North Valley Music School to Host First-ever Bluegrass and Roots Mini Festival

North Valley Music School’s new program director, Taylor Ackley, has never known a life without bluegrass and roots music. 

Born into a family jam-packed with folk musicians, Ackley has a connection to the bluegrass and American roots genre that dates all the way back to his great-great-grandfather, who was a fiddler in Kentucky. 

When the hardships of the 1930s and 1940s hit Ackley’s family, they headed West and settled in the Flathead Valley, making sure their musical traditions were in tow.

“One side of the family left the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, and the other side left Kentucky and came here and brought their music with them,” Ackley said.

Ackley’s introduction to bluegrass and American roots music is reflective of the heart of the genre itself: “it’s a music that people have played together,” he said.

A career of professionally performing, studying, and teaching bluegrass and roots music leads back to a childhood spent in family jam sessions where Ackley learned how to play a myriad of songs and instruments — most notably learning to play the mandolin on the same one his grandfather brought to Oklahoma in a covered wagon at the turn of the century. 

“My grandfather knew thousands of songs and fiddle tunes and played all these instruments, fiddle and mandolin and banjo,” Ackley said. “Bluegrass festivals have been a way to take that tradition of learning from your community, but then you build a little community for a limited period of time, in that same way of just sitting in a room and learning how to play things from other people, more experienced people, and learning not from a book but by making music together.”

“There’s not a big separation between playing and teaching this music,” he added. “It’s all kind of one big thing that you do it all together.”

Now, Ackley is looking to foster the spirit and community of bluegrass in the Flathead Valley through the North Valley Music School’s first-ever Bluegrass and Roots Mini Festival, which will run from Aug. 4 through Aug. 6. 

Unlike traditional music festivals, less of an emphasis will be put on the headlining performers. Instead, the festival will offer an array of events that focus more on community-building rather than official performances, Ackley said. 

“There are all of these workshops, and a lot of times, you go to a cool bluegrass festival and you can take a workshop with the people who that evening are going to be playing for 3,000 people in the audience,” Ackley said. “All of these things that we’re doing are free, so people can come and get a whole day basically worth of amazing private bluegrass teaching and not pay a nickel for it.”

The mini festival will kick off from 2:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 4, with “Bluegrass and Roots Day” at the music school at 1998 River Lakes Parkway in Whitefish. The opening event will feature workshops on each of the bluegrass instruments, as well as topics like harmony singing and improvisation. There will also be faculty-hosted jams, a barbecue dinner and an open mic.

Festivities will continue the next day at noon in Kalispell’s Depot Park as the school co-hosts a family folk concert with Kalispell Parks and Recreation as part of their Picnic in the Park series. Ackley said having the festival extend to Kalispell would be key to creating more awareness of what the music school offers and the scholarship opportunities available. 

“Here at North Valley Music School, we never ever turn away a student based on what they can afford,” Ackley said. “We have a really robust scholarship program. It’s about $63,000 so far this year that we’ve given away in scholarships.”

The festival will conclude on Thursday, Aug. 6, with a 7 p.m. album release concert from Ackley and his wife, Alison, and opening act Andrew Brozek back at the North Valley Music School.

While the Ackleys have performed together for more than a decade — including releasing two albums with their group, Deep Roots Ensemble — their album “Songs for Trees,” which was released earlier this year, was the first that solely featured the two musicians as a duo. 

“We’d been living in New York and working with this ensemble playing all over and then during COVID we came back here to Montana for a year,” Ackley said. “We started just figuring out, OK, well, what if we want to do music, not with seven people or 16, but with just the two of us?

“That was the first year we were married, and over the course of the year, I wrote a piece called ‘Songs for Trees.’ It’s four different movements, like individual songs that trace the four seasons, and it also traces the seasons of life and romance.”

Although still preparing for the first edition of the mini festival, Ackley already has his sights set on growing the festival in the future, all while keeping it free and accessible for the valley, he said.

“There’s going to be some really awesome music, but I think all of us are really hoping this is not just a one-time thing,” Ackley said. “That this can grow into something and eventually have a couple evenings of performances and two days of workshops, and people from around the state can come here and enjoy this music and enjoy learning and playing together.”

North Valley Music School’s Bluegrass and Roots Mini Festival will run from Aug. 4-6, with all events free and open to the public. To learn more, click here. 

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