Fan favorite Wylie and the Wild West returns to the Boulder Music and Arts Festival, 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Sept. 7 at Veterans’ Park in Boulder.
The annual festival, which has been a weekend-long event for the past decade, now packs a lot of fun into one day. Bring a chair and listen, or swing your partner to tunes by professional and amateur Montana musicians.
“The music we want to enjoy at the Boulder Music and Arts Festival is the kind of music Montanans love,” says Jefferson County Event Coordinator Bruce Binkowski. “And we think we have a great cross section of entertaining music.”
In addition to the western swing and authentic country sounds of Wylie and the Wild West (augmented by band leader and Montana native Wylie Gustafson’s stellar yodeling), the roster includes Butte’s Dublin Gulch, a mainstay of the Irish music scene in Montana. The group “was a hit last year with their Irish music and we decided to bring them back for an encore performance,” says Binkowski.
Fiddle player and vocalist Brigid Reedy and her brother, Johnny Guitar, have performed their country-hued tunes for many years at the festival and are fan favorites. Reedy, who has performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, NV, is described as “a singular young voice representing her beloved home state of Montana.”
MT-CAN, a local Boulder group that plays country, kicks off the music selection at 10 a.m., followed by guitar player and singer John Montoya from the Whitehall area. North Hill Trio from Helena takes the stage at 12:15 p.m. with an infectious blend of bluegrass and newgrass; and Backroad Betty plays “grassicana,” a combination of bluegrass and Americana, at 1:30 p.m. Dublin Gulch takes the stage at 2:45, followed by Brigid Reedy, with Wylie and the Wild West closing out the afternoon at 5:15 p.m.
The festival also hosts around 20 vendors who offer a wide array of wares including soaps and skin care products, paintings, quilts, aprons, towels, stained glass and woodcrafts, area rugs, art and books, wildlife photos, handcrafted jewelry items, beadwork and handmade toys, framed acrylic prints, and more.
A food vendor is also on-site and water and soft drinks are available.
Admission is free; visit www.bouldermtchamber.org.