Missoula guitar fest speaks for the trees

Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) Ents - the wise, ancient beings from “The Lord of the Rings,” may not be the only trees that can speak in defense of their homes. Thanks to a few men who’ve designed a guitar, one hallowed spruce from northwest Montana has been given a voice to save a forest.

Author Rick Bass moved to the Yaak Valley decades ago after falling in love with its remote primordial rainforests and the serenity they invoke. He’s often wandered the moss-decked pathways through towering pillars of spruce and cedar, and the rich, musty atmosphere has invaded several of his stories and novels. So it’s not surprising that Bass should feel his muse was imperiled when the Kootenai National Forest proposed the 143-square-mile Black Ram logging project in 2019.

Bass has used his writing talents to warn people of various environmental threats. But with the Black Ram, he felt more was required. That was the motivation behind the Breedlove Black Ram guitar, which will be presented to the state of Montana on Saturday night in an extravaganza at the Wilma Theater.

“When something so hugely important is on the line, you choose to defend it with love, not fury and fear. This place deserves something different,” Bass told KGVO Radio.

A few years ago, Bass was drawn to a friend’s acoustic guitar made by Bozeman luthier Kevin Kopp. Lightly tapping his fingers on the front of the guitar produced a dark, rich boom, and Bass learned the wood was from a piece of spruce found in the Yaak. An idea bloomed in his head, and he asked if Kopp would make another from a spruce in the Black Ram forest. Kopp agreed, and Bass chose the downed trunk of a 315-year-old spruce tree.

“I had hunted a piece - I knew what I wanted after getting that idea. I went to the edge of Unit 72 where the Forest Service had already built a road to the units they wanted to cut. At the edge of any clearcut, there’s going to be a lot of associated blowdown. All the giant spruce along the edge of the clearcut were toppled over,” Bass said. “It’s ironic that this project was supposed to be about fuels reduction, when what they did is make this head-high stack of dead limbs, branches and trees. So I cut out a section about the size of a whale vertebra and wheelbarrowed it out.”

After about a year of work, Kopp unveiled the first Black Ram guitar, and Bass took it around to a few meetings and art festivals. Then in September 2023, Bass met another idea man, Jeff Bridges, who was attending an issue launch of the “Whitefish Review.” Bridges has been working with Oregon-based Breedlove Guitars on their “All In This Together” project, which emphasizes using ethically sourced woods. So he loved the story of the Black Ram Guitar and asked Bass for more slabs of the Black Ram spruce to make six Breedlove guitars.

That’s what will debut at the Wilma: the Breedlove Black Ram Guitar. The guitar body has a rich dark outline that fades to blonde near the tone hole, and tripping up the neck are mother-of-pearl fret inlays of the footprints of a Yaak grizzly bear.

The Breedlove guitar has already been out-and-about over the past few months, making its way into the hands of some Montana musicians. When Pearl Jam played Washington Grizzly stadium in late August, bassist Jeff Ament played the Breedlove and really liked “the low end,” Bass said.

A few months earlier, Bass offered Montana musician Rob Quist a chance to play the Breedlove, and Quist asked to play it in the Black Ram forest. Quist had admired the guitar from afar, to the point that he’d already written a song about it that he wanted to play among the spruce trees that still survive.

“(Bass) knows I’ve always been an advocate for public lands. So I was really excited about contributing to this project, and I wrote a song about this guitar telling me its story,” Quist said. “I told Rick, ‘I want to sing it for you, but I want to sing this song for you in the forest where this tree came from.’ When I played this guitar, it just spoke to me. It’s just a magical guitar.”

On Saturday night, more musicians will play the Breedlove Guitar, including Jeffrey Foucault and James McMurtry. They’ll be joined by several other musicians and local personalities, including Leslie Caye, Siri Sæteren, Lauren Strohacker, Kendra Sollars, Lander and Badge Busse, Pico Alt, Caroline Keys, Gibson Hartwell, Nate Biehl, Jenny Lynn, and Ro Myra.

Journalist and environmentalist Bill McKibben will emcee, and Breedlove Guitars will film the event for a documentary. Missoula woodcut artist Claire Emery has produced original artwork for the evening's program.

“It’s funny how many times a person can say we’re ‘all in this together’ when it involves a guitar that so many people enjoy playing. The guitar really does belong to everyone in Montana - it’s for everyone to play. We do intend for her to travel all over the state and musicians coming into the state can ask to play her,” Bass said.

Bass said he purposely priced the tickets low - $20 - so everyone could come. The money raised through ticket sales and donations will go toward paying the performers - many of whom are traveling from out of state - and continuing legal efforts to save the Black Ram forest from clearcutting and other logging. Tickets can be purchased online at blackramguitarfest.org.

Bass and the Yaak Valley Forest Council not only want to save the old-growth forest from logging, but they also want to designate the area as the nation’s first official climate refuge.

“It is a primary forest. It has never been logged, and large portions of it show no sign of ever having burned. It protects itself against wildfire in a fire ecosystem,” Bass said. “We’re just trying to get other people to love it. One seed, one tree, one guitar, one forest. It’s an opportunity to connect with the nature that we came from.”

First proposed in 2017, the 149-square-mile Black Ram project in the rural and wild lands along the Canadian border would log 57 million board-feet of timber using more than 2,000 acres of clearcuts. Selective logging would occur within almost 580 acres of old-growth stands.

In August 2023, Missoula federal district judge Donald Molloy ruled against the Black Ram project, finding that it violated several requirements of the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act and National Forest Management Act. The U.S. Forest Service has appealed.

In addition, the Black Ram is one of five large logging projects in the same general area proposed by the Kootenai National Forest. Others include the 35,000-acre OLY project, the 56,000-acre Buckhorn Project, the 72,550-acre North-East Yaak Project, and the 56,000-acre Knotty Pine project.

The Black Ram Guitar Festival is being held in conjunction with the MacLean Festival.

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.