remarkable journey that followed as he reunited with long-lost relatives, battled a mysterious illness, and discovered himself in the process. Recorded with Grammy-winning producer Paul Bryan (Aimee Mann), the result is an album a lifetime in the making, a rich, revelatory sonic memoir that faces down doubt and despair with love, resilience, and commitment at every turn.
Matraca Berg
In 2011, Matraca Berg’s song “You and Tequila,” was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Country Song. That nomination came three years after she was the youngest person ever inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She is credited with several Billboard Number One country songs, beginning with the TG Shepherd and Karen Brooks duet “Faking Love” in 1983 when the songwriter was just 18 years old. A debut album of her own scored four modest hits, but by 1996 she had penned numerous hits for others, including Number Ones for Reba McEntire (“The Last to Know,” 1987), Trisha Yearwood, (“XXXs and OOOOs,” 1994), Patty Loveless (“You Can Feel Bad,” 1996) and Martina McBride (“Wild Angel,” 1996). That was also the year that Berg’s signature song was released by Deana Carter. “Strawberry Wine” topped the charts the following year and became an enduring country classic and earned her her first Grammy nomination and the CMA Song of the Year in 1997, making her just the third woman to win the award (Gretchen Peters, also performing at this year’s festival, had won it a couple of years earlier with “Independence Day”). She would score another Best Song Grammy nomination with the Gretchen Wilson hit “I Don’t Feel Like Loving You Today” in 2005 before striking gold again when Kenny Chesney topped the chart with “You and Tequila.” In addition to her induction to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, she has also won the CMA’s Poet Award in 2018.
David Wilcox
David Wilcox’s three-decade career as a folk singer-songwriter began in earnest in the late 1980s, when songs like “Eye of the Hurricane,” from his major label debut album How Did You Find Me Here, established him as a distinctive voice in the acoustic and folk-rock scene. The record sold over 100,000 copies virtually on word of mouth alone, unheard of for a newly emerging folk music artist. Rolling Stone praised his “soulful insight,” while the New York Times called his music “a kind of open-hearted therapy.”
More than a dozen albums and 35 years later, Wilcox’s music still resonates and meets the moment, for the last decade reflecting a re-ordering of priorities and a redefinition of his sense of love and time as his late wife Nance lived with Parkinson’s disease. In this world, craft is a form of care. And the introspection of David’s music is a public offering, and his ability to stay soft in a hard world isn’t a liability—it’s a kind of leadership.
His website features a “Musical Medicine” section with hundreds of songs written to heal and teach and guide himself and that he hopes will offer the same to others – filed in categories from heartbreak to faith to parenting.
In addition to his lyrical prescriptions, David is an extraordinary craftsman with his instrument, admired and studied by generations of acoustic guitarists. His expressive guitar work is delivered with a signature virtuosity, causing anyone who’s ever picked up the instrument to lean forward in their chairs, enviously, curiously, asking “How does he do that?”
Dan Navarro
Dan Navarro’s music probes life at its most resonant. In his rich baritone, he sings songs of heart and insight, steeped in experience, soulful tales from a long road well-traveled. The veteran singer-songwriter’s work spans decades of American folk, pop, roots and Spanish language music. He is the co-writer of one of the most recognizable and enduring 80s pop anthems, the Grammy-nominated “We Belong,” written with Eric Lowen and recorded by Pat Benatar, a song that remains one of the most recognizable pop anthems of the 1980s, featured prominently in the trailer for the Amazon film The Wrecking Crew. He and Lowen gained national recognition in their duo Lowen & Navarro in the late 1980s and 1990s with their trend-bucking acoustic pop-rock vocal-based music that earned them airplay and a dedicated worldwide following even in an age of hip hop and grunge.
Dan’s songs have been recorded by artists including The Bangles, Jackson Browne, and Dave Edmunds, and his work has been widely placed in film and television. He continues to perform extensively as a solo artist. His distinctive voice has earned him many roles as a voice actor in film and television, and his voice on behalf of other artists and songwriters has earned him leadership roles in the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Musicians, including testifying before a congressional intellectual property committee.
