CD Release Concerts from the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana

Based on a simple premise that America’s greatest places should be accompanied by great songs, the Western Folklife Center presents Songs from Yellowstone and the Tetons, a concert to launch a new CD of the same name. This concert features the winning songs from our Yellowstone and the Tetons Songwriting contest and more! 

Both concerts feature the winners of the Yellowstone Teton Song Contest:
       Connie Dover with Skip Gorman
          Out Yonder
       Ray Doyle
          The Jewel
       The Wichitones, with Jon Chandler
          The Road That Leads to Yellowstone
In addition, others from the CD will perform including Jackson-based musicians Beth McIntosh, Dan Thomasma and Ben Winship; and in Bozeman, Greg Keeler will join the show

Read about the performers.
Read more here about the Jackson Hole, Wyoming concert on April 4, 2008
Read more here  about the Bozeman, Montana concert on April 5, 2008
Read about the contest.

About the CD and the Concerts:

The musicians performing in the concert include Connie Dover and Skip Gorman, Ray Doyle, and Jon Chandler, winners of the Yellowstone Teton Song Contest, sponsored by the Western Folklife Center in 2007. The CD is comprised of songs inspired by Yellowstone and the Tetons, including song contest finalists and winners plus other songs by artists such as Lyle Lovett, Tim O'Brien and Jerry Douglas.  The Songs of Yellowstone and the Tetons Wyoming concert is produced by the Western Folklife Center and co-sponsored by Vista 360 and the National Museum of Wildlife Art with support from Julie and Will Oberling, and Philae and Peter Dominick. The Bozeman concert is sponsored by the Museum of the Rockies with support from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, who is also the major sponsor of the CD and contest.

The Yellowstone Teton Song Contest sought songs and other musical compositions inspired by the greater Yellowstone area. Connie Dover won the Grand Prize of $1,000 for her song "Out Yonder." The second prize of $500 went to Ray Doyle for his song "The Jewel." The public was also able to vote online for their favorite song. The winner of the online audience award was Jon Chandler for his song, "The Road That Leads to Yellowstone." Jon received a new Gibson Songwriter Deluxe acoustic guitar, made in Bozeman, Montana, and valued at close to $3,000 that was donated by the famous guitar maker.

There were 139 original songs entered in the contest of which 16 songs were chosen as finalists to be judged by four anonymous music experts from states surrounding Yellowstone and the Tetons, and by the public in the online audience award. In the end over 8,000 votes were cast online. The four judges also voted in terms of songwriting craft and pertinence to the Yellowstone region.

Hal Cannon, founding director of the Western Folklife Center and song contest organizer said: "Most of the songs that came in were cowboy, singer-songwriter, country and bluegrass. There were so many wonderful songs submitted I really don’t know how the judges picked the winners." Of the CD, which includes selections from the contest, Cannon says: "We wanted to give people a wonderful soundtrack of music to accompany their drive around the parks."

Yellowstone and the Tetons are powerful symbols of the mythic West. Yet every person has made these places his or her own. It’s not so surprising that Yellowstone and the Tetons would inspire songs. One of the first songs written in Yellowstone was the famous cowboy classic "The Nightherding Song." In 1909 a Texas cowboy named Harry Stevens was hired to watch over 1,000 horses used on stagecoaches bringing travelers into the Park. In an interview later with the legendary folklorist John Lomax, Stevens commented, "we always had so many different squalls and yells and hollers trying to keep that cattle quiet, I thought I might as well have a kind of song to it." Today, this song is sung all over the West, but few people know that it was composed in Yellowstone.

"Out Yonder" was written by Connie Dover on the front porch of the cook house at the Double Diamond X Ranch where she worked as a ranch cook in the summer of 2004. The ranch headquarters overlooks the South Fork of the Shoshone River right on the edge of Yellowstone Park near Cody, Wyoming. Connie has worked summers on ranches all over Wyoming but winters near Weston, Missouri. "Out Yonder" is a song about a woman who dreams of leaving the East to come to God’s country near Yellowstone. Connie completed the song driving to a recording studio near Taos, New Mexico where she recorded this and other unreleased songs about her love of the West with friends and fellow musicians Mason Brown and Chipper Thompson. Connie will perform in the Songs of Yellowstone and the Tetons concert with singer, guitarist, fiddler and mandolinist Skip Gorman.

"The Jewel" was written by Ray Doyle of Mar Vista, California. Ray is originally from Ireland, and when he moved to North America at 13 he had a lot of catching up to do in American culture. It wasn’t until he joined the famous touring band Wylie and the Wild West nearly 20 years ago that he saw Yellowstone. It was after playing with Wylie at the Calgary Stampede that Ray took a detour home through Yellowstone. He says of that trip through the Park "I’d never been so affected by a place." In the song he recalls that first experience of seeing the volcanic aspects of the Park, and says "The Jewel" examines "the meeting of the water and the fire."

Jon Chandler’s "The Road That Leads to Yellowstone" was inspired by his boyhood adventures with his father, uncle and grandfather on yearly fishing trips to the rivers that define the Yellowstone region such as the Snake, Firehole and Madison. In the song, he tries to bring back the vision of those boyhood trips. Jon was just completing the song when he heard about the contest and decided to enter it. He has recently completed a collection of songs about Wyoming. Jon Chandler will perform in the Songs of Yellowstone and the Tetons concert with his trio, the Wichitones, which includes Butch Hause and Ernie Martinez.

The Yellowstone Teton Song Contest, concerts and CD are supported by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Gibson Guitar, Museum of the Rockies, and public radio and television stations throughout the region.

Producer of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering for 23 years, the Western Folklife Center is a regional organization dedicated to grassroots culture in the West. Headquartered in Elko, Nevada the Folklife Center conducts its work all over the region, and is a regular contributor to National Public Radio with its series, What’s in a Song, which is broadcast over 500 public radio stations nationwide. The mission of the Western Folklife Center is to enhance the vitality of American life through the experience, understanding, and appreciation of the diverse cultural heritage of the American West.