For 30 years, a handful of music-loving folks have kept the first weekend in August open for the annual Northern Rockies Folk Festival. This year, the anniversary was celebrated by longtime friends and family with particular vigor.
Nearly 5,000 attended the two-day festival Aug. 3 and 4. They brought blankets and picnics, and by nightfall were dancing up a storm. Though rain delayed the start of the show on Saturday, the bands were well on their way by mid-day. MC Dallas Dobro quipped, "FEMA is helping out by sending tarps for everyone ... Monday."
Friday night's headliner, The Greencards, a Nashville-based progressive folk band, proved they were as hot a surging band as was rumored. Now we know. Not since Bela Fleck and Sam Bush taught the world that bluegrass could rock has the genre been so enlivened. Carol Young's singing and bass playing grounded the innovative antics of her band mates Kym Warner on wicked mandolin and Eamon McLaughlin on a fiery fiddle.
"Everybody enjoyed them," said Pete Kramer, Northern Rockies Folk Festival board president. "I saw very few people leave the park until their performance was finished. Oftentimes, people will start leaving early, just because of the hour. Not the case during the Greencards."
On Saturday, the bands were treated to an ever-expanding crowd of festival goers, who were in turn entertained by lively local music and the tunes of visiting performers Niccole Bayley and Mo Kelly of Boise, and the acoustic blues of Californians Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan.
Sultan played a Kenny Sultan Sunburst Martin Guitar. When approached regarding a namesake guitar, he suggested a modern version, but one with a definite "old school" character. "I really pushed to get it as close to the original as possible," he said.
"The show went great and all the feedback I've gotten is that it was yet another wonderful and successful show, and everybody had a blast," Kramer said. "Everybody loved seeing Tom and Kenny again. Kim Stocking was great, and we also had a lot of people tell us how much they enjoyed Mo and Niccole. The Wood River kids, Kelsie (Barrow) and her friends, of course, impressed everybody in attendance. We know the subdudes also had a great time and I thought Rob Quist turned in one of the best performances I'd ever seen him do and that's significant because all of his performances have always been terrific."
Subdudes' lead singer and guitarist Tommy Malone summed up the event the best.
"This is one great crowd here in Hailey," he said after the band's enlivening performance.
Mo Kelly seconded that.
"We will come back anytime they want us," she said.
Rob Quist and his stalwart band of co-musicians that go by the name of the Great Northern play a great set of swinging cowboy Western tunes at the Northern Rockies Folk Festival. Photo by Willy Cook
