News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Festival celebrates music in Sisters

The 17th annual Sisters Folk Festival celebrated it's most successful season with capacity audiences over the course of three days.

More than 30 acts, spanning every genre of folk music, entertained huge crowds at all eight venues spread throughout the city. Each year the festival tops itself with the quality and quantity of acts, and it showed with the size and enthusiasm of the audiences.

"I think it's proved out to be our strongest and most diverse lineup ever, we've got everything from bluegrass to a hip-hop band this year, and the response of the crowd has been tremendous," said Jim Cornelius, founder and board chairman of the Sisters Folk Festival. "The Walking Woody's Road set was epic, exceeded very high expectations, and the weather cooperated and Sisters looked great, it's full of people and we couldn't be happier."

Celebrating what would have been Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, Walking Woody's Road was a loving tribute to America's most noted troubadour. Created by Jimmy LaFave, the ensemble band consisted of LaFave's band; Eliza Gilkyson; Slaid Cleaves; and special guests, Woody's granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie and her husband Johnny Irion.

A packed house greeted the troupe on a nearly perfect Friday evening. A combination of the spoken word of Woody Guthrie, taken from notes and journals, and a wide selection from Guthrie's musical library, the performers brought to life the humor of the man as well as his views of America during his life and times.

After nearly an hour, the band completed the musical journey with Guthrie's unofficial national anthem, "This Land Is Your Land." The audience, completely enthralled by the performance, lent a hand and sang along to finish the set.

"Woody wrote 'This Land Is Your Land' in response to 'God Bless America,' and when he sang the song to Pete Seeger, Pete didn't think it was a very good song," said Sarah Lee Guthrie. "He thought it was just OK, and here we are 70 years later, people are leaving a little bit of themselves in the song and I think it's perfectly great that 'This Land Is Your Land' is the unofficial national anthem, I mean there was nothing 'official' about Woody Guthrie."

Saturday's session got underway with staggered starts at all of the venues. With the wealth of talent around town, it was hard to stay in one place. If you missed someone on Friday evening, chances are you could catch them again on Saturday or Sunday.

Longtime Sisters Folk Festival participant Slaid Cleaves took the stage at the Village Green on Saturday afternoon. With just his voice and his Gibson acoustic, Cleaves took the audience on a stroll through his workingman's music. His love of Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen could be heard in the stories he told through his music.

Every year the festival attracts bands and fans from all over the country, and this year was no different. But what was different this year was that the festival sold out it's allotment of tickets for the first time ever.

"Yeah this is the first year that we sold out; we just think that the word's out that this is a great event in a beautiful place and people just want to be here," said Cornelius. "And that's true of artists as well, we've got a national reputation now; artists really want to be here, they know what kind of festival it is. It's a really good listening crowd that really appreciates music, is here for the music, so yeah, we've been discovered."

Gary Keown from Sisters commented, "I've been coming to the festival for 13 years. I'm here with my wife and I'm really looking forward to all of the acts and really enjoying myself. It's been really great to see this event grow over the years."

And grow it has. Every venue seemed near capacity for the entire weekend. The town was abuzz with activity. While jazz and blues can be called uniquely American music and draw a more specific type of listener, there is something about folk music that is universal. Every country in the world has it's own type of folk music. In this country it can be the "Okie" folk of Oklahoma, to the down-home folk from Texas, to the hip-hop folk of a local named MOsley WOtta, and it draws people from all walks.

The party went a little too long for some folks - late-night venues were shut down by police a little earlier than scheduled.

In addition to the musical acts that abound, the event offers festival-goers other attractions. There is a songwriting contest, this year won by RJ Cowdery. There are also workshops, exposure for emerging artists, and the Americana Project is represented. The highlight for many of the artists is a songwriting academy held at Caldera.

"They asked Johnny and I to come and instruct, and we absolutely loved it," said Sarah Lee Guthrie. "The song camp was like pure love and light, it was so beautiful. And it's courageous for some doing it for the first time, and to see that is like recharging our batteries."

Sunday greeted everyone with a cool but clear day. A late season fire started near Pole Creek campground directed smoke over the area, but it did nothing to dampen the spirits of the crowd or the performers on the festival's last day.

With the 17th year in the books, and the event a success despite what is still a sluggish economy, what does the festival do next?

"Economic depression is good for songwriters; just ask Woody Guthrie," Cornelius said. "But moving forward more venues is the answer, probably not any more big venues but more smaller venues. It's a matter of balance of trying to let the festival grow as it needs to grow to accommodate the people who want to be here, but still keep the character that makes them want to be here. It's a really fine line to walk, a hard balancing act. We spend a lot of time thinking about it and working on it. We learned things from this festival that we'll apply to the next festival just like we do every year, and we just try to get better every year."

 

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