Troy festival hoping for growth
It’s all about getting the word out.
Ralph Stever, Troy Fine Arts council projects director, announced that the Kootenai River Bluegrass Festival will return for a second straight year this summer. And with an aggressive advertising campaign, Stever believes the festival can hit its attendance goals.
“That’s going to be our big challenge – getting the word out,” Stever said, who added that in addition to online and traditional types of advertising, he also wants to target Montana’s friends to the north as well as college campuses. “Last year, we didn’t do any advertising in Canada.”
The festival is scheduled for Roosevelt Park in Troy from July 17-19. Just recently, the Troy Fine Arts Council was awarded a second grant of $5,000 from the Montana Department of Commerce’s Travel Montana. The grant program is designed to help support economic development in communities through the creation of annual music events.
“We’re shooting for 1,500 this year,” Stever said. “We’ll be getting closer to becoming self-sustaining. … The community really sees the benefit of it coming to town for three days.”
Last year, the Troy-based group received $10,000 and if the festival continues to grow, it could get another $2,500 next year.
“If an event appears to be working and drawing folks from outside a 100-mile radius of the community an organization may receive funding for up to three years,” Stever said about Travel Montana’s grant criteria.
“For a first-year event the festival did real well last year,” Stever said. “We had well over 900 folks attend our three-day event and about half came from outside a hundred-mile radius of Troy.”
Stever said the effort to attract bands really came together for this summer. In fact, he believes the festival will be one of the top bluegrass events in all of the Pacific Northwest.
“The third weekend in July worked out well for finding some big-name bands across the Northwest that happened to be in between gigs and had heard about our festival from the nine bands that played last year,” Stever said.
The headliner will be John Reischman and the Jaybirds from Vancouver, British Columbia. The lineup also includes Jackstraw, another Canadian band that appeared last year. Others slated to play are Loose Digits, a progressive bluegrass band out of Seattle, and Viper Central, a well-known group out of Vancouver that will appear for the first time in the United States.
The rest of the lineup includes Big Red Barn, Mighty Squirrel, Wise River Mercantile, Mike and Tari Conroy, Ray and Shirley Jacobs and Bryan Bowers – who will again serve as emcee.
But before those musicians hit Troy in just over three months, the festival will be trying hard to spread the word.
“At this point we are focused on raising the funds we will need for a expansive advertising campaign across Montana, the inland Northwest and on up into Canada,” Stever said. “We feel we have one of the best lineups of all the summer festivals in the Northwest and now folks have to hear about it.”
Stever has several ideas for potential sponsors willing to donate and also would like to hear from food and art vendors. The festival also needs volunteers willing to help with the logistics of the event.
For those interested in helping through a business sponsorship or serving as a volunteer, or for information on becoming a vendor, call Stever at 295-3016.
On the Net: The Kootenai River Bluegrass Festival plans to update its website with new information. To find it, go to: www.krbgf.org .