The 2018 Guitar Town Festival at Copper Mountain

2018 Guitar Town Festival at Copper Mountain Colorado

The 2018 Guitar Town Festival included another great line up for this FREE annual guitar festival.

FRIDAY

John Jorgenson always performs with bands on both Acoustic Saturday and Electric Sunday. This year, he decided to step it up and also perform with his electric band for the Friday night kick-off on the main stage.

ACOUSTIC SATURDAY

Rory Hoffman demostrate his unique style of guitar playing. Rory says he learned this technique because he started playing when he was young and too small to hold the guitar upright. He sat in with several of the bands during the weekend on guitar, acordian, piano, and organ.

Chiste Lenèe was the 2017 Intermational Fingerstyle Guitar Champion. She is a rising star in two handed percussive style playing pioneered by Preston Reed and Michael Hedges. 

Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley performed a blend of country, blue grass, and blues numbers.

Andy McKee demonstrated his finger style and two-handed tapping techniques on baritone guitar. He played crowd pleasers with his arrangements of 80’s classics like Africa and Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

John Jorgenson back on stage with his acoustic quintet. 

Al Dimeola left his electric guitar behind for the day to play an all acoustic set.  Yes …. He shreds just as fast on acoustic guitar when he wants to.

A Saturday evening closer with (almost) everyone back on stage for the acoustic all-star jam.

ELECTRIC SUNDAY

The Sunday morning workshop and Q&A with the electric day headliners.

The hardest working man at Copper Mountain … John Jorgenson and his electric band.

Johnny A played solo with a looping station and multiple effects. His theme was British rock from the 60’s.  After some pedal mishaps, he announced that he was going to change his entire set.  He proved that a backlog of classic rock songs will always work. 

Coco Montoya got the crowd dancing and told stories of learning to play blues guitar from the great Albert Collins.

Robben Ford headlined on Sunday. He led some young musicians including the rare second guitarist in his band.

Electric Sunday closed with the all-star jam.  Usually, a jam with more than three guitars on one stage is a bit too much.  Somehow, these end-of-the-day jams at Guitar Town always work. 

-HC-

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Russ Loeffler is a contributing editor to Harmony Central who covers trade shows and live events when he is not fine-tuning his guitar chops. He is also a  gear head with a passion for good music, great tones, and music that is much easier to listen to than it is to play.