Indie, country stars combine in Under the Big Sky’s festival of Americana

Toward the end of Shakey Graves’ set, the one-man act from Texas plays an old standard of his, “Roll the Bones,” hitting the line “them city boys in country clothes” with extra emphasis.

The crowd at Under the Big Sky — freshly reddened from the afternoon’s sun and awash in unrumpled straw hats, shining belt buckles and unscuffed boots — roars approvingly. The audience sprawled out before the Great Northern stage on Saturday night was happily self-aware.

From its trappings alone, the three-day music festival in Whitefish exuded a country western vibe. Those straw hats with curled brims came off only once on Saturday, during the rendition of the national anthem heralding a brief rodeo interlude across the grounds of Big Mountain Ranch. Among the typical concert fare sold by vendors — band T-shirts, hoodies and trucker hats — visitors could splurge for fringed clothing, leather accessories and stetsons. Reusable bottles were filled at “watering holes.” The twang of a fiddle was never far off.

One of Sunday’s headliners was outlaw country’s Cody Jinks, and he was preceded over the prior days by Zach Bryan, Turnpike Troubadours and Sierra Ferrell. Saving Country Music heralded Under the Big Sky “as quickly becoming both one of the biggest and most important festivals in independent country and Americana” after organizers unveiled this year’s lineup.

But you’d be hard pressed to define Saturday’s big act, Lord Huron, as either country or western, even if they closed the night playing with a desert-scape backdrop of lightbulb-illuminated cacti and pulling heavily from the twangy serenades and ballads of “Long Lost,” their most recent album.

Same for Shakey Graves, the stage name of Austin-based Alejandro Rose-Garcia, who slid effortlessly between rock, blues and the sublime. The Silent Comedy? You wouldn’t find their sound out of place in the soundtrack of a modern western, but the gritty, driving blues rock with a banging boogie-woogie piano would seem just as natural in a subterranean urban bar as a honky-tonk on a lonely country road.

Paul Cauthen, for sure, but only if you want to see the genre turned on its head and skewered from within. The East Texas singer-songwriter might boast a voice akin to Waylon Jennings, but with new heel-tapping singles like “Champagne & a Limo” and “Country as F*” there’s more than a little mainstream rock ‘n’ roll in the mix.

"ONE THING I love about the Americana genre: It’s not so restrictive,” says Michelle Rivers a few hours after her set on the Big Mountain stage, which is dominated by its eponymous peak. The Eureka-based musician was born in Nashville and while she admires the work coming out of Music City, the industry based there can seem confining.

Not so here, on the open land just outside of Whitefish. As Rivers reflects on opening up the Big Mountain Stage on Saturday morning and her musical influences, the Lil Smokies of Missoula fame launch into their set behind her on the Great Northern Stage. These guys, she says, adding them to a list that includes Watchhouse – formerly Mandolin Orange – Sarah Jarosz and fellow Under the Big Sky performer Sierra Ferrell.

Tracing her musical roots, Rivers says growing up in Nashville meant cultivating a strong connection to what was happening on the country western scene, in her case the Dixie Chicks, Trisha Yearwood and a dash of Shania Twain. Living so close to the Kentucky border, the influence of bluegrass was inescapable.

Although detouring into more mainstream pop rock in what she describes as a phase, Rivers said her roots returned when she moved to Montana 12 years ago. Her husband and fellow musician, Sean Tribble, is also a bluegrass lover.

For her set, Rivers highlighted her new album, “Chasing Somewhere,” released just days earlier. Its first single, “Gone” is listed as a “Bubbling up” track by the Americana Music Association’s weekly chart, putting the Eureka songwriter’s name alongside living legends like Patty Griffin and Robert Plant.

Rivers described the opportunity to perform at the festival as a “huge honor” and praised event organizers for treating the local acts as if they had just flown in off of a major tour. Sure enough, in mid-conversation, she’s alerted that the staff has prepared a gift basket for her.

Rivers graced the festival with fellow local musicians like her friend Hannah King and the Whitefish-meets-New York City hybrid Big Sky City Lights. Susan O’Dea and Nick Spear of the latter group played, as promised, new work intermingled with tracks off of their 2021 album “Wake Me When We Get There.”

As Big Sky City Lights ended their turn on the stage on a high-spirited note (the duo has added an electric guitar to the mix of late), fellow valley musicians MYNXX were picking up their instruments. The trio – or perhaps clowder, given the group’s feline spirit – bills itself as the state’s “hottest glam rock band,” adding a stomping beat and heavy rock chords to the mix. Along with original tunes like “Sexy Ginger,” the trio put their own spin on the Johnny Cash classic “Further On Up The Road” and Britney Spears’ “Toxic.”

A day earlier, Tim Helnore of the Helnore Highwater Band introduced his parents to the audience from atop the same stage. Helnore, who moved to Northwest Montana in 2012 in his early teens, gave the crowd a taste of state lore with the story of Henry Plummer, the former Bannack sheriff hung on his own gallows.

