WHERE ARE YOUR FESTIVALS YELLOWSTONE BLUEGRASS ASSOCIATION ?

We are now in the middle of summer bluegrass festival season. A number of successful bluegrass festivals are held in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Casper, Buffalo, and Worland, WY have annual events. Idaho has at least three. The Dakotas have theirs. Western Montana has seen them for years at Hamilton and now Darby. There is a winter event at Big Sky. Lots of activities in Missoula.  Even little Miles City presents a good one every September. Butte has the big folk festival and out of the way White Sulpher Springs has a  growing country fest annually. So why has the YBA never been successful in putting on a real bluegrass festival?  A few years ago they tried a couple of times in Red Lodge and more recently at Zoo Montana, but they were all failures. This blogger believes they did not work for a number of reasons. They did not bring in any well established outside bands. Instead they mainly relied on local YBA groups and generally unknown groups like the “Pinetoppers.“ The problem was that fans could come to the Friday jams and the showcases and hear these same local bands and musicians perform free of charge. Then the YBA seemed to expect fans to DRIVE to a “festival” and pay to hear these same groups. Were too many egos of YBA pickers involved?  The YBA members were also providing any necessary labor for the event, selling and taking tickets, parking, etc. No outside people doing that work. The YBA board was also the planning committee. Again, no outside business people really involved. There was poor publicity for all these events. If people do not know about it they obviously will not attend. The YBA seemed to expect the ZOO to publicize that event while the ZOO probably thought the YBA would take care of it. Other music events at ZOO Montana have been quite successful.  Red Lodge presented it’s own set of problems. The biggest may that Red Lodge has a very aggressive chamber of commerce and schedule many events all summer long. That can make a bluegrass event rather low on the list. The MT Fiddlers had a similar experience with moving the state fiddle contest from Polson to Red Lodge. At first it was a novelty and then attendance dwindled way down. They moved to Conrad. The Big Horn Festival in Buffalo works because they avoid most of the above problems and have the entire community solidly behind this event. The events in Worland and Pocatello are very family oriented with BBQ, other food and craft booths and play areas for kids. The Hard Times in Darby combines good music with jamming and a camp out. Even Miles City is successful by keeping it all within reason and having good folks from the community behind it. If the YBA is ever to succeed in putting on a real festival they need to look at why it works in these other locales and avoid the mistakes of the past. It is a shame that the Yellowstone Bluegrass Association does not present a good bluegrass festival every year for fans in the Billings region, the most populous in the state.