Music fest planned near Buena Vista
The Collegiate Peaks will come alive with the sound of roots music this summer.
Country star Dierks Bentley, in partnership with Live Nation, will kick off the inaugural Seven Peaks Music Festival, a multi-stage country and bluegrass extravaganza set for Labor Day weekend (Aug. 31-Sept. 2) at the edge of Buena Vista.
Not only will Bentley will play each night of the festival, and make some special guest appearances, but the artist helped curate the three-day lineup. It includes Miranda Lambert, Brothers Osborne, Elle King, Lanco, Del McCoury, Sam Bush and The Cadillac Three, with more artists to be announced in the coming weeks. Bentley hinted that Hot Coun-
try Knights, his ’90s-inspired country act, might even make an appearance.
Buena Vista is a drive from just about anywhere, which is why Seven Peaks will be a camping and RV-friendly festival.
Bentley is from Arizona, but his festival’s Colorado locale fits in the context of “The Mountain,” his upcoming studio album, which was inspired by — and written in — the state. When we spoke on the phone in late March, he had just finished a hike in Telluride.
“I love it here,” said Bentley, who spent holidays in Durango when he was growing up. “It’s my favorite state. I always wanted to do something here. If there were anywhere in the world I could launch a festival, it would be Colorado.”
Bentley has visited Buena Vista three times in the last four months, including a trip to shoot the music video for his new single “Woman, Amen.”
For his new album, his ninth, he brought six Nashville songwriters to Studio in the Clouds, a 90-acre recording studio and retreat in Telluride. “I wanted to take this vibe back to Nashville.”
The Seven Peaks Music Festival will be held on Jed Selby’s 240-acre ranch, the same property that hosted Madison House’s Vertex music festival in 2016. Headlined by the Alabama Shakes, ODESZA and the Trey Anastasio Band, the three-day event was tabled after its first year when negotiations with Chaffee County commissioners, who proposed an earlier curfew and tighter sound restrictions in response to resident complaints, cut into the festival’s planning timetable.
In contrast to the debate that dogged Vertex’s permitting process, Seven Peaks’ approval was quiet enough to keep it a surprise until Thursday’s announcement.
“(Some) people in town didn’t respond well to Vertex,” Buena Vista mayor Joel Benson said. “Choosing a different type of music has changed the conversation a lot. Country music is a popular genre out here.”
Last year, Bentley teamed up with Brian O’Connell, Live Nation’s president of country touring, to formulate the event.
“We wanted to continue to make everything about this project unique in the festival landscape, from the lineup to the setting to what fans will be able to do onsite,” O’Connell said in a release. “As soon as we stepped on the grounds in Buena Vista, we were just blown away, it feels other-worldly out there and I can’t wait for more people to get to experience that.”
Bentley said he plans to hang out among the festival goers and drop in on fellow musicians’ sets throughout the weekend, an idea inspired by Delfest in Cumberland, Md. The decade-old roots festival is hosted by bluegrass elder statesman Del McCoury, who rides around the festival in a golf cart to greet his fans and spends nearly as much time on stage as off during the four-day event.
“I’ve been out on this hike and I was thinking, man, what can we do,” Bentley said. “Should we hand out free beers? I want to be out in the campgrounds and on the stages.”
Bentley even looked to Vertex’s array of ideas for inspiration. Some, like the pond that vertex turned into a de facto beach hang out, were viable. Others, less so.
“They had a tickle room,” Bentley said, laughing. “It’s like, how can we transfer that? I don’t know about a tickle room at a country festival. But I’d love having creative things like that in there.”