How Arts Council’s Music in the Mountains finds their local talent
By Annie O’Neill EDITORIAL INTERN
Brian Hurlbut, executive director of the Arts Council of Big Sky, has spent his career booking bands for Music in the Mountains with one strategy: watch the names in small print at the bottom of festival posters.
“I pay attention to who’s on the underbill,” Hurlbut said. “Those up-and-coming bands opening for big headliners… I try to find those and curate them.”
His track record speaks for itself. Since the start of the free Music in the Mountains Series in 2008, the event has built a reputation for finding artists before the rest of the world catches up. Jason Isbell played Len Hill Park. So did Mt. Joy, Lake Street Dive and the Turnpike Troubadours, all before they became household names.
Hurlbut remembers each of them, but Lukas Nelson stands out.
“He was still like a really young kid,” Hurlbut said of Nelson’s 2016 appearance. “I’m getting a chill talking about it.”
That instinct does come at a cost. Putting the festival on each week costs nearly $500,000, but admission remains free.
“Our goal is to keep it a real family friendly, free, event,” Hurlbut said. The festival is supported by sponsors, volunteers and the Big Sky community, who share the belief that cost should never be a barrier to culture.
“When people walk into this space, they can sense it’s something special,” Hurlbut said.
This summer, two acts demand attention. Sterling Drake is a Montana native who spent years thinking his ranching life and music career could not coexist. The Takes are a young Bozeman band fresh off a national tour. Both play Len Hill Park this summer as part of the Emerging Artist Series, which highlights local and regional talent. The Takes performed June 25. Drake plays July 16.
Drake grew up in Montana knowing he was both a rancher and a musician. For a long time, he viewed that as a problem.
“I’ve been a musician since I was younger, and they often felt like two different passions of mine that were at odds for a long time,” Drake said. “Over the years I found a way to kind of blend my own personal story and relationship with the West and my artistry as a musician.”
That merging separates Drake from artists who use Western imagery as a mere aesthetic. He does not perform a version of ranch life; he lives it.
“There’s a lot of people that will don a cowboy hat and sing a country song,” he said. “But I think it’s just as important to make sure that we’re not appropriating an image, but elevating those important messages and issues that we face here in the West.”
Drake calls the album intentionally existential, but he built something practical around it. Working with the American Farm Bureau, he connected “The Shape I’m In” to a mental health directory for agricultural and rural communities.
The Takes formed in Jackson, Wyoming, in 2020, less by design than by circumstance. Writing songs to pass time during the pandemic, the band brought together guitarist and vocalist Sumner Rahr, bassist Phoebe Webb and guitarist Guido Rahr. The group eventually added a fourth member, drummer Sam Beilenson, and toured the Pacific Northwest before recently landing in Bozeman.
Live, the band carries more energy than the recording suggests. They are high-energy and visually magnetic, often making a crowd forget they came for the headliner.
When asked to describe the band’s sound, Webb laughed.
“I hate this question,” she said. “We sound like The Takes, you know?”
The band’s newest EP, “Uprooting Roses,” blends folk, Southern rock and country blues. That restlessness is intentional.
“The music we just released is kind of all over the place, in a good way,” Webb said. “It doesn’t really fit into one genre.”
The band recently toured as the opening act for The Runarounds, a group whose Prime Video series built something of a cult following. Playing a string of sold-out shows changed The Takes’ perspective on their own trajectory.
“Not a sense of stardom,” Rahr said. “A sense that this is achievable. That a bigger stage isn’t too far away.”
Music in the Mountains carries its history into every performance. The Takes felt that connection immediately when they learned which artists had stood on the same stage.
“Those names are just another echelon,” Rahr said. “To even be sharing the stage feels tremendous. There’s imposter syndrome, but there’s a point where you remind yourself, we’ve been at this five, six years. We’ve put a lot in.”
Drake hopes the audience feels the same.
“I hope that they feel more connected, with music, but also with their own neighbors and everybody that’s there,” Drake said. “Unity through music.”
That is what Hurlbut has spent his career building. He has watched the names at the bottom of the poster move to the top for almost two decades, and he sees it beginning again.
“Artists want to play Big Sky whether they’re huge or up and coming,” Hurlbut said. “The audience always responds. The bands are like, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.'”
