Sisters Folk Festival, an outstanding musical gathering that brings music lovers from all over was celebrated the weekend after Labor Day. This special festival included 45 acts, stretched throughout the charming town of Sisters, OR, which is why they famously say: “All the town’s a stage”. 2015 marked the successful festival’s 20th anniversary and Breedlove wanted to help celebrate that.
Breedlove Stringed Instruments has been a proud sponsor of Sister Folk Festival since 2001. The festival does many things for the town of Sisters, but one especially hit close to home for Breedlove, the Americana Project. This extraordinary program instructs and inspires high school students how to build and create their very own musical instrument, the most popular being the acoustic guitar. These students leave this program with the knowledge most luthiers wished they could have acquired at such a young age. After hearing about what this project does, the craftsmen at Breedlove knew there was a way they could help.
The event kicks off with a sponsor’s night where students from the songwriting portion of the Americana project performed.
Breedlove had something special to offer to not only support the Americana Project, but also to be a part of such a spectacular music festival. A custom-made Breedlove Guitar was created and offered as a raffle prize to rase funds to support the program. So, how does this custom guitar tie into these programs? The special guitar is put on display and placed on auction. Music lovers from all over the place come to try and win this guitar, but that’s not the best part of the story. All of the proceeds from the auction raffle ticket purchases go back to funding the Americana Project! Every year has been a successful auction, but this year brought in an all time high of $9,000 for the custom red cedar top, custom burst finish, mahogany neck, not to mention the back and sides which were donated from Jay Howlett’s “The Tree” (a special Honduran mahogany). 2015’s lucky winner, Richard Mombell from Eugene, OR, received this beautiful guitar and was part of the $9k raised to help support the Americana Project.
The family here at Breedlove looks forward to intriguing and inspiring festivalgoers, musicians, students, and guitar collectors to awe them with a guitar aesthetically and sonically stunning as well as supporting an great cause. Sisters Folk Festival 2016 will be here before you know it so keep up on the Breedlove News!
