'Learn to play in the groove'

The Crown of the Continent Guitar Workshop and Festival is in full swing this week, and no one has the blues.

The grounds at Flathead Lake Lodge in Bigfork are a hive of activity. Students hurry to attend classes, while workshop demonstrations can be heard from rooms across the grounds. At night, the festival tent come to life with concerts for audiences of guitar and music enthusiasts from all over Montana.

Ana Popovic, one of the featured musicians and instructors at the camp, said the event has been a great experience for her as well as the students.

“It’s a wonderful group of people,” Popovic said. “It’s people who are all happy to be musicians and want to learn more.”

Popovic taught a class on blues guitar and shared her experience as a working musician.

The “workshop” was more of a conversation, with Popovic sitting on the ground in front of a group of students with a guitar across her lap. Throughout the 90-minute class Tuesday, she demonstrated techniques the students saw in her concert the previous night or answered questions they had about her career.

“It’s like a sport,” Popovic told the class. “It’s an exercise to learn to play in the groove, and make people dance to your music.”

Popovic, born in what was then Yugoslavia in 1976, is one of today’s leading blues guitarists.

She was nominated as 2014 Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the year and is the first woman Artist-in-Residence that the Bigfork festival has hosted. Popovic is currently working on her next album as well as preparing to tour with a Jimi Hendrix tribute group in which she is the only woman.

“When I started, I was 23 [years old] in Nashville,” Popovic told her workshop group. “And I was from Serbia! If I could do it, you guys can do it.”

After the class, Popovic spent time listening to class members play and answered specific, personal questions.

Most participants in the festival stay at the lodge in Bigfork, giving the students easy access to world-renowned guitar teachers and musicians.

Throughout the week, the artists and students are able to mingle and work on skills together as they eat meals, attend workshops, concerts, and jam sessions together. This creates ample opportunities for students to improve, both in their musical skills and their self-confidence.

The festival/workshop creates a noncompetitive environment where students are able to take classes from professional musicians such as Popovic on different guitar techniques and styles to help them hone their skills.

This year is the fifth annual festival and it continues to grow, hosting over 80 students and instructors from across the United States, including New York and Florida.

In past years, the festival has had international participants from Brazil and Japan. Over 25 of this year’s participants are on scholarships, with the majority of these scholarships going to Flathead Valley residents.

The idea for the camp started in 2009 when David Feffer, a lifelong guitar player, began mulling the idea of a regional guitar workshop. He had attended workshops such as the Crown of the Continent back East and strove to find a similar event in the West to promote the artistry of guitar across all genres of music.

Feffer met instructor Andrew Leonard at one such East Coast event and invited him back to Montana to continue lessons. The two, along with Feffer’s son, William, and brother-in-law, Mark Noonan, began to hatch the idea for the Crown festival.

In 2010, they held the first workshop and festival with five performances and 400 attendees. Now the festival has grown big enough to have up to 900 people per night for the concerts.

Last year’s festival contributed over $3 million to the local economy, according to a study by NorthWestern Energy and Flathead Economic Development Authority.

The festival also offers art and cooking classes to participants, as well as excursions to Bigfork and time on Flathead Lake. The participants are encouraged to see Glacier National Park or explore the area to find inspiration.

The festival will run for the remainder of the week with concerts each night leading up to Friday night when the students will perform.

For the first time ever, Friday’s show is free and open to the public. The student concert will start at 7:30 with the “Beginners and Beyond” group, and then move into more advanced groups as the night progresses.

The festival culminates on Saturday afternoon with performances by faculty and staff members. The public is invited to join the camp participants at Flathead Lake Lodge for a cookout, booths and music beginning at 4:30 p.m.

For a schedule of events or for more information, go online to www.cocguitarfoundation.org.

Reporter Brianna Loper may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at bloper@dailyinterlake.com.