Crown of the Continent Guitar Workshop & Festival August 24-31 Featuring Top Artists

By: Debra Devi

Ana Popovic

For the first time, a blazing female lead guitarist—blues star, Ana Popovic, will join the exclusive ranks of Artists-In-Residence [AIRs] in northwestern Montana, at this summer’s week-long Crown of the Continent Guitar Workshop & Festival. 

Also arriving in beautiful Bigfork [August 24-31] are Dweezil Zappa, Mike and Leni Stern, Lee Ritenour, classical guitarist David Leisner, Americana artist Shelby Lynne, John Oates of Hall & Oates and up-and-coming jazz singer/guitarist, Emily Elbert.

The AIRs will perform the festival’s evening concerts and teach afternoon clinics as part of the workshop.

AIRs also drop in to support a top-notch  faculty drawn from the now-defunct National Guitar Workshop, which teaches three-hour morning classes in rock, blues, jazz and songwriting.

Workshop attendees also meet special guests during cocktail hour, like luthier Aaron Green, who brought the mythic 1951 Barbero used by Gypsy flamenco master, Sabicas, to record Flamenco Puro, for Dennis Kostner to play.

Founded by classical-guitar enthusiast and businessman, David Feffer, five years ago, Crown Guitar Fest has built an international reputation by attracting legends like Pat Metheny, Robben Ford and Joe Bonamassa to an exceptionally scenic location.

Last year, Crown even hosted Lee Ritenour’s Six String Theory Competition finals, with winners jetting in from Israel, Singapore and Europe.

The entire event takes place at Averill’s Flathead Lake Lodge, a family-owned dude ranch that has hosted presidents and gangsters with equal panache since 1945. It’s said that it was a favorite hideout of Bugsy Siegel.

The ranch sits along the banks of Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. Meals are taken family-style in the log cabin Main Lodge, to encourage plenty of easygoing interaction between students, faculty and AIRs. Flathead Lake is thirty-five minutes from Glacier National Park–one of the most spectacular natural environments on earth, and the reason this region is called the “Crown of the Continent.”

Once the sun begins to set behind the mountains and towering pines, everyone ambles over to a huge white concert tent set in a bucolic green pasture. The evening festival concerts are open not only to Workshop attendees, who receive a pass with their tuition, but also to the public who show up decked out in their finest cowboy hats and boots.  The scene turns picture perfect when the ranch’s 90-horse herd is driven past the tent to its evening quarters.

Dweezil Zappa will kick things off Sunday Aug. 24 with his band, Zappa Plays Zappa. Ana Popovic plays the following night, with scholarship student Solomon Hicks opening. The audience is entertained during intermissions by a rocking student pit band with a sense of humor led by jam-class teacher, Dennis McCumber. Frank Zappa’s “Montana” was a crowd favorite last year, and with Dweezil Zappa coming this year, expect a reprise!

Dweezil Zappa

Dweezil Zappa notes,”This is my first experience with the Crown Workshop and Festival. Because of my family connection to Montana via my father’s song about dental floss, I’m really looking forward to spending time there.”

As for what he plans to teach, Zappa says, ” I have a few strategies to share about visualizing the neck, as well as creating a new rhythmic vocabulary for lead playing.”

The nonprofit Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation gives scholarships to rising guitar stars, and donates to regional music education and environmental protection initiatives. This year’s breakout just might be “King” Solomon Hicks, a teenage prodigy from Harlem who’s “carrying on the torch of the blues.” Hicks has been lead guitarist for the Cotton Club’s All Stars Band since he was thirteen. He’s a blues/jazz phenom with real showmanship, musicality and soul.

Willie Moore III

“It will be my first show in Montana, so it’s going to be memorable for me. I plan to give the audience a taste of what a born-and-raised New York City musician/entertainer has to offer!” Hicks says, adding, “I’m excited about discovering my voice musically, and writing my own music–learning how to put my own taste, soul and spin into what ever song I play.”

Scholarship student,  Willie Moore III , is another find, a dapper young man with the smooth, sophisticated sound of a funkier George Benson—and only four fingers on his left hand. Early in his childhood, doctors were forced to remove Moore’s non-working thumb and replace it with his index finger. That hasn’t stopped him, and Moore says he will use his Montana week “to get ready for my transition to attending Berklee College of Music this fall.”

On Tuesday, Emily Elbert—a former Crown scholarship student garnering praise for her lilting singing and jazzy playing—will open for Grammy-winner Shelby Lynne.

