Debra Devi at Crown of the Continent Guitar Festival Day 6

By: Debra Devi
Photo Credit: Will Feffer

FRIDAY Sept 3

I’m flying back to the concrete jungle Sunday, so Friday I cram in as much nature as possible, starting with a morning horseback ride and a trip to Glacier National Park. Just us teachers and some guests are going, since the students are woodshedding for their concert Saturday.

The Lodge hooks us up with vans, drivers and packed lunches for the ride. Within 45 minutes, we’re in the park, climbing Going-to-the-Sun Road, the two-lane highway that curves along the sheer rock cliffs of Garden Wall. We marvel and click our cameras at spectacularly beautiful peaks, valleys and waterfalls.

Glacier Park Photo Credit Will Feffer

Million-acre Glacier Park protects some of the purest, most scenic wild lands in this country, and abuts the 1.5 million acre Blackfeet reservation. This Crown of the Continent region, or Backbone of the World, was revered by the Blackfeet people long before the park was created in 1910. It’s an important ecosystem that provides headwaters for three oceans and a critical habitat for grizzly bears, white mountain goats and other endangered species.

I asked David Feffer why he named his guitar workshop for it and he said, “The magnificence of Northwestern Montana was our inspiration. We’re committed to helping protect and preserve the Crown of the Continent so it will continue to inspire our musical creativity, and our humanity, now and for future generations.”

Feffer even invited the Montana Land Reliance (MLR) to the workshop to promote its voluntary land donation program. The donation provides the landowner with a tax deduction and the security of knowing the land will be protected permanently, while still being able to use it during his or her lifetime. I talked with MLR’s Western Manager, Mark Schiltz, who said, “The festival was a great forum for us to share our mission. MLR has permanently protected 830,000 acres of critical land in Montana including 17,667 acres in the Crown of the Continent region.”

Finally, the vans drop us at Logan Pass, a Wizard-of-Oz-scale alpine meadow surrounded by cone-shaped peaks and jagged ridges. As Blues teacher Mark Dziuba dashes off to grab a photo of a curly-horned ram chewing on some flowers, I snap a mountain goat’s rear. I spot a marmot sunning himself on a flat rock.

Mark, Jody Fisher and I step onto the boardwalk that crosses the meadow—humans are not allowed to walk on the fragile flowers and grasses—and begin our hike to Hidden Lake. I wish I could bottle the exhilaratingly crisp scent of pine that washes over us. We make it to Hidden Lake just in time to have to turn around and head back. It’s hard to leave when incredible vistas stretch on before us.

At the bottom of Going-to-the-Sun Road, the vans pull into a clearing by a river, and we’re met by David and Judy Feffer and a picnic table piled with food the Lodge sent with them. Roast chicken, pasta salad, a whole sliced watermelon and huckleberry shortbread…God forbid we should go hungry in the wilderness! We pile our paper plates and sit on the river bank to eat. <p>

By the time we get back to the Lodge, I’m so stuffed and sun dazzled that I skip the evening concert by Mark Dziuba and Scott Tennant. I’d already seen Scott work his magic on the classical guitar but I’m sorry I missed Mark’s quirky, jazzy compositions. I spend the evening soaking my saddle sores in my room’s giant Jacuzzi.

SATURDAY Sept 4

Saturday is a warm clear day, which is good given that the faculty is playing a public outdoor concert tonight. Tough to play presto with frozen fingers.

This afternoon, students are in the Carriage House performing their recital pieces with the ever-patient house band, Dave Overthrow (bass) and Pete Sweeney (drums). The room is full of applauding teachers, family members and guests. How great to learn new stuff and be able to perform it at the end of the week with a crack band! Beginner teacher Doug Smith tells me later: “My most exciting moment was the student concert. The people I got to know in classes took the stage and there were some wonderful performances.”

Dave gave me a lesson yesterday on how to write a chart, so I head back to the couch by the fireplace in the main Lodge to write charts for the songs I want to play tonight at the faculty concert. We don’t have time to rehearse so charts are a must.

On my way over to Carriage House to give my charts to Dave, I stop to listen to Doug and Andrew Leonard play Pat Metheny’s “Travels” as a duet on a bench outside. Doug’s bright steel strings and Andrew’s mellower nylon ones chime in the pristine air as Flathead Lake ripples and flashes in the sun behind them.

Soon, a crew arrives to set up a stage and lighting rig at the bottom of the lawn that slants down to the lake. Meanwhile, David’s photographer son, Will Feffer, corrals teachers and students for a group photo. (I’m fourth from right, with a red Strat, between Andrew Leonard and David Feffer.)

