Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
The Palouse Music Festival is back July 28 with some new and familiar names at Heyton Greene Park for the daylong event with food, arts and crafts sellers and a beer garden. A lineup of musicians perform from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., when the Senders take the stage for the last hour and a half.
A new food option this year will be hot dogs and chips from the Garfield/Palouse Performing Arts boosters. Hearth of the Dragon will again serve wood-fired pizza, and the Palouse Community Center will run the beer garden as a fundraiser with beer donated by Paradise Creek Brewery in Pullman.
The music begins with Matt Zook and John Elwood. Zook, the Garfield/Palouse school band director, will play clarinet, pairing with Elwood, the veteran Palouse musician and builder of instruments.
“I would expect some Celtic American folk on dulcimer,” said co-organizer Paul Smith of the Palouse Arts Council, which puts on the festival.
At 12:05 a new act takes the stage, Diamond Joe, a four-piece family bluegrass band from Moscow. The leader has a connection to the years of the Palouse Bluegrass Festival, which became the Palouse Music Festival in 2012. Tim Kinkeade, formerly of the band Forgotten Freight, now brings a son on banjo and another on fiddle for Diamond Joe, with a neighbor kid on standup bass. “Blue Moon of Kentucky” may be on the set list.
At 1:10, Eric Jessup on a Martin D-28 bluegrass guitar performs with Paul Anders on mandolin. Anders, a co-owner of The Congress in Palouse (at the former Green Frog location), is a veteran of the Green Frog’s open mic nights, playing acoustic Americana.
Next, at 2:15, Arman Bohn returns from last year’s festival.
“He’s more of a rock and roll guy,” said Smith. Bohn also adds a screen with video animation to his performance. “Definitely the mad genius sort in the best way,” Smith said.
Following Bohn is an intermission when kids come up and play instruments. At 3:45 Bart Budwig, another Palouse Bluegrass Festival alumnus, returns to town from Enterprise, Ore., to perform with Ben Walden, a guitarist from Moscow, and Nevada Soule on stratocaster.
“As with everyone that will play, I ask them, who do you want to bring,” said Smith.
A married-couple act, Jesse James, follows, with Jessie Twigg-Harris and James Harris, Jr., who moved to Palouse from Bellingham.
“Good country songs,” said Smith of what they play. “Old country songs, and originals.”
Next will be more students followed by the 6:30 p.m. arrival of the Senders, the longtime cover band from around the Palouse.
“As the sun goes down you get some good rock and roll, people dance around, and it’s perfect,” Smith said.
“If you can stay seated, I might give you a buck,” said Marie Dymkoski, Palouse Music Festival director.
Admission will be $10 for adults, $10 ages 16 to 6 $5, and kids younger than 5 free. T-shirts will be for sale for $12, or $15 for the tie-bleached version.
The park’s pool will also be open to the public.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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