Bob Marshall Music Festival sees its biggest crowd ever

SEELEY LAKE - The Bob Marshall Music Festival returned for its fifth year after taking a year off due to COVID-19. Max Pigman, Lewis and Clark Brewing Company CEO and one of the festival owners, said his second year as festival owner went well.

"It was just a really, really fun event and we lucked out with the weather," he said. "I would say [this was] the highest attendance that I've seen in those ... previous years."

Attendance was capped at 1,000 people. Pigman said they had 943 check-ins throughout the weekend with campsite locations selling out. He estimates that they had anywhere from 600-625 people in 2019. Overall he felt that the crowd was "very manageable" and that they did a better job of organizing the camping sites.

"It's nice to increase [to 1,000 people], because we get an understanding of what kind of infrastructure you need to continue to provide great services and make sure that you don't run out of [resources]," he said.

Pigman believes that the festival's capacity has the potential to grow to anywhere from 1,500-2,000 attendants depending on stage placement and land layout. Organizers are also looking into expanding the camping sites a bit next year. The property has been secured for next year.

He said the event saw minimal fire issues. Aside from a generator that was beginning to heat the grass underneath it, festival organizers otherwise did not have to deal with any large flames.

For future iterations, Pigman hopes to improve their fencing in order to better separate the campgrounds from the festival grounds and prevent outside alcohol from coming in. He also hopes to increase the number of sponsorships they get from the Seeley Lake community and improve communication with residents to gauge how the festival impacts the local community.

Pigman said audience highlights included blues band Mississippi Heat, Americana group Laney Lou and the Bird Dogs as well as the event headliners The Steeldrivers and Reckless Kelly. He also enjoyed this year's Songwriter Showcase featuring Sean Devine, Chad Okrusch and Tom Catmull where musicians took turns performing and sharing the stories behind their songwriting.

Pigman believes the strongest aspect of the festival's lineup is the diversity of their acts.

"It's nice to be able to provide some diversity in music and introduce people maybe to a genre of music that they hadn't really spent much time listening to," he said. "I got a lot of really good feedback on that. People came up to me and said, 'Hey, thanks for getting that band because I never really listened to that kind of music, but I really enjoyed them.' So I think we're going to continue to do that instead of getting kind of pigeonholed into, we're a bluegrass or we're a country or we're a rock [festival]. Just as long as we get really good musicians, people appreciate good music."

A full list of Louis and Clark Brewing's live music events can be found on https://www.lewisandclarkbrewing.com/music-events.