Group Photo Credit Will Feffer

I head back to the Inn to change into my Anna Sui dress and H&M patent leather jacket. During dinner, though, I start sweating like a pig under the jacket. The Anna Sui dress shows too much cleavage for family dining at the Lodge, but I take off the jacket and suck it up. Somebody’s got to bring a little boobage to this testosterone fest; it might as well be me!

Debra Devi

After dinner, around 250 people stream onto the lawn for the Guitar Extravaganza Finale, bringing blankets and chairs to sit on. “This is going to be a blast,” David Feffer says, adding, “It starts at eight, and it’s over when it’s over!”

As the sun sets, Jody Fisher plays a solo set of elegant jazz guitar, using a different complex chord for each note as he outlines a melody. He makes it look effortless, but as he told his workshop students, jazz guitar requires nothing less than ‘learning to exhaust the possibilities of all chord inversions for each note of a song’s melody,” adding that this would be “an agonizing, painful experience.” (Here’s Jody playing My Romance at the National Guitar Workshop.)

Next Doug Smith gets everyone clapping along to his mind-blowing rendition of The Stars and Stripes Forever on acoustic guitar.  Andrew Leonard follows him with a set of his exquisite classical work. (Andrew playing Presto from Koyunbabya.)

The Rock teacher, Matt Smith, a big boisterous dude from Austin, makes the perfect MC for the night. Pretty soon I’m called up. Doug’s wife Judy Koch Smith, a wonderful musician in her own right, sings backup and plays flute with me on The Needle and the Damage Done. Next Dave and Pete join me for Get Free and When It Comes Down , and Matt adds great bluesy harmonies to Runaway.

We rock it out. By the time I get offstage and stroll uphill to the merch table, my CDs have been bought up, as the woman running the table tells me, “by all these folks asking if we have a CD by that little gal from New York.” Alright, Montana!

I settle into a chair on the lawn for some kick-ass blues rock from Matt and Mike Dziuba.  Lodge owner Doug Averill, a tall drink of water in a cowboy hat, tells me how pleased he is with the entire week. Soon David Feffer is handing the evening’s raffle winner a Gibson J-45 guitar (other prizes included weekend getaways in the area) and the entire faculty crams onstage for Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On.”

Judy and I sing backup, while Matt sings lead, Andrew shakes a tambourine and the other guys play guitar.  I’ve had two glasses of wine, which no doubt accounts for my elaborate Supremes-like choreography. What a blast; I feel so lucky to be here and am still wondering how I wound up on this stage, with these great players and new friends.

SUNDAY Sept 5

On Sunday, David Feffer takes me and Andrew Leonard to his art-filled home on a mountainside in Bigfork, to hang out before our flights home. Over lunch I get the story of how he and Andrew brainstormed this whole event over bourbons last summer.

A classical guitar enthusiast, David had met Andrew at the National Guitar Workshop campus in New Milford, Connecticut. Last summer David brought him to Bigfork to play a benefit for Ravenwood Outdoor Learning Center. After the concert, David told Andrew Bigfork was the perfect spot for a guitar festival but initial calls to artist managers were going nowhere. He wanted a partner–like the National Guitar Workshop. There was just one problem; in almost thirty years of operation, NGW had never partnered with anyone.

Andrew helped David hammer out his concepts and agreed to propose the partnership to NGW president Dave Smolover. “The bourbon made it all seem highly feasible,” Andrew notes, adding, “David is an extraordinary person, an outside-the-box thinker who did not approach this event with limitations as his first consideration.  From the start, his focus was always on how to give the students, faculty and guest artists an environment in which to have a great time sharing our passion for the guitar and the outdoors.  Of course, the amazing hospitality offered by Flathead Lake Lodge put the whole thing over the top.”

The Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation not only brought Pat Metheny to Bigfork, it also gave ten scholarships to local guitar players and sent instructors to schools and a hospital in Flathead Valley communities. With this focus on service and bringing top guitarists to one of the most beautiful places in the world, the big sky is the limit. I am really curious to see who’s going to follow Pat out there next year.

P.S. I encourage you to check out the teachers I’ve mentioned, most of whom have lessons on Youtube, like Matt Smith’s Killer Slide Guitar Lesson.

Debra is the singer/guitarist for the rock band Devi. Download Devi’s debut album, Get Free for free.

******

Mike Dziuba, Debra Devi and Jody Fisher in Glacier Park