Music festival is crowning achievement for David Feffer

The Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival was born over a few drinks in the kitchen.

David Feffer had spent the weekend immersed in music. He’d invited Andrew Leonard, a guitar instructor he’d studied with, to his home in Bigfork for a house concert and a fundraiser. The events had gone well, and Feffer, Leonard, and Feffer’s son and brother-in-law were celebrating their success.

Then the talk turned to planning: How could they bring more great guitarists to the valley?

“We were talking and drinking bourbon, and it turned into a college bull session. It started feeding itself,” Feffer recalled. “We said, ‘We live in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Why wouldn’t great musicians want to come here with their family and spend time and teach?’”

From that conversation, the nonprofit Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation emerged. Now in its third year, the foundation’s guitar festival is in full swing this week in Bigfork. Musicians from around the globe have converged at Flathead Lake Lodge to study under some of the world’s top guitarists, and concerts in a variety of genres are scheduled nearly every night.

As chairman of the foundation, Feffer’s schedule is jam-packed this week. But he couldn’t be more thrilled with the festival and its top-notch talent.

“From the very beginning, we said, ‘If we’re going to do it, we want to create something unique and that is the very best in the world,’” he said. “From Day One, we were not looking to create a small, modest event. We were going to do something absolutely world class.”

The festival is the work of a host of volunteers, led by Feffer, a man who first picked up the guitar seven years ago. He’d played saxophone and clarinet while growing up in Washington, D.C., but hung up his instruments after his freshman year in college. School and friends — and later, career and family — kept Feffer from playing music for decades, but he told people constantly, “the second half of my life, I’m going to play guitar.”

His career in health care kept him busy for most of his life. His family had long been involved in medicine — Feffer’s father was the first dedicated spine surgeon in the United States — but Feffer knew from an early age his path lay somewhat outside the hospital. He loved creating something from nothing and became an entrepreneur.

He and a partner “created the nurse decision support on the telephone industry,” he said. In the business, nurses coach patients who need advice about and support regarding their medical conditions.

“People are very intimidated by their doctors, and doctors speak in Latin,” Feffer explained. “On top of that, if you have a serious condition, you’re either scared or you’re just feeling not as smart as your doctor. ... What our nurses did, and our online resources, is they helped people be better decision-makers.”

Feffer’s first company was in Missoula in the early 1980s. From there, he built similar businesses in Seattle, Connecticut and Boston. In 2008, his company was purchased by British United Provident, which does business all over the world.

Since then, Feffer has had more time to devote to other projects, including mentoring young entrepreneurs in their own startup projects. He recently became vice chairman of the North Valley Hospital Board of Directors. He is a board member for the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts and has served on the board for Ravenwood.

But his primary commitment is to the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation.

“Literally for the last three and a half years, it’s been seven days a week, 60 to 80 hours a week,” he said. “We were in Europe for five and a half weeks, and I worked on it every day.”

Feffer also makes time for guitar, which he finally picked up at age 56. It was love at first touch.

“I love the tactile nature,” he said of the instrument. “The strings, when you touch them, it’s not a hard piece of metal. They move. When you move your fingers, there’s a flow.”

Playing guitar has also had an unexpected benefit: It has helped ease Feffer’s Tourette’s syndrome.

“With Tourette’s ... you have neurons fire in your brain, and instead of connecting to other neurons, it goes basically into a blank space in your brain, like little explosions in the brain,” he explained.

“What the guitar does is it somehow grabs the explosions and connects them to other neurons. When my fingers move and I’m playing, my mind, my body is relaxed, is peaceful, is content. It’s really interesting.”

The guitar also taps into Feffer’s lifelong love of creating things.

“When you’re playing music, you’re always creating something. It’s a journey,” he said. “When you play a song today, it’s different from what you play yesterday, because you’re different from who you were yesterday.”

Feffer will be participating in workshops and attending concerts all week at the guitar festival. For a complete lists of festival events, including ticket information, visit cocguitarfoundation.org.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.