History of the Barnburner
1999
Location
The Go West Drive In, Missoula MT
Bands
The Juice
The Flood Plain Gang
Cold Mountain Rhythm
Abendego
Ritmo Six
Cash for Junkers
The Stuarts
Portable Winter
The Squares
Humpy
Everyday Sinners
Sharky
Rhythm and Booze Review
Djs
Tom Grinn (CT)
Soul Shaker (MO)
3po (NYC)
Rainmaker (AR)
Johan Afterglow (Sweden)
Schlep (OR), Damon (CA)
Lien (MT)
Millhouse (MT)
Major Terror (MT)
Tobin (MT)
Entropy (MT)
Ken Kasey (MT)
Gruv42 (MT)
Beyonda (MT)
SJB (MT)
Mr. Redhands (MT)
Daniel Flotsom (MT)
Synchronicity (MT)
Herb (MT)
Overview
So here it is three years into the Barnburner party, and here we are, trying to out do ourselves again. With two years of parties that the town has gone crazy about, we had to somehow come up with a plan that would blow the city away. So we did, with a little help from our friend mother nature.
We wanted to keep our guerilla productions feel, but try and sturdy up the program to invite talent in from out of town. This meant a more professional approach to promotion and stages. The Go West Drive-In was the perfect venue, big, flat, and no neighbors. All we had to do now is create the skeleton of a festival. This would mean plenty of tents, heaters, lights, generator and multiple PA’s to power the wide range of music that would be going on.
Trying to bring the whole progressive community of Missoula together is not easy. The concept was to unite the ravers, hippies and punks. To do this, it takes more than one stage, so we put together four stages, in tents and all named after some of Michael Jackson’s (being the scariest person we could think of) greatest hits; The Thriller Tent, The Smooth Criminal Tent, The Billy Jean Tent and The Beat It Tent. Each was highly decorated with the help of the Enlitenment Project Crew. The drive inn gave everyone a specialized spot in the festival.
It was a three day affair, full of entertainment and good times, but our luck ran thin when Hurricane Missoula with its record breaking winds of 80mph struck our festival site on Sunday morning leaving it to shreds across The Go West. It was disastrous, but we managed to pull Sunday night off by moving locations to the Cowboy Bar and The 140 West Club (now The Blue Heron). What a curve ball! We unconditionally learned a few things about how to go about outdoor productions and managed to make an event that no one attending will ever forget.