Charlie Mars
Charlie Mars writes songs with the aim of never squeezing himself into a single genre. He always liked Country music (the less popular kind), then got into Jam Bands and Alt-Country music, especially Uncle Tupelo. Over twenty years , he released seven studio albums and shared the stage with the likes of REM, KT Tunstall and Steve Earle, and has been profiled in Forbes, USA Today, American Songwriter, among other major media outlets. Charlie employs his art as a channel towards personal discovery, candidly exploring all the human limitations – from pride and fear to cynicism self-doubt – that stand in the way of his attaining true happiness. Always an admirer of people who lived close to the land, Charlie came nearer to happiness when he bought a dog and property with a weird house on it in the middle of nowhere in the hill country of his native Mississippi, an inspiration for his most recent album, Times Have Changed.
Eric Erdman
A singer-songwriter whose work bridges across genres from folk to hip-hop, Eric Erdman is the only visiting artist to have appeared at every Peace Love & Union Festival and has become a central figure in the event’s identity, not only performing his own show but accompanying many of the other artists and annually participating in the Operation Song writing project and performance. As a songwriter, Eric has collaborated with countless artists including The Red Clay Strays, winners of both CMA and ACM Group of the Year and who, like Eric, hail from Mobile, Alabama. His co-written song “Stone’s Throw,” recorded by the group and included on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack album for the movie Twisters, has surpassed 60 million streams on Spotify. Eric has racked up five consecutive Trop Rock Music Awards for Songwriter of the Year and has been voted Mobile’s favorite solo performing musician for an astounding sixteen years in a row. And those aren’t even his most impressive streaks. Through his “Fresh Song Friday” videos and radio programs, he has introduced a new composition every Friday for over six years, well over 300 consecutive Fridays.
Dan Sullivan
In 2025, Dan Sullivan’s album Friendships, the first solo album of his career, swept the Trop Rock Music Awards, winning Album of the Year, and both Song and Single of the Year for the title track, as well as earning Dan the award for Male Vocalist of the Year. Based in the Austin area, the native Texan was inspired as a young musician by fellow Texans Robert Earl Keen and Jerry Jeff Walker, and also by the music of Jimmy Buffett. Prior to striking out on his own, he co-founded the award-winning duo The Detentions with his friend and fellow school teacher Chris Hillier. The duo earned a nationwide following, boosted by their songs “Coast” and “Sunburned,” both in regular rotation on Radio Margaritaville for years. Dan has performed at songwriter showcases and festivals all across the U.S. including the historic Bluebird Cafe and Kerrville Folk Festival.
Jamie Floyd
Nashville-based singer-songwriter Jamie Floyd’s original songs have been included in Grammy-nominated albums by Madi Diaz, Ingrid Andress, and Ashley Monroe, and has had songs recorded by country legends Ty Herndon, Ronnie Dunn and Miranda Lambert. With songs that span contemporary Americana, pop, and country, Jamie performs her own material in songwriter-focused settings. She’s also written extensively for stage and screen, including theme songs for The Voice, Dolly Parton’s A Country Christmas Story, and the entire soundtracks for Lifetime’s Manson’s Lost Girls and Burt Reynolds’s final film The Last Movie Star, which earned her the Nashville Film Festival’s award for Best Song in a Feature Film (“Yet To Come”). She’s performed with her band at the Grand Ole Opry and the Washington State Fair, Her performance at the Peace Love & Union festival is part of a national tour to promote new music in 2026.
David Ashby
Union’s own Dave Ashby’s music career expanded rapidly following his involvement with the Peace Love & Union Festival. Prior to his appearances at the festival, Dave’s songs were staples of the town’s music diet, but he had rarely performed outside a ten-mile radius of his hometown. Indeed, Dave was flirting with a decision to step away from songwriting and performance in favor of other pursuits, before his first showing at the Saltwater Songwriters event, when his music caught the attention of other festival artists and the ears of listeners to Radio Trop Rock. Since then, his songwriting has reached a wider audience, leading to national attention and opportunities beyond the Pacific Northwest, including a recent performance at the iconic listening room Eddie’s Attic in the Atlanta area. He has partnered with established co-writers including multi-Grammy-winning songwriter Tia Sillers and is currently working on his debut EP with Grammy-winning producer Kristian Bush of Sugarland.
Robin Tricker
If Rock, Country and Pop had a curly haired baby it would be Robin Tricker. She describes herself in one of her lyrics as “one part sugar and one part cayenne!” Once a professional dancer featured in national TV commercials, Robin’s passion shifted to writing and performing music and playing the ukulele, an instrument that fits well with the beach vibe that permeates much of her music. Listed as “one to watch” by the Nashville Songwriters Association International, she’s earned four Trop Rock Music Association nominations for Female Vocalist of the Year since 2020. Her most recent album Salt Water Happy produced by Anthony Krizan (The Spin Doctors) includes three chart topping trop rock songs.
