“The guitar is a universal instrument,” he tells me. “It’s an instrument that you can pick up and almost instantly be accompanying a three-chord song, yet you can spend a lifetime learning the intricacies and intimacies of the sound.”
I’m sitting with David Hunt and David Feffer of the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation as the former speaks and plucks a melody on the custom-built Crown of the Continent guitar.
The one-of-a-kind guitar, donated to the Foundation last year by Paradise, luthier Rick McCollum, is set to be auctioned at this year’s Crown Guitar Workshop and Festival. David Feffer is the visionary behind Crown of the Continent Guitar, which includes the workshop, the festival and the foundation. David Hunt is the executive director charged with keeping the vision in focus. The workshop and festival, a week-long collection of classes, concerts and some of the guitar community’s most significant artists, is scheduled to occur in Bigfork later this month.
David Feffer, a retired healthcare executive by profession and guitar-picking entrepreneur by choice, says music has always been a part of his life. He had wanted to learn guitar from an early age, but it wasn’t until age 56 that he allowed himself the opportunity. Then he enlisted none other than Andrew Leonard, a classical guitarist of some considerable note, as his teacher. Classic entrepreneur and classical guitarist hit it off, and in short order, they’d given a benefit concert in Bigfork and developed plans, around a kitchen table, to do it bigger and better the next year. What began as a visit to Montana became a week-long workshop for a few dozen students and then a week-long concert series featuring some of the biggest names in guitar. Lee Rittenour, Pat Metheny, Scott Tennant – yeah, big names.
By design, the workshop is kept small, allowing significant interaction among the students and the artists. And by space restrictions in the venue of choice, Flathead Lake Lodge, the evening concerts, which happen every night, are limited to about 900 guests. Still, in the course of four years, the Crown of the Continent Guitar Workshop and Festival has become the most talked about event around town, almost certainly eclipsing the Fourth of July parade, the art festival and even Santa Claus. And it’s developed a significant buzz in the guitar community as well, putting the name “Bigfork” on the lips of many around the world who strum and fret the instrument.
“We want to make Bigfork and the Flathead Valley a highly regarded international center for guitar study, performance and composition,” says Feffer. “What we’ve started with the workshop and festival is unique. We have students who have just begun to learn and we have accomplished musicians at the top of their game. Yet there is this atmosphere of community and camaraderie. Everyone is helping everyone else pursue their common passion. Our objective is to create an environment where great things involving the guitar can happen.”
“Montana is an inspirational place,” he continues. “Artists of the caliber you see here, you could never get them to perform for what we can afford to pay them. But they come because they love it here. We take them fishing. We take them hiking. And they’ll tell you, the experience they have here influences the way they play.”
“Even though this may seem a grand vacation for well-to-do amateur musicians,” Hunt adds, “we make a concerted effort to keep it accessible to the community. Each year we give about 20 scholarships so that promising local students and teachers can attend the workshops. And you can get a whole week of concert tickets for $140, about what you’d pay for a single show of many of these performers.”
“Our goal isn’t so much to grow the festival,” Feffer summarizes. “Instead, we want these musicians to feel the impact of this area on their music, to buy houses here, to establish recording studios here, to truly make this a guitar Mecca.”
Big things rarely come from thinking small.
The Crown Guitar Festival is scheduled this year from Aug. 26 through Aug. 31 at Flathead Lake Lodge. For information or concert tickets, call 855-855-590 or visit www.CoCGuitarFoundation.org.