Festival season in our neck of the northern Rockies was another good one this year, with good weather and great music combining for record crowds at outdoor venues on both sides of the Continental Divide.

Festival season means outdoor music, and outdoors is my favorite venue by far. Most of the action for us centered in and around Bozeman and the greater Gallatin Valley area. That included Music on Main in downtown Bozeman on Thursday evenings, including local favorites like the Clintons, Golden Grenade, and Ten Foot Tall and 80 Proof, to national acts like Andy Frasco, the Clumsy Lovers, and Dale Watson. We didn’t miss a single Thursday this year.

My favorite outdoor venue in the area is the Pine Creek Lodge in the Paradise Valley. Festival season usually begins and ends for us under the pines at the Lodge. We began our season at Pine Creek late this year (in early July) with a favorite band we ended last year’s festival season with, the Dave Walker Band. We also caught acts like the Booze Hounds and Pinky and the Floyd at Pine Creek this summer, two Bozeman bands that we love to support.

This year we missed both festivals at The Bridge west of Three Forks, Country Jam in late June and Rockin’ the Rivers in early August. It was the first summer I’ve missed Rockin’ the Rivers in over a decade. We did not miss what has become our favorite festival of the year, the Red Ants Pants Music Festival in White Sulphur Springs. Sarah Calhoun, owner of the Red Ants Pants Company in White Sulphur, has put together a festival that, by its third year, already has big-name artists requesting to play at the big venue in Big Sky Country, on the Jackson Ranch just north of town. This year acts like Merle Haggard, Robert Earl Keen, and Todd Snider helped bring record crowds to the event, sure to become a mainstay on the Northern Rocky Mountain summer festival circuit.

Todd Snider also wowed the crowd at another festival on the west slope that we aimed for and missed, the Braun Brothers Reunion in Challis, Idaho. Tom Cook of Bozeman made it over the divide for the festival, and said it was an outstanding event with great weather, and much better air quality than last year, when smoke from forest fires plagued the Braun Brothers Reunion and other Rocky Mountain festivals.

We did hit another outdoor show that’s always a hit, the Labor Day Weekend Street Dance at Chico Hot Springs, which again featured “Siberian Rock” with the Red Elvises. The staff at Chico go out of their way to make that event a standout, and this year was no exception. September also brought a few surprises, as we hit two shows that managed to make up (a bit…) for our absence at the Braun Brothers Reunion. Micky and the Motorcars, with Micky and Gary Braun, played at Bozeman’s Filling Station on Sept. 4, and just by chance, we saw their older brothers Willy and Cody perform with their band Reckless Kelly two days later at the Sun Valley Pavilion in Idaho. Another favorite band, The Trishas, got the ball rolling for Reckless Kelly that night, and we even got to hear Muzzie Braun sing a tune with his sons.

We ended our outdoor music season at Pine Creek on Sept. 21 with a wonderful solo show by Claudia Appling Williams of Montana Rose. The temperature that night was warm enough for us to make-believe that summer wasn’t ending, but fresh snow hit area mountain peaks within 24 hours, as did the first day of fall, letting us know that, at least for this year, festival season was at an end.

Pat Hill is a freelance writer and music lover from Bozeman.

* Bozeman Magazine’s Honorable Mentions include all the festivals at Grand Targhee Resort including widespread Panic over the fourth of July, and the always great Targhee Fest and Targhee Bluegrass Fest. A second Honorable Mention from Bozeman Magazine goes to Spruce Moose Music Fest in Big Sky with Galactic and Ozomotli. These are all great, family friendly festivals.