There's a musical style here for everyone

Even if the musical acts on the bill for Kalispell’s 12th annual First Night Flathead aren’t household names, every household should be able to find a style of music its members can appreciate. 

The annual downtown family celebration of the New Year offers myriad musical genres: rock (indie, metal and classic), blues, jazz, classical, vocals, country, bluegrass, piano bar, Scottish bagpipes and cowboy. 

From 7 p.m. to well after midnight, music and other activities will be going nonstop.

A First Night staple entertainer, Gene Gordner, will hold court from 8 to 11 p.m. at Western Outdoor. Gordner, billed as the “Last of the Singing Cowboys,” has been part of all but the first few First Nights and he has played to a sizable crowd every year.

Gordner, 55, said he sings “old traditional songs, not country music — there’s a difference.”

He dresses up in old-time cowboy clothes and sings songs that are often more than a century old. He adds a narrative and humor to thread the songs together and lighten up the mood, since “most cowboy songs are about dead cowboys,” he said.

The nostalgia of Gordner’s music often brings the listeners in, but he said the stories keep them captivated.

“I get tons of people who say that their Grandpa sang that song to them, or their Dad,” he said. “But then the stories are a better hook than the songs are. Very few have heard the stories; everyone has heard the music.”

Gordner moved to the Flathead Valley in the 1970s after a stint in the Marines. He was born in Pennsylvania but is glad he escaped that part of the country.

“Like all the kids in the 1880s, I wanted to go west and be a cowboy,” he said. “I ended up with the same wanderlust. I never nailed down why I wanted to be in the West, it was just my dream.”

Gordner turned his passion for all things western into his professions.

Music helps pay his bills, since he sings mostly in the summer for dude ranches and for chuck wagon dinners at Flathead Lake Lodge. He used to entertain regularly at Hargrave Ranch west of Kalispell.

Other western passions have given him careers; he currently builds guns for a living and used to create custom-made saddles. 

He lives on 40 acres west of Kalispell and has some animals and as much isolation as any cowboy could crave. But despite his tribute to the lifestyle through his musical act, he can’t in good conscience co-opt the title of “cowboy.”

“I would hate to say I’m a cowboy to real cowboys who are out calving in March when it’s freezing or riding the range,” he said. “There are still tons of real cowboys in the West who do their job day and night, and they deserve the credit.”

At Shorty’s Barbershop, the musical lineup for First Night stays firmly in the present with modern acts playing original rock and folk music.

The night at Shorty’s is topped off by an 11 p.m. set by Throne of Malediction, a local metal band that’s finding international success through the Internet.

The band, led by Kalispell’s Eric Horner and his wife, Jessica, is in the process of recording its first CD, “Ceremonial Blood,” for the Dutch label Ziekte Records. The group also has released a video for a collaboration with South African metal artist Verkrag.

The other band members are Tim Godbold, Jeff King and Nick Fischer. Eric and Jessica Horner started the band in 2006 and still write the music.

Jessica grew up in the valley and Eric moved here when he was in high school; his Montana connections include his father’s first cousin, famed Bozeman paleontologist Jack Horner.

Horner calls the band’s sound “mountain metal” as a nod to its home base in Montana, but Throne of Malediction has received the most positive response from European metal fans.

“They say we have a really European vibe, a different sound,” he said. “We’re not really trendy, a lot of the music is dark, not like simple pop sounds, but more elaborate and progressive. It’s not really radio-friendly.”

Horner, 32, is going on tour in Norway to play guitar for a solo tour by the bass player from Carpathian Forest, a popular Norwegian metal band.

He is finding that running a band requires hard work and persistence. Doing everything he can to promote the band, keeping up an Internet presence and finding live gigs, keeps the stay-at-home father busy.

“We are pretty boring normal people, we just let our darkness out through our music,” he said. “We’re not evil Satanists. It’s like a horror movie, a scary movie through music.”

On the opposite side of the musical spectrum is Off The Record, a sunny harmonious blend of five female and three male singers, plus a few musicians to back them up.

Their spokeswoman, Julie Stone, emphasizes the group’s lighthearted approach.

“We have a lot of fun together, we might do some serious pieces, but we have a lot of humorous stuff,” she said. What makes them stand out is also their “fun choreography, which is different than most groups.” 

Off The Record is doing its third First Night appearance. Due to last year’s overflowing crowd, the group has been moved from one of the smaller venues to a prime-time spot at Central Christian Church at 10 p.m.

Off The Record gave its first stand-alone concert last June, and otherwise have performed for various organizational events and private parties.

The chorus is composed of Stone, Genia Allen-Schmid, Lynn Fawcett, Alison Klein, Cissy Booth Mark Schultz, Kalen Jongeling and Tom Nerison. All but one have experience singing with the Glacier Chorale and all have extensive performance backgrounds.

They have broken away from the more serious classical repertoire of the chorale and taken a less reverent but still seriously musical approach to their choice of songs. Their music selections are mostly jazz standards or ethnic, folk and pop compositions.

“We’re just very eclectic,” Stone said.

For more information and a full schedule, visit www.firstnightflathead.org.

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.