Festival book celebrates 25 years of music and magic

SANDPOINT — The book reads like the Billboard Top 100 chart.

Carl Perkins. Tony Bennett. Jan & Dean. Emmy Lou Harris. Wynton Marsalis. The Beach Boys. Judy Collins. Al Jarreau.

And, yet as much as “Celebrating 25 Years: The Festival at Sandpoint” chronicles the summer music series’ journey through the years, it is also a love letter to the community which has nourished the festival and supported it through the years.

The genesis for the book began more than two years ago when longtime Festival board member Jim Walter approached the rest of the board with something he’d been dreaming of for a long time — a permanent history of the Festival. From pictures to programs to memorabilia, the Festival’s entire life story was packed away in boxes, said Festival Executive Director Dyno Wahl.

At first, the board was hesitant because everyone knew the how demanding the project would likely be, she said.

“We knew it was going to be a ton of work,” said Wahl. “We were behind the idea but I think we knew there would be a lot involved to make it the quality project we wanted.”

Eventually, the board opted to go for it, Wahl said. Members wanted to preserve the story of the annual music series, telling the complete tale from start to finish, good, bad and all.

To make the project work, Wahl said the board knew they needed a team of professionals who were talented at what they did, but also who knew and loved the Festival.

Walter, who owned a color separation business in Wisconsin, brought his expertise in the industry to the table. Writer Marlisa Keyes brought her knowledge of the arts community and skills at telling a story. Melissa Hammack captured the Festival’s spirit with an artistic and imaginative layout.

Others — from Festival photographer and board member David Marx, who selected and refined images, to information booth chairperson Trish Gannon, whose candid shots and stories added a human touch to the book — also played key roles, Wahl said.

While tales of music, musicians and the nuts-and-bolts of the event weave their way through the book, each year also has it own story and stories. To make it all work, the book’s collaborators decided to make each year its own chapter.

“That way we could segue from year to year and touch on some of the different stories with a lot of candor,” Wahl said. “We didn’t want to sugarcoat anything but we wanted to be true to the Festival’s spirit as well.”

Wahl compared the final result to a chat between friends catching up on their lives — gossiping, laughing, crying and smiling; sometimes all at once.

“As a result, the book is true to the spirit of the Festival,” she added. “You see the ups and downs but there’s also a lot of fun, a lot of hope and optimism.”

While it would have been easy to edit the Festival’s story to leave out the inevitable controversies and bad years that happen in any organization, Wahl said the board was very clear in wanting the story to be true to the facts. While painful, she said the hard times are part of the Festival history and cannot be ignored without minimizing the great community spirit that arose in the wake of the problems and have made the annual summer music series shine the way that it has.

Because, while the book is a behind-the-scenes look at a beloved musical tradition, it also is a story of the community and the Festival’s role in shaping the Sandpoint area and vice versa over the past 25 years.

Because it is a tale of the community as much as it is the history of the Festival, the book has something for everyone. It is also something that holds up over time — each time she picks it up, another story or picture captures her attention, even though she proofread the book several times during editing.

“I think the book is true to what the Festival is,” Wahl said. “It’s captures the music but there’s also the hometown feel and the love, that nobody gets paid enough to have a bad time.

“And that’s what we have, and what the book shows, that the Festival is a good time.”

n “Celebrating 25 Years: The Festival at Sandpoint” is available at Vanderford’s and at The Festival at Sandpoint office. It also will be available at the Festival store at Memorial Field during The Festival at Sandpoint.