![bret-michaels-carrie-reiser2 Bret Michaels (photo: Carrie Reiser)](https://www.genestout.com/wp-content/uploads/bret-michaels-carrie-reiser2-269x300.png)
The Puyallup Fair begins each year with a new slogan.
The 2010 slogan is “Free Your Glee,” which sounds more like a catch phrase for “American Idol” (or a certain Fox TV show) than a slogan for a 100-plus-year-old fair that has been entertaining Northwesterners for generations and is older than Seattle’s legendary Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909.
Founded in 1900, the grand old fair also pre-dates the Model T Ford, talking pictures and sliced bread. Read about the fair’s history here.
Opening Friday (Sept. 10) and continuing through Sept. 26, the Fair is packed with activities, among them big-name grandstand concerts, bronco-busting rodeo competitions, stomach-twirling thrill rides, snorting livestock displays and old-school fast food, such as pink cotton candy, raspberry jam-filled scones and mustard-loving Krusty Pups.
![adam-lambert Adam Lambert (photo: Lee Cherry)](https://www.genestout.com/wp-content/uploads/adam-lambert-300x252.jpg)
The grandstand lineup opens with a standing-only concert Friday by Bret Michaels, the actor, director, screenwriter, producer, reality star and former singer for glam-metal band Poison.
Over the coming three weeks, grandstand shows include such acts Kenny Rogers with the Tacoma Symphony, John Legend and Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, We Three Kings, Willie Nelson, Chris Botti and Natalie Cole, Dierks Bentley, Queensryche, Adam Lambert, Daryl Hall & John Oates, Heart and Kid Rock, among others. No kidding, it’s an impressive lineup. And it’s very cool that two big Northwest bands — Queensryche and Heart — and headlining this year.
Read about Kid Rock’s recent homecoming show in Detroit here.
![kid-rock-brian-tipton Kid Rock (photo: Brian Tipton)](https://www.genestout.com/wp-content/uploads/kid-rock-brian-tipton-300x200.jpg)
For general information about the Fair, click here. And for the complete grandstand lineup, follow this link.