Elbert says she’s excited “about the growing prominence of stellar guitarist women,” and is “stoked to share in an evening of radical feminine energy. There’s something truly special about playing in such a majestic natural environment. It inspires the live music experience and energy exchange in a really powerful way.”

“King” Solomon Hicks

Wednesday will feature sets from jazz fusion master Mike Stern and legendary session guitarist Ritenour—who’s been involved with Crown since it was just a twinkle in Feffer’s eye. Ritenour will be backed by possibly the world’s best rhythm section: bassist Abraham Laboriel Sr. and Earth, Wind and Fire drummer, Sonny Emory.

Stern says he hasn’t decided yet exactly what he’ll play, “but Lee Ritenour will be there and it will be a ball. I love Lee. He and I will come up with a plan. There will be plenty of playing and it will be fun. I’ve heard such great things about the festival and the workshop. I’m really looking forward to it. I heard it’s beautiful and I can go swimming!”

Stern adds that he’s “really looking forward to the teaching aspect. I love to teach. My wife, Leni, will be there, too, and we’ll probably teach separately and together.”

If previous Crown Fests are any guide, Ritenour may get Zappa and Popovic onstage to join him and Stern for some jamming–like last year’s mind-blowing impromptu set by Ritenour and Robben Ford.

On Thursday, classical virtuoso David Leisner—“among the finest guitarists of all time” according to American Record Guide–will perform solo and with the Glacier Symphony String Quartet.

Also performing that evening is John Oates, who tells Guitar International this show “will give me a chance to touch on the diverse influences I’ve had in my long career.” Oates will be accompanied by Live from Daryl’s House musical director Shane Theriot, who also plans to do some teaching.

Theriot says he will “touch a little on some aspects of rhythm guitar playing–which I feel is greatly overlooked, but a critical part of being a ‘working’ guitarist.”

Oates adds that he’s “really looking forward to returning to the Flathead Lake area. I was last there in 1989 with Bob Weir on a mountain bike ride to create awareness of the national forest. It’s a very special part of our country, and to come back and play with all these other great artists will be a great experience.”

The festival wraps Aug. 30 with a Guitar Extravaganza featuring the faculty—all renowned players and recording artists themselves, including Matt Smith, Tobias Hurwitz, James Hogan, Jeff McErlain, Andrew Leonard, Mike Dzuiba, Dennis McCumber, Bret Boyer, Doug Smith and Susan Mazer.

I will be teaching an elective on alternate tunings, and playing in the faculty concert with Tobias Hurwitz and my band Devi’s bassist, Max Feinstein.

In the afternoons, Workshop students attend clinics with the AIRs. Popovic plans to encourage students to develop their own signature sound. As the Serbian guitarslinger notes, “That’s what the great blues players I admire had. They had signature phrasing and tones that identified each of them as unique guitarists. You can identify B.B. King or Albert Collins almost immediately. Same goes for Robert Cray or Stevie Ray Vaughan.”

Popovic will also share insights into how she blends jazz and funk influences into the blues to make it her own. “It’s very important to be different, to come up with your own sound and phrasing,” Popovic explains. She suggests that guitarists “try to listen to many other instruments, not just to guitar players. Try to nail down a saxophone solo or a piano solo. You’ll come up with unique ways to phrase.”

Finally, she notes, “Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, no matter what level you are at. If you seeking to play as yourself and not trying to mimic someone else – you are already offering something unique–and that already makes it good!”

Attending guitar geeks will no doubt be thrilled to study with six-time Grammy nominee Mike Stern, who says simply, “I teach what I’ve learned over the years from other teachers that I’ve had. I’ve had some great teachers that have helped me. I also share my experience as a working musician.”

Mike Stern

Fittingly for the co-writer of so many hit songs, John Oates says that in his clinics, “I always like to emphasize the importance of ‘the song,’ as the starting point. I also like to be open to a dialogue with the students. I love to keep an open format and see what they want to know and learn. I’m going to be there for the students and fellow guitar players and I look forward to the interaction. I started teaching guitar in college, so this workshop and festival will be full circle for me.”

There will be plenty of opportunities for students to practice what they learn at open mics and jams, both at local watering holes like The Garden Bar and at the Lodge’s Carriage House. Students also interested in performing in Bigfork venues during their stay should contact Crown Communication Coordinator, Kevin Van Dort, at kvandort@cocguitarfoundation.org.

To register for this year’s Crown of the Continent Guitar Workshop & Festival, visit HERE.

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The Crown Guitar Festival Official Line-Up Video