Montana's Winter Playlist

The musicians I write about all say they’re in Montana for the same reasons we’re all here—for the slower pace and the landscape that continually inspires all forms of creativity. Montana art and music is a special brand and a unique culture surrounds it. Plus, they like the camaraderie more than the money.

 

Native Troubadour

Jack Gladstone spent years chasing awards, and when he stopped looking, one finally found him. Gladstone’s album “Native Anthropology” won the award for the “Best Historical Recording” at the 2011 Native American Music Awards, or the NAMMYs. He was also nominated for songwriter and folk album of the year. Gladstone, a member of the Blackfeet Nation who lives in Kalispell, considers himself a story-smith troubadour, traveling and sharing a part of a collective human cultural heritage. He follows in the footsteps of poetic tradition, spreading history through a lens of myth and parable. 

His latest focus is on athlete Jim Thorpe, who won two gold medals at the 1912 Sumer Olympic Games. The program, “American Sunlight and Shadow,” explores the role athletics played in reforming Native American identity at the beginning of the 20th century. It was through sports, Gladstone said, that Native Americans were able to first compete on a level playing field.

Gladstone doesn’t relate to written music, and considers himself theoretically illiterate. Still, he found his voice in a public speaking class at the University of Washington, where he was better able to express his ideas through song, ending each speech that way. “Just because you can’t read or write music doesn’t mean you can’t play or create,” Gladstone said. 

Gladstone picked up a guitar at nine-years-old and now his style is an amalgamation of genres, incorporating pop, country, blues and even gospel in ways which he believes will best reach the audience. He performs full time and has recorded 15 albums, all of which he say wouldn’t be possible elsewhere. 

“I wouldn’t be creating the art I was creating if I was in Nashville or New York of Los Angeles, or even Seattle for that matter,” Gladstone said. “The big sky country is the inspirational landscape I immerse myself in.”

 

Family Fiddler

Trevor Krieger grew up with a violin in his hands as a member of his family’s band, the Krieger Family Fiddlers, who once performed for President Bill Clinton. At 13, he was the youngest musician in the Billings Symphony. “I didn’t really appreciate music until I got a paycheck from it,” he said. “It was a bonus and made me take things more seriously.”

By 18, he had won fiddle championships in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Canada. Now 34, Krieger has appeared on over 30 albums as a studio musician and performed on stage with the likes of the Ray Charles Orchestra, the Allman Brothers, Wilco and Alison Krauss and Union Station. 

Though his primary occupation is as a firefighter and paramedic for the City of Billings, Krieger said he remains open for acts passing through town in need of his skills on a fiddle.  He takes on students including his own young children, teaches at summer fiddle camps, directs his church choir and praise teams, is developing a small home studio, and performs with Cody, Wyoming-based National Guitar Flatpicking Champion Jeff Troxel around Montana and Wyoming. The two musicians’ “Spirit of Our Time,” a collection of Americana and folk tunes, was released last year.

“I gauge success by enjoyment and I’m having a hell of a time,” he said of his varied projects. 

A student of the Suzuki method, Krieger said he doesn’t have a lot of formal training, but learns as he goes, adding the keyboard and mandolin to his repertoire in a style he said bends the traditional fiddle forms. “People think violin is classical or country, Charlie Daniels or Bach,” he said. “There’s a whole other world out there.”

 

Piano Appreciation

Pianist David Morgenroth made his way in the world as a musician for years, playing weddings and bar mitzvahs that didn’t speak to the soul of the musician. Though he has performed on stages around the world both solo and with greats such as Bill Watros and Toots Thielmans, as a jazz and classical pianist living in Montana such gigs are few and far between.

Morgenroth, who has the resumé to back a sparkling career, holds graduate degrees in classical piano and jazz studies from the University of North Texas. He is the pianist and musical director for vocalist Eden Atwood’s album “Turn Me Loose.” He released his first solo album in 2010, his interpretation of 13 Duke Ellington standards including “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If it Ain’t Got That Swing)” and “Love You Madly.”

Montana musicians often have to struggle and compromise to make a living, or find another job to pay the bills. It means playing music that doesn’t speak to their individual artistry. Plus, the work that is there is spread across the state’s vast landscape, often requiring hours of travel. “The life of a working musician,” Morgenroth explained, “requires making adjustments and sacrifices.” So Morgenroth chose a different route, not surrendering his art, but taking a day job as an investment advisor in Missoula.

The trick, he said, is to find a balance with a “job that doesn’t take the stuffing out of you,” and leaves you something to give to the music at the end of the workday.  Then, he is able to share his artistry on the keys with those that appreciate it, wherever they happen to be. “It can be a couple in a living room to 5,000 people in a park,” he said. 

 

Soul for Jazz

M.J. Williams’ father may have been a jazz musician, but the vocalist and trombone player didn’t settle into the genre before testing the waters elsewhere. “I did some folk. I did some blues,” she said. Neither genre grabbed her the way performing jazz music has. “I found jazz such a huge, interesting, rich world,” she said. 

In the music, she has found the history of music in America, bringing a richness to a sound that also has a deep respect for innovation.  Jazz encompasses the standards as well as improvisation and both have allowed Williams to perform with the M.J. Williams Trio and the Williams, Roberti, White Trio. She has played house concerts and festivals such as Seattle’s Bumbershoot and the New York City Women in Jazz Concert and spends her winters with her partner in Paris, performing at the legendary jazz club Le Sept Lezard. “I enjoy playing where there are people to listen to respond to the music,” she said. 

That could be anywhere, as long as she’s out of the hot sun. As a musician from the tiny town of Basin, where she helped found the Montana Artists Refuge, Williams doesn’t feel isolated. Instead, she said she feels surrounded with dedicated and talented musicians. “Our interaction – that’s what really keeps it alive for me,” she said. “It would be a big struggle if there weren’t dedicated people here.”

Instead of accepting the relative ease of working as a musician in an urban center, Williams is drawn to the spirit of Montana musicians, who go to great lengths to seek out others like them. “Just being located in Montana is a whole different way of looking at the music,” she said. “It’s pretty isolated here for jazz musicians.”

 

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