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Missoula’s Zootown Festival will bring big high-profile musicians to Montana

Concert flyer for the 2025 Zootown Festival.
Concert flyer for the 2025 Zootown Festival.

For the first time in decades, Missoula will host a major music festival next July. The Zootown Festival is the latest event in Montana’s flourishing live music scene.

When headliners Hozier and Kacey Musgraves hit the stage in Missoula next Independence Day, they’ll kick off a music festival enthusiast’s dream — an entire month of weekends packed with major live music events across western and central Montana.

The Zootown Festival joins the likes of Under the Big Sky, the Montana Folk Festival, Red Ants Pants and Headwaters Country Jam — all of which debuted in the last 15 years.

That’s about how long Zootown Festival creator Scott Osburn says he’s been sitting on the idea. Osburn runs an entertainment production company, Always On.

“My dream was to build a festival in Missoula, so this is something I’ve been meditating on for a very long time,” Osburn told MTPR in an interview.

Osburn graduated from the University of Montana’s entertainment management program in 2010. He says his mentors told him Missoula wasn’t ready to host a festival at the scale he was imagining. Missoula’s growth since the pandemic finally inspired him to give Zootown Festival a shot.

Osburn says he imagined the community would be wary of a 15,000-person party at the fairgrounds in the center of town — which is why he’s working to gain Missoulians’ support.

“We understand — things are changing in Montana, things are changing around the world at such a fast clip,” Osburn said. “But, we just want to come in and be like, ‘Look, we’re truly looking at this from a Missoula, Montana, and obviously a Montana-first mindset,” said Osburn

The festival offered residents with billing zip codes in the Missoula area first dibs on tickets. They sold out online in less than an hour. Osburn also says he’s working with his alma mater to include students in the planning and marketing process.

UM Entertainment Management program director Peggy Keiper says it’s a unique opportunity for her undergraduates.

“It gives students a really good example of, ‘This is one of our alumni. This is an entrepreneur who came through our program, and this is what you could potentially do,” Keiper said.

Longtime Montana entertainment executives say the state has always had a vibrant home-grown music scene. But, the biggest names largely overlooked the state because no one had proven a Montana audience could turn them a profit.

That changed in 2006, when the Rolling Stones played to more than 22,000 people in Missoula’s Washington-Grizzly Stadium.

Brian Knaff co-founded a music agency in Missoula 50 years ago.

“That was the big idea that got everybody thinking big. You look at that stadium, and you know it was sold out,” Knaff said. “And, you look at those ticket prices, and you know they were $175 to $350 — totally unheard of.”

Knaff says the Stones proved Montana could sustain large artists — a trend that continues today.

The Zootown Festival has a lease with Missoula County to run the event each summer until 2029. In return, the county will net $50,000 to $120,000, depending on the number of tickets sold.

Austin graduated from the University of Montana’s journalism program in May 2022. He came to MTPR as an evening newscast intern that summer, and jumped at the chance to join full-time as the station’s morning voice in Fall 2022.

He is best reached by emailing austin.amestoy@umt.edu.
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