Silver Dollar serves up Folk Music Café - Jackson Hole News&Guide

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Live music is a luxury during a pandemic.

But the Silver Dollar Showroom in the Wort Hotel is doing its best to keep the tradition alive.

Starting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday it will host its first Folk Music Café. Part of Showroom’s “Sit Down, Get Down” series, the evening will showcase the musical talents of John Sidle, Jake Dulln and Jason Tyler Burton.

The idea for the multiperformer gig began with Sidle, who felt the current time was well-suited for calmer musical performances.

“I thought that during this period, when there’s no dancing, this would be a good time to have more listening music rather than just dancing music,” he said.

Sidle, a stalwart of the Jackson Hole Hootenanny, is excited to play songs by iconic folk musicians like Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. The music is nostalgic for him: In his 20s he witnessed “the greats, like Joni Mitchell, Tom Rush and the Blue Grass Boys.

The focus on music from the 1960s allows Sidle to engage in what is known as the “folk process,” a continuous reinterpretation of old songs as they are passed down from person to person.

“I’m not primarily a singer-songwriter; I’m more of an interpreter,” he said. “You take an old folk song, which you heard from somebody who changed it a bit, and you change it a bit, and there’s this progression, which I like.”

While Sidle’s memories give him a soft spot for certain songs, he also recognizes their historical and cultural significance. Many of them capture significant moments and landscapes in American history, like building dams in the Pacific Northwest or travelers leaving the Dust Bowl to head to California.

“Folk music reflects our national upbringing and our natural history,” he said, “the history of the common people.”

The proletariat themes of folk music are also important for singer-songwriter Jason Tyler Burton, who will perform an original song dedicated to the working class of Jackson Hole.

“I am excited to play a song for everyone that doesn’t live in Jackson, who maybe lives in Idaho or Alpine and has to work really hard at two or three jobs to get by and live in the beautiful place that is Jackson,” he said.

Burton’s music capitalizes on the storytelling ability of folk music, he said. When crafting his songs, he often focuses more on the lyrical parts.

The narrative-heavy style of folk music lends itself well to live performances, which is important to all three musicians. Dulln said his own passion for folk began when he saw a YouTube video of a Bob Dylan performance.

“I like the grit of folk music, the rubber-meets-the-road feel of it,” Dulln said.

Sidle said most children learn folk songs in their grade school music classes, because they are pretty simple in their chord structures and progressions. For that reason, folk music is accessible to audiences, as well.

“As the idiom goes, folk music is strung for the people, by the people,” Silver Dollar Showroom talent buyer Justin Smith said. “It’s not supposed to be avant-garde or complicated, it’s quite simply stories in our music.” 

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Silver Dollar serves up Folk Music Café - Jackson Hole News&Guide
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