Posted on August 9, 2022, 5:18 PM MDT
The Inurri Gorri Praka Music Festival is part of the Inurri Gorri Praka Foundation’s mission to enrich and promote rural communities. For four days and four nights in July, musicians from across the country brought the music to rural White Sulfur Springs, Montana, where the foundation is located. A small town is usually home to 1,000 people.
After a pandemic-related hiatus, the music festival returned this year, bringing 15,000 attendees and dozens of musicians and artists to the small town for a sold-out event, according to Sarah Calhoun, founder and director of the Red Ants Pants Foundation.
“There’s something pretty magical that happens when all these bands keep telling us how attentive and tuned in people are,” Calhoun said. “…and it’s a whole community-driven feeling and I think that’s reflected through the music and the whole experience.”
All proceeds from the festival go directly to the Red Ants Pants Foundation, which provides support, workshops and leadership programs for women and girls in rural Montana communities. The organization made its mission of empowering women and girls a reality by fronting female musicians such as Grace Potter, Allison Russell and The Local Honeys.
We sat down with The Local Honeys after Saturday’s performance to talk about their experience in rural Montana.
“It’s great not just playing hubs,” said Linda Jean Stokley, lead singer and guitarist for The Local Honeys. “There is a connectivity that we have when we play in the countryside, because we are rural witnesses. We are very excited to take our music to rural areas.’
The couple is originally from rural Kentucky and said they were the first women to graduate from the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, where the two met.
“Playing here at Red Ants Pants is not lost on us as two girls from Kentucky trying to make a living as artists and musicians,” said Montana Hobbs, lead singer and banjo player for The Local Honeys.
On the side stage, bands compete to win the Emerging Artist Award. The audience votes for their favorite performers and the winner gets a spot on the main stage next year. That meant a lot to the winners of The Last Revel 2014, who headlined Saturday.
“Playing the side stage and winning and then playing the main stage opened the door professionally,” said Ryan Acker, multi-instrumentalist for The Last Revel. “That inspired us to do it for real.”
This year’s winner was Montana’s Dusty the Kid, a band from Missoula. They describe their music as “Old folk punk with a side of squat club swing.”
“Everybody just got a little taste of us this year,” said lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Dusty the Kid. “Next year will see Dusty the Kid’s explosive, insanity and full Recession Special on the main stage.”
Sarah Calhoun, director of the music festival, says next year’s festival will be held on the last weekend in July.
“We’re going to continue to try to bring a bunch of diverse and influential artists here in rural Montana,” Calhoun said.