Krystal King
Krystal King describes herself as your “next door redneck,” delivering relatable country songwriting with vivid and humorous imagery. Her inner redneck means she’s not afraid to say what she is thinking, whether a heartfelt emotion or a “love song” for her husband that announces “You’re the Reason That I Drink”. The songs and videos from the North Carolina native’s 2025 debut album Pretty Poison have been featured on IHearts 96.9 The Kat, Countryline TV, and the Heartland Network. Krystal took home 3 Josie Music Awards last year at the Grand Ole Opry in connection with the release, including Female Artist of the Year for Country Rock/Southern Rock, Music Video of the year for “Mind Your Own Backyard,” and Best Actress in a Music Video, adding to a trophy case that already included top honors in the 2018 Hickory Oktoberfest Songwriting Competition and the 2019 Old School Songwriting Contest. When she’s not writing and performing her music, Krystal is a popular disc jockey on Sirius XM’s Radio Margaritaville every Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10-3 Eastern Time.
In addition to her performance, she’ll be handling some of the emcee duties at this year’s festival.
In addition to her performance, she’ll be handling some of the emcee duties at this year’s festival.
Ethan Tucker
Ethan Tucker’s trademark sound of acoustic roots and layered electric guitars, combined with an unmistakable soulful and bluesy vocal, is a recipe that has garnered attention from some of his most popular contemporaries, as well as bonafide legends.
The Olympia, WA-born singer-songwriter is an alumnus of NBC’s vocal competition “The Voice” and has performed around the world, touring nationally with Jimmy Cliff, Micheal Franti, Buddy Guy, and The Wailers, as well as national support slots with musical peers Slightly Stoopid, G.Love and Special Sauce and many others. He has performed at premiere national festivals such as Bottle Rock, Cali Vibes Fest, California Roots, Kaboo, Hangout, and Slightly Stoopid’s Mexico destination event Closer To The Sun. In addition, he has been invited to perform at notable film festivals including Sundance, Sun Valley and Mill Valley Film Festivals. Ethan has also garnered international acclaim, performing at M4M Festival in Poland, as well as performing in Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, England and more.
Jessica Willis Fisher
Jessica Willis Fisher is a singer-songwriter and fiddle player who for years toured the world with her family band The Willis Clan. Her experience as a child and young woman in that family band managed by an extremely abusive and domineering father now serving a decades-long prison sentence, is the subject of her book Unspeakable.
"Aloha Steve" Molnar
is a Florida Keys-based in-demand master of the pedal steel guitar, one of the hardest instruments to master. Steve will be on hand to accompany many of the festival’s songwriters, making his first ever trip to the state of Washington.
Melanie Howe
"The Djembabe"
Percussionist Melanie Howe, also known as “The Djembabe,” is well-known around the country as a unique artist who has been a part of popular touring acts the Southern Drawl Band and Drop Dead Dangerous. She has also toured with award winning vocalist Brittany Kingery and performed with countless other artists.
Join us for these Additional Events:
Special Thanks to Our Sponsors:
A portion of the festival revenue benefits the following charity partners: Harmony Hill Healing Retreat, Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, Salmon for Soldiers, & Parrot Heads of Puget Sound
Parrot Heads of Puget Sound is a nonprofit organization and a sanctioned chapter of Parrot Heads in Paradise, the international Jimmy Buffett-inspired group that has donated raised and donated 65 million dollars and and nearly 5 million hours of volunteer service in the 21st century, and having too much fun along the way, pursuant to their mission to “Party with a Purpose.” PHoPS volunteers will be volunteering on site at the event, helping to raise funds for the other charity partners
Harmony Hill’s mission is to transform the lives of those affected by cancer and to inspire healthy living for all, whether seeking a retreat from daily life or wanting to make healthy lifestyle changes.
The Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group strives to deepen the connection between land, people, and salmon through restoration, education, and research. Their mission is to ensure that wild salmon are once again abundant in the Pacific Northwest.
Salmon for Soldiers is a Non-Profit that provides free fishing events for our US Veterans and Active Duty Military Members. The mission of Salmon for Soldiers is to offer a sense of normalcy and relaxation to our nation’s Veterans through fishing.