Since the SFF presents added The Big Ponderoo so our summers start off with great music in Sisters and ends in late September with the seasoned Folk Festival that Sisters has hosted for over 25 years. We could not be happier to be in this part of Oregon as it fills our shop with music and musicians that keep us inspired!
This year at the Big Ponderoo we had a booth in the Village Green where the festival takes place. It was nice to be near the action and share our space with Nechville Banjos. Linda and Tom are the perfect folks to collaborate with on booth space! Lots of picking going on and all sorts of musicians stopped by.
The line up included some Thompson players like Joe Cicero from Fireside Collective, Lindsay Lou and our own Matt Behnke and his amazing wife Jenny and their band Sky Bound Blue – these players have all have been supporters for many years and it is always a pleasure to hear their great music!
Click on photo and it will take you to our Instagram post : )
Each year for the Sisters Folk Festival we host a band on our front porch – what fun it is each year to see who ends up being a part of our “workshop” – if we don’t have a Thompson artist at the festival we are assigned one to play on Saturday at 4pm to share the sounds of our guitars. This year the band Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band graced our pickin’ porch and they sure know how to play! Wow! Ian Ly was game to switch out different guitars to tell the listeners what nuances he heard with the different tonewoods.
Click on photo to go to Instagram post….
We also had a musician we didn’t know stop by several times and enjoyed his songwriting and playing – if you haven’t heard Mason Via don’t miss out, his band killed it at the festival night after night. Here is a great song about our National Parks that bears listening too.
Tray Wellington stopped by and not only is he an amazing banjo player of course he plays guitar too… So wonderful to meet these talented musicians as they stop by the shop.
Max Gomez is always someone we love to visit with and he tried out our new model the DMC – Deep Motified Classical guitar Mahogany / Adi top. It is the perfect songwriters guitars for it’s size, tone and powerful sound. Modeled after the N-20 body shape similar to “Trigger” with X bracing and a deeper body. This guitar delivers a sweet sound and we can’t wait to make more of them!