Page 18 - Flathead Beacon // 3.25.15

18 | MARCH 25, 2015
WHITEFISH – In front of John Dunnigan’s home sits a Lund aluminum fishing boat waiting for another summer day on Northwest Montana’s pristine waters. But on this overcast winter afternoon, the old dinghy lies in wait.
“That’s a folk singer’s boat,” Dunni- gan says from the recliner in his living room. “If I was a hip hop star it’d be a lot bigger and there would be chicks all over it doing their bootylicious dances.”
Despite the medical issues that have sidelined one of the Flathead Valley’s most prolific performers for the first time in 30 years, Dunnigan’s sense of humor has not dimmed.
Dunnigan, 60, is probably best known as the tequila-slugging staple of Whitefish’s music scene who up un- til this winter played four or even five nights a week and upwards of 250 shows a year. But since January, Dunnigan hasn’t set up his gear at the Great North- ern Bar on Thursday nights or tuned his guitar at The Boat Club on Saturday evenings. Instead, Dunnigan has been at home reading, relaxing and recover- ing from a battle with pancreatitis, an inflammation of the organ that results in crippling stomach pain. On March 20, Dunnigan had surgery to remove 30 per- cent of his pancreas and at this time it is unclear how long he will be away from the stage, but Dunnigan promises that this is not his curtain call.
“I’ve never had this much time off,” Dunnigan says, sitting next to a pile of books about baseball, music and fishing. “But I wish I was out in that boat or do- Ding a gig somewhere.”
unnigan has been playing gigs in the Flathead for more than 30 years, after his first band, the
Feather River Music Company from Cal- ifornia, toured here in the 1970s. Like so many others who have come to North- west Montana, Dunnigan fell in love with the landscape and lifestyle, and quickly threw down roots.
By day he worked odd jobs or waited tables at the Buffalo Café, then located in Bigfork, and by night he would play music in bars across the valley. In the early 1980s, he started playing solo after meeting another musician at the Blue Moon Nite Club who was making $100 a night playing by himself, big money in those days for a starving artist. It was at one of those solo bar gigs that he met his future wife, Andrea. She was working as a waitress at the Outlaw Inn and was also an aspiring musician. Upon hearing of her love of music, friends told her that she should see Dunnigan play, and so after work one night she headed to Sam’s Bar in Bigfork.
“The moment I looked at him I fell in love,” she said.
Dunnigan approached his future wife after a group of “loud and obnox- ious guys” sat down next to her. The two hit it off immediately and started dat- ing soon after. In the summer of 1982, Dunnigan proposed to Andrea in her little flamingo-pink cottage in Woods
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John Dunnigan at his home in Whitefish. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
“WHEN I TRIED TO GO BACK TO SLEEP, THE
PAIN BECAME UNBEARABLE. I REALIZED AT THAT POINT THAT IT WAS NOT GOING TO BE A GOOD DAY.”
John Dunnigan