For brothers Jeremiah and Joshua Zimmerman of The Silent Comedy, performing in Whitefish on Saturday was more than a homecoming, it was a waystation on a pilgrimage.

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“We grew up coming here as kids,” Jeremiah says, sitting down after their performance and rattling off the communities in the area where the two have family. “We came here a lot.”

So often that Jeremiah got his driver’s license in Kalispell. And if you want to be persnickety about their bona fides, he vividly remembers coming across a bear in the road the first time he got behind the wheel.

The two had family in the audience as they played a rollicking set — to get a taste, give “The Well” a listen — on the Big Mountain Stage. Rollicking, though Jeremiah and Joshua argue it was a toned down affair, owing to the family friendly atmosphere of the festival.

“What works for a bunch of drunks in a bar, it’s different with people on the lawn,” Jeremiah says with a wizened smile. The two emphasize that The Silent Comedy is built for dimly lit and cramped bar rooms.

“We’re a band that’s best in the dark,” Joshua says, noting that the group played The Remington Bar in Whitefish prior to the festival and let their hair down.

Though happy to talk about their music — they recently released the single “Vigilante” — life on the road and the ins and outs of playing a festival, the pair are just as interested in learning what’s changed in the valley since the last time they’ve visited. Both harbor dreams of maybe one day making Northwest Montana home. So many of its landmarks already are sacred ground for them.

“We’re headed to Swan Lake tomorrow,” says Joshua. “It’s like a Mecca for us.”

FOLLOWING THE Silent Comedy on the Big Mountain stage, Tre Burt professed his lack of local knowledge early on, telling the crowd he came in late the night prior.

“I have no idea where I am,” he says, glancing around. “It seems like an upcoming season of ‘Westworld.’”

Burt, who is touring with Shakey Graves, appears dressed like Jimmy Buffet but channeling John Prine. His singing evokes Bob Dylan, though later he admits his voice is a little coarse from the weeks on the road. As he nears the end of his set, he plays “Under the Devil’s Knee,” a tribute to George Floyd, Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, adding his work to folk’s long tradition of casting light on societal ills.

He recalls playing the tune a year or so earlier in Wyoming. Afterward, someone pulled him aside and gave him a bit of friendly advice: “You gotta watch where you play that song.”

“I said, ‘I did,’” Burt recalls deadpan.

As for Burt’s tourmate, Shakey Graves emerges in a more low-key fashion, the opening notes of “Late July” slowly gaining ground before Rose-Garcia’s raspy and reaching vocals take over. Though seemingly austere with his music — just on its face, Rose-Garcia often has fun with rhythm and tempo — he’s anything but with the audience, joking and bantering between tunes.

For a rendition of “Ready or Not,” he pulls Sierra Ferrell back on stage to accompany him. The pair released the single earlier this year.

Paul Cauthen, who played Friday night, returned to the stage for a second time immediately before Shakey Graves’ set, filling in for the Black Pumas. If performers can feed off of an audience, Cauthen can boast having mastered the reverse. Traipsing across the stage, he fired up the steadily expanding settlement of blankets and lawn chairs spread out before him.

Cauthen and Shakey Graves built a solid foundation for Los Angeles-based Lord Huron to cap off the evening. They pulled heavily from 2021’s “Long Lost,” but without forgetting earlier work, particularly favorites from “Strange Trails” and “Vide Noir.”

“Don’t think we’re ignoring you,” lead singer and guitarist Ben Schneider tells the audience after plowing through four songs, including a rendition of “Dead Man’s Hand” fit to see the setting sun off for the night, “Fool for Love” and “Hurricane (Johnnie’s Theme).” After all, he reminds the crowd sprawled out on the field before him, there’s a strict curfew.

“We just get in a little zone,” he says. “We don’t want to stop.”

Lord Huron’s drawn well-earned comparisons to Neil Young (their cover of “Harvest Moon,” available on Spotify, drives that home), and Schneider’s unmistakable and encompassing vocals created a haunting, melancholic ambience. Much of the band’s discography ruminates on life, death and the ache of love lost, but not forgotten. Unsubtly, Schneider dons a skull mask for several songs.

Not that the group’s music is funereal. “Fool for Love” is an unmistakably upbeat song with gallow’s humor. “I Lied,” which came up later in Saturday’s set, is a seemingly straightforward duet, a mournful breakup song – unless you listen for the wickedly funny twist. “Mine Forever,” the fifth song in the group’s set, best captures the mix of vocal harmonies, drummer Mark Barry’s spur-jangling percussion, the Ennio Morricone-infused ‘60s surfer guitar riffs and Schneider’s typically playful lyrics emblematic of “Long Lost.”

For all the band’s professed melancholy, their performance is rapturous.

“This is what the world needs,” Schneider says of Under the Big Sky.

News Editor Derrick Perkins can be reached at 758-4430 or dperkins@dailyinterlake.com.