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“Dwight Yoakam speaks volumes to the whole community - grandmas and grandpas, young country fans, honky-tonk fans. Yoakam, for example, is an artist with cross-generational appeal, Shockey said. Music festivals are increasingly popular as family activities, especially smaller “boutique” festivals like Under The Big Sky. Shockey made it a priority to create an event for all ages. “When I went to see Pearl Jam, I realized there really is a great music scene in the state of Montana but in the Flathead County, there wasn’t anything going on,” he said. Shockey said attending a Pearl Jam stadium show at the University of Montana in Missoula in 2018 gave him the idea for curating a music festival for the Flathead Valley. Acts on the roster such as the Lil Smokies and Corb Lund, a Canadian country artist with whom Shockey grew up, are known to local audiences after their regular stops in Flathead Valley bars and nightclubs. He named singer/songwriter Amanda Shires, who is married to country superstar Jason Isbell, as one of his favorite scheduled performers.
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“It’s a good mix of singer-songwriter stuff, alt-country, Americana, some folk, some indie,” Shockey said “I felt like it was a good fit for this area.” Other big names among the two dozen acts are country music pioneer Dwight Yoakam, indie soloist Jenny Lewis and country singer Cody Jinks. Headliners are Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats, a high-energy soul and blues band from Colorado that broke out nationally with the single “S.O.B.” in 2015, and the Grammy-nominated indie rock group Band of Horses.
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Under the umbrella of his event-production company Outriders Present, Shockey has created the first Under The Big Sky Music & Arts Festival, set for July 13-14 on two stages at Big Mountain Ranch near Whitefish. Johnny Shockey is doing something that most music fans can only dream of - bringing together some of his favorite nationally known singers and bands to play for two days in his own backyard.