Guitar Town 2015
By Russ Loeffler |
Festival Overview by Russ Loeffler
Guitar Town 11- Copper Mountain, Colorado (August 7-9, 2015)
This year marked the 11th anniversary of Guitar Town, the free guitar festival at Copper Mountain resort in Colorado. Every year, world-class guitarists arrive at Copper Mountain to perform in front of an audience comprised mostly of guitar players (and their significant others) - and this year may have been the best artist line-up in the histroy of Guitar Town.
The traditional format for the festival includes an Acoustic day on Saturday and and Electric day on Sunday. This year's line-up included:
Saturday - Acoustic Day
J2B2 (John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band)
Sunday - Electric Day
John Jorgenson Electric Band with Special Guest Chris Casello & Stig Mathisen
The event is very well-organized, with all of the performers walking on stage as scheduled. Performances begin at noon each day with a final performance at 6:00 p.m featuring an all-star line-up of the performers from that day.
The all-star jams at the end of the day were fantastic. More often than not, seven or more guitar players on the stage at one time is not a good thing; the acoustic jams tend to work better than the electric jams, but this year the festival closed with an amazing all-star electric guitar jam. Steve Vai led extended jams of Jeff Beck's Freeway Jam and Jimi's Little Wing that were musical and inspiring.
There's a bonus to the festival performances, too: the workshops held each morning by the performers who will be going on stage that day. The comraderie of the guitar playing "brothers" is genuine, and they were very open to answering questions regarding technique, composition, and musical inspiration.
The Copper Town Mountain resort has several restaruants, coffee shops, and bars to keep you from leaving the resort. There are very reasonable accommodations at the resort; just do your homework on VRBO and Air BNB. If you plan ahead, you can reserve condos that include decks with views to the festival stage. For those people traveling with guitar geeks and needing a break from "all guitar - all the time," Breckenridge and Vail are nearby for entertainment.
All in all, Guitar Town just keeps getting better - and this year was no exception.
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Russ Loeffler is a freelance contributor to Harmony Central who covers trade shows and live events between fine-tuning his guitar chops and and exploring the more interesting sides of music.
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