HAMILTON — This weekend, outside Hamilton, you can still catch a tune before the music stops at the last Hardtimes Bluegrass Festival.
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“We'd like to keep it as nice as it was and go out with the same character we've always built up,” said Tari Conroy. “It's a small genre of music, so we've never had huge crowds, but you have those that always come back.”
Mike and Tari Conroy missed the music after another long-running local festival ended. So, 17 years ago, they started Hardtimes.
“It was just a special festival because it's old timey and all the bands play on one mic and we got the old time stage here,” Mike Conroy said. “Kind of like you'd expected back in the 30’s or something if it was a festival back then.”
After all the years of music and memories, the Conroys decided it was time to wind down the festival.
“It's been 17 years, and we're wore out, right?” Mike asked Tari.
“Exactly,” she said. “We actually got in the middle of it in the youth of our 50s. We're not in our 50s anymore. Or 60s.”
They found it was not as easy to do all the demanding work required to put the festival on, and were not ready to sacrifice the quality and care behind the scenes. Mike Conroy said that changing musical styles also played a role.
“Our thing was traditional bluegrass, the old-time, traditional, pretty simple bluegrass, and that's hard to find anymore. It's hard to get bands that play that way,” he said. “And nobody's gonna take this over because I'm afraid they'd change it.”
But they are not going out without a big final jam. The last Hardtimes starts on Friday and will wrap up Sunday.
“Lots of bands are all saying they got special stuff they're gonna do this weekend, and I think it's gonna be the biggest one ever,” Mike Conroy said.
Tari Conroy hopes that people who have not attended before will come check it out before the music stops.
“It's something that everybody should experience once,” she said. “A lot of it is just from the heart, you know? If you like bluegrass, it's because it touches you. Like bluegrass, gospel, you can't get any better than that.”
They will also be playing for and with people who have been jamming with them for years. Many of the bands are regional, and some have become staples at the festival.
“One of the other bands played here 15 years, you know, a lot of marriages don't last that long, so it's pretty cool,” Tari Conroy said.
The community was instrumental in bringing the bluegrass to the Bitterroot all these years, from hosting to taking tickets to picking up trash and, of course, listening.
“We've never had a serious problem here in 17 years. I mean that's a great bunch of people,” Mike Conroy said. “I like to say that our only security is our dog and she likes everybody, so there you go.”
“Within three, three and a half hours of the last note being played, most everything's packed up and ready to go back to our house,” Tari Conroy added. “Someone will walk around to pick up garbage and they'll be lucky to find a handful of anything. That's the kind of people that come.”
The Conroys are looking to celebrate that community and have Hardtimes to go out on a high note. They have signs for the festival up and down the valley and along the road to the gate. When you head out after the show, the last sign says “Thank you! Mike & Tari Conroy… We’re going camping now!”
“We're thinking about going camping just kind of slow down,” Mike Conroy said. “Oh yeah, we're gonna have a stage for sale if you know anybody that wants one, it's solid.”
