2026 Wheatland Music Festival WheatSongs
Have you ever wanted to perform at Wheatland Music Festival? Here is your opportunity! All participants in Wheatsongs will perfrom on the Songstage at Wheatland on Sunday afternoon of the festival. Wheatsongs is not a competition. You will be a part of a warm and welcoming family of fellow songwriters and share an 11 day journey into the songwriting experience, ending with a final concert featuring your assignment song.
Program Leader Jan Krist will facilitate activities including pre-festival group sessions, song assignments, and one-on-one coaching sessions, online via Zoom, or phone, during the week leading up to the Festival. Program leader Dan Hazlett is a talented entertainer and songwriter. He is well-known for his finely honed acoustic guitar work and his soulful voice.
Jan Krist Bio
Detroit born singer-songwriter Jan Krist was raised on rock, and schooled in the folk of the 60’s and 70’s. Today, Krist's work reflects the power and poetry of having matured as an artist in that place and time. With 14 solo recordings to her name, and 2 duo records with Jim Bizer, Jan continues to impress. She is a member of Diamonds in the Rust,( Jim Bizer, Annie and Rod Capps, and husband, Alan Finkbeiner) and a founding member of southeast songwriter’s collective of note, The Yellow Room Gang. Critical response to her music has been strong and effusive, and her work has been praised in the pages of Entertainment Weekly Magazine, Dirty Linen, Image Journal, and Billboard Magazine, among other publications. Billboard critic, Bob Darden had this to say of Jan’s work:“Jan Krist is a singer songwriter whose music has an uncanny way of cutting to the heart of a topic and providing the listener with food for thought. Her talent as a songwriter equals – if not surpasses – her vocal gifts. She has an uncanny way of cutting to the heart of a topic and providing the listener with food for thought.” Jan has twice been a finalist in the New Folk Competition, held each year at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, Texas. She has also won four Detroit Metro Music Awards, and has been nominated for that honor 13 times.
Dan Hazlett Bio
For more than 50 years, Dan Hazlett has performed and toured throughout the Midwest. His ten previously released CDs have received airplay throughout the United States and internationally. Dan achieved recognition for his songs as a winner in events such as the Great Lakes Songwriting Contest, and the Big Top Chautauqua Songwriting Contest As a songwriting educator, Dan has been featured on the staff at The Interlochen Center for the Arts, Lamb’s Retreat for Songwriters and the Wheatland Music Festival. As a playwright, Dan authored and toured with the musical comedy “Tumbledown Town and is the co-author of a new musical entitled “Calling Winston.” He is a founding member of SE Michigan’s Songwriters Anonymous, spent seven years as a folk DJ on college radio and has recorded and produced dozens of records for local songwriters.