Summer 2012 Music Fests

   

With Desert Rocks Festival and the Ogden Bluegrass & Acoustic Music Festival from oh-so-early in the summer behind us, the festival outlook for these hot, hot months might seem bleak. Two words: road trip! Options abound in the Intermountain West, from intimate affairs to colossal music carnivals—the choice is yours.

Targhee Country Festival
It gets pretty damned hot in Nashville in the summer, so it seemed like a good idea to bring the city—or, at least, some of its crooners—up to cooler latitudes for the first-ever Targhee Country Festival. With best-selling Dierks Bentley headlining Thursday, and country mainstay—actually, he shows these new whippersnappers the ins and outs of traditional honky-tonk and Bakersfield country—Dwight Yoakam headlining Friday, it’s sure to be a scintillating first edition. Alta, Wyo., July 26 & 27, $35-$47 per day, $67-$75 for two-day pass, GrandTarghee.com

Oyster Ridge Music Festival
While the headliners (Young Dubliners, Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers, Royal Bliss) are impressive for this free festival, the annual band scramble is even more so. Around 30 players throw their names into a hat and several bands are pulled together at random. Then, they take an hour to practice before taking the stage in competition for fame—or infamy. Kemmerer, Wyo., July 27-29, free, OysterRidgeMusicFestival.com

RockyGrass Festival
It’s been 40 years since Bill Monroe and the Colorado Bluegrass Music Society founded what’s now called RockyGrass Festival. This three-day event carries the intimate charm of the early days of the now bigger but one year younger Telluride Bluegrass Festival (run by the same folks, Planet Bluegrass), yet boasts an insanely amazing acoustic-music lineup. Lyons, Colo., July 27-29, sold out, Bluegrass.com

Sawtooth Music Festival
What had been a one-day festival since its inception, the Sawtooth Music Festival launched a Friday-night pre-festival concert in 2010, which was so successful it turned the event into a two-day spectacle—Idaho’s biggest little music festival. The Cave Singers and Langhorne Slim headline. Stanley, Idaho, July 27 & 28, $15-$45 per day, $50-$55 for weekend pass, SawtoothMusicFestival.com

Targhee Bluegrass Festival
At 8,000 feet above sea level and sitting in the shadows of the Grand Tetons, Targhee Bluegrass Festival’s locale is as cool as the caliber of musicians it attracts—and without all the fuss over the other, bigger mountain bluegrass festival in Telluride. Truth be told, even the artists feel like they’re on vacation. Leftover Salmon, Del McCoury Band, David Grisman Quintet, Infamous Stringdusters and Donna the Buffalo lead a killer lineup. Alta, Wyo., Aug. 10-12, $45-$65 per day, $119-$159 for weekend pass, GrandTarghee.com

NedFest
Nestled in the Front Range just west of Boulder, Nederland is a place all its own. Homegrown brews—among other “homegrown” things—and music make it magical. The powerhouse trio of Steve Kimock, Keller Williams and Kyle Hollingsworth along with Melvin Seals backed by the Jerry Garcia Band make this fest one not to be missed. Nederland, Colo., Aug. 24-26, $35-$55 per day, $105 for two-day pass, $130 for three-day pass, NedFest.org

Intro

Film explores troubadour archetype

 A still from "Intro"

Posted // September 19,2012 -  Intro is not a documentary. It was, however, nominated for the Best International Documentary at the 2011 Torino Film Festival—a surprise to director Brandon Cahoon and the movie’s protagonist, local singer-songwriter David Williams.
While Williams is identified as “David Williams” in the film, the viewer never comes to know the character, mainly due to a lack of dialogue. There are few important instances where Williams speaks: once to an audience, the other to his bandmate. He is, though, portrayed as a troubadour archetype, one trying to connect with himself and to people, at large, through his music. Lacking a spoon-fed narrative and with a Vincent Gallo-esque emphasis on stunning landscape shots, the film is challenging and decidedly a drama—an art flick.
Intro is also not not a documentary. The film follows “the artist” on a real-life road trip from Salt Lake City, stopping to gig in towns along the way, to the Huichica Music Festival in California—the biggest opportunity of his career.
During this venture, Cahoon captures the challenges and virtues of road life and, even more so, of the artistic path. Scenes where Williams must manually pull up the window of his Subaru Outback—which plays a supporting role, along with the landscape—makes one ponder the compromises of choosing a musician’s life. Cahoon films a variety of venues, from packed concert halls to a subway entryway where not one person stops to listen. During one performance at a patio bar, the troubadour, mid-song, asks, “Can we do just one verse really quiet? Just one?”
It’s moments like that that demonstrate Cahoon’s ethos: authenticity and sincerity at all costs.
For this art-film-meets-quasi-doc, it had to be Williams as the lead. For one, Cahoon and Williams first collaborated on Cahoon’s 2011 Salt Lake City Film Festival entry, Parade, which Williams scored. Williams’ story of once moving to the Utah desert (Torrey) to find himself and perfect his musical craft—portrayed with clips of Williams in the desert sewn into the narrative—is enigmatic and provocative. But his evocative songs take center stage in Intro—music filled with ghosts and grappling with demons, says Cahoon.
For years, Cahoon has found himself trying to come to terms and understand the power of Williams’ music. That questioning, that searching, is at the film’s core.
“[Filming and directing Intro] really helped me make sense of the hold his music had on me,” Cahoon says. “David’s music is kind of like my mistress: I can’t understand it, I can’t break away from it, I can’t rationalize its effect on me.”