Butte Montana

MTPR's Cole Grant hosts an exploration of the great music coming up July 13-15 at the Montana Folk Festival. Malian desert blues, Tennessee acapella gospel and Montana swing are just a few of the great genres represented at this year’s festival in Butte, MT. Tune in now to get to know some of the artists on the lineup for this weekend's festival.

Longtime Butte Superfund watchdog Fritz Daily says he’s not particularly surprised that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt abruptly resigned Thursday amid various ethics investigations.

I’m standing at the top of a tall tangle of bright red and blue slides at Ridge Waters, Butte’s brand new outdoor waterpark, as a teenage lifeguard gives a steady stream of dripping kids the green light to hop in, hang on, and ride down.

On Thursday morning, close to a hundred people gathered at an old ball field across from Butte’s Civic Center and circled around haul trucks and excavators fit for Paul Bunyan, if he was a miner, and not a lumberjack.

Both the crowd and the heavy machinery were there for the groundbreaking ceremony on the Parrot tailings removal project.

Montana Public Radio will broadcast live from the 2018 Montana Folk Festival in Butte, MT, July 13-15. Festival Director George Everett stopped by to give a preview of the upcoming music festival.

Despite the name "Folk Festival," the music isn't "a songwriter with a guitar," Everett says. "What that means is music of the people. Traditional music that goes back generations. Bluegrass, blues, cajun, zydeco; the genres stay the same, but we try to have the performers be different to represent those genres every year."

We heard music from all over the country and the world during the 2017 Montana Folk Festival. Consider this the highlight reel from MTPR's live broadcasts from the festival.

In the first hour, you'll hear Cajun and Acadian music from Bruce Daigrepont of Metarie, LA; the North Carolina-based gospel brass shout band, Cedric Mangum and Company; and the Ethiopian jazz of Washington, D.C.'s Feedel Band. In the second half of the program, we'll feature reggae from Seattle-based Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band; Chicago blues from Toronzo Cannon; and the Texas-style triple-fiddles and harmonies of The Quebe Sisters.

Tuesday night the Environmental Protection Agency organized what it called a “public availability session and workshop” in Butte to give locals a different kind of opportunity to learn about the proposed Superfund cleanup that was unveiled last month.