A Weekend of Music and Adventure

I've been thinking about attending the Butte Folk Festival for two years. This year I finally made an entire weekend of it, after Mickey, one of of the summer techs, invited me.  I got busy and found a place to camp out, packed up my stuff and a little extra for her, and we started out mid morning last Friday. We were headed to a free dispersed camping area near Homestake Pass, which is between Butte and Whitehall.  We had a little problem with our GPS but soon were turning on the well kept dirt road. Mickey seemed to know exactly at which little sub road to turn to find us a premier campsite. I was glad we were in her big truck because my little Honda Fit would have had a few spots that would have been hard to navigate.

We got our tents set up and hung out a little before eating a early meal in camp, then heading back to Butte in order to be there for the festival opening. We left the truck in a parking lot and caught a bus up to where the streets were closed for the festival.  Then we walked several more blocks to the original stage, on top of the hill above Butte.

The dispersed campsites are within a geologic area known as the Boulder Batholith - we had
 our own set of boulders in our campground

Early morning view of our camp

Dalmatian Toadflax - an invasive weed in Montana

That evening was amazing and the next two days just got better. I won't bore you with everything we heard, which, was not everything there was to hear. But I'll give you pictures and a little discussion about some of my favorites. We listened to musicians from several countries and states, as well as from Montana. Spainish flamenco, Indian flute, Indian hip hop, choral music, blues, country, bras band, Egyptian, Appalachian...... the diversity was as amazing as the music.

The Treme Bass Band started off the festival with a "parade" - however it was only them marching in to the stage area.  They are from New Orleans and we enjoyed another hour of them later in the weekend. 

Some of the crowd on Friday night - Saturday must have been several times larger when there were six stages, many with standing room only or outside standing room only

Annika Chambers - an up and coming blues singer from Houston, TX

C.J. Chenier - Clifton's son - and his Zyedoco band were favorites and we had to stand for the entire performance - from Louisiana

The sleeper group for me was the Iberi Georgian Choir. The five members of a larger choir had the most arresting voices as they sang both a cappella and with instruments. Mickey and I went to hear them twice (each performer plays three times.) I found one of the songs we heard on you-tube.

Iberi Georgian Choir - wearing their national costumes

Two shows came together to epitomize how music knows no boundaries. We went to a show by a native Montana Blackfoot Indian, Troy DeRoche, who makes flutes, and plays his original music on them. He had been followed on Saturday by a Swedish musician, Astrid Selling, who had gone to college in Butte. Troy DeRoche listened to her concert and realized they both were playing songs in the pentatonic scale, which is equivalent to playing only the black keys on the piano. They ended up playing together and then decided to play together for the public on Sunday. They played two songs, one with him playing one of his flutes, and her singing and one with him playing the flute and her playing the lap harp. It was so beautiful to think that this music comes from a primitive part of us and that two such different people both understand it.

Blackfoot Indian flute and Swedish lap harp

We  had free mornings and used them to explore. On Saturday morning, we  drove down to the lake that is ten miles away, then  we went to the museum of mining, which depicted the mining from years past. We could have taken a tour which allows you to actually go down to as far as 100 feet into the earth. But we stayed above ground. What we visited was just exhibits in what looked like a mining town and its mine. Butte had a little gold mining and a little more silver mining, but its wealth came from the mining of copper. We didn't go to look at the Berkley Pitt, the worlds largest superfund site, left over from strip mining the richest hill on earth. There is still some mining going on in Butte.

Micky going into the mining museum

Street scene

Schoolhouse

Mickey and old engine

Sauerkraut factory building

Cabbages waiting to be made into kraut

Barrels of sauerkraut fermenting

Mine exhibit showing how blasting was done

Drawing of the rail bicycle the supervisors used in the mine

Copper ore being removed from the mine 

A view into the Pawn Shop

This appeared to be a shop for women

On Sunday, we ate breakfast and packed up before going off to find the Ringing Rocks.  They are only a few more miles east.  Most vehicles can do all but the last mile of the road. We managed to get all the way to the parking lot in Mickey's truck. There we found a variety of hammers and each of us took one and started walking and climbing around tapping as we went. Some rocks don't ring but many do. Here is a video of Mickey checking some of them out. Click below the picture for the video.

Click here for video

I barely got home and got the house cleared of stuff before my best friend, Natalie,  and daughter, Ellen, stopped by for a visit.  Natalie had just helped her daughter get married and was babysitting her daughter's dog.  They were all in Natalie's van which was pulling her little camping trailer.  They camped at Upper Campground, but ate breakfast and supper with me.  I took two days off to play with them.  They went to Grand Tetons before heading back to Boulder, Colorado.