True Blue
Blues, bay, hospitality recipe for success at Flathead Lake Blues Festival
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Skies brightened and thunderheads moved north just in time for the start of the Flathead Lake Blues Festival on Friday evening along the lakeshore at Salish Point.
“It was great, especially considering the forecast,” Brian Higgins of Kalispell said. A high wind advisory was in effect Friday. Instead, a gentle breeze brought relief from the heat.
In 2014, a squall soaked the festival, but die-hard blues fans still got their monies’ worth as displaced bands performed the following morning, according to Higgins.
“Last year there were 20 people under our canopy,” Higgins said. “We rode the storm out.”
Higgins was on the selection committee and helped choose the bands for this year’s two-day event. Although he plays guitar, he watches the festival with other music fans and said he was anticipating a “great show” Saturday evening.
“You listen to the show. Sometimes you feel like dancing, so you ask someone to dance. If you want a beverage, you go get a beverage. If you want dinner, you go get dinner. You see people who are like-minded about music — mostly everyone is a blues fan,” Higgins said. “It’s a big social event.”
Joe and Marilyn Bicknell of Boerne, Texas, have been visiting music festivals along the route of their “walkabout,” pulling a trailer on their six-month road trip across the west.
“I just love outdoor music,” Joe said.
When they learned about the Flathead Lake Blues Festival from a flyer in South Dakota, the couple decided to check it out, and fell in love with Polson.
“We love it,” Marilyn said. “We stayed an extra four or five days, we like it so much.”
The two-day event drew 973 fans through the ticket gates, according to board president Dorinda Huntley. Because the gates are open to anyone after 10 p.m. on Saturday the total likely topped 1,000 people this year, organizer David Venters said.
“People love a good music festival, and we try each year to make it better than the last one,” Venters said. “We try and mix it up. We don’t have the same bands two years in a row.”
The recipe for success has many ingredients: the beautiful venue offering swimming, scenery and great food vendors; the quality of the bands; the selflessness of volunteers.
But one of the most surprising and effective ingredient is the hospitality shown to bands and visitors.
“We thank people for attending the event and they look at you like, ‘what?’ We are trying to be gracious,” Dorinda said.
Now in its fifth year, the blues festival has made big changes. The first two years were one-day events around the Fourth of July that landed organizers in a financial hole. After researching other dates, they decided to “go big or go home,” Venters said. Venters and Huntley began really branding the festival with glossy flyers, distributing cards through the I90 corridor and event as far as South Dakota. They relocated to the third weekend in August and added another day, which brought more people.
They started a sponsor drive.
With the help of sponsors and dedicated volunteers, it worked.
Planning for the sixth annual festival begins Sept. 1.
“It happens behind the scenes,” Huntley said.. “Chris Ricciardi works like a trooper. AnneCherie Mellen, she works all year round … and never gets rattled. We are so lucky to have people like that.”
Huntley said they could still us many more volunteers as the festival continues to grow.
For more information or to get involved, call 406-646-6816.
