{"id":13887,"date":"2016-08-27T08:13:08","date_gmt":"2016-08-27T14:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13887"},"modified":"2016-08-27T08:13:08","modified_gmt":"2016-08-27T14:13:08","slug":"montana-folk-festival-needs-our-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/08\/montana-folk-festival-needs-our-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Folk Festival needs our help"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Original\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

The Original Stage at the Montana Folk Festival in Butte.<\/p><\/div>\n

Editor’s note<\/strong>: \u00a0Anybody who has followed Last Best News since our founding knows that I am a big fan of the Montana Folk Festival in Butte.<\/em><\/p>\n

I believe I once referred to it as the coolest event in the history of Montana, and I was not exaggerating. I’ve written about it<\/a> on more than a few occasions<\/a>, and I have also posted lots of photographs<\/a> of the festival, mine own and those of Anna Paige<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

And now the folk festival needs our help. Here’s the whole story, in the form of a press release from the festival. Please give it a read and then do what you can to help:<\/em><\/p>\n

The 2016 Montana Folk Festival in Butte was drenched but not rained out on the Sunday of the festival weekend, July 10.<\/p>\n

“After a solid Friday and Saturday, the festival was on track to break records for on-site sales, attendance and onsite donations\u2014in fact in every area that we use to measure it,” said George Everett, festival director.<\/p>\n

Then, on Sunday the rains came and performances were canceled on the untented venues\u2014the Original Stage and the Granite Street Stage.<\/p>\n

This hurt the festival because on-site revenue from beverage, food and merchandise sales were lost, especially at the Original.<\/p>\n

“It was about a $20,000 to $25,000 hit to on-site revenues to have these stages close,” Everett said.<\/p>\n

In addition, a shortfall in sponsorships has left an additional gap of about $25,000 to pay remaining bills.\u00a0 The festival sends out thousands of dollars in payments for goods and services in July and August and more is needed to meet obligations.<\/p>\n

As a response, festival organizers have started a crowdfunding effort to fill the gap left by the 2016 shortfall.<\/p>\n

For anyone interested in helping online they can visit www.gofundme.com\/2gzqf8k<\/a> or they can send contributions for the 2016 Montana Folk Festival Rain Dance Fundraiser directly to Montana Folk Festival, P.O. Box 696, Butte. MT\u00a0 59703.<\/p>\n

Festival planning for 2017 has already begun and will continue with the hope that long-time sponsors will again renew their support in the coming year so the seventh Montana Folk Festival can return on July 7-9, 2017.<\/p>\n

For details as they develop, visit www.montanafolkfestival.com<\/a> or on facebook at\u00a0www.facebook.com\/mtfolkfest<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: \u00a0Anybody who has followed Last Best News since our founding knows that I am a big fan of the Montana Folk Festival in Butte. I believe I once referred to it as the coolest event in the history of Montana, and I was not exaggerating. I’ve written about it on more than a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[31,944,81],"class_list":["post-13887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-butte","tag-george-everett","tag-montana-folk-festival","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}