“The song isn’t factual, and it takes liberties, but it’s based on my real experiences at the Gila River,” said singer-songwriter Wally Lawder. The 4th annual Gila River Festival featured a songwriting competition, and there were two winners: Wally Lawder and Jeff Goin, both local songwriters. Read more
The two winning songs debuted at the Dance for the Rio Gila during the Gila River Festival in September. Lawder’s song, Banks of the Gila, was written over the span of two months, as it evolved from “a commercial jingle into a real song.” And not just “real,” but lovely, too!
Two local recording studios donated professional recording sessions as prizes for the winning songs. We owe big thanks to the studios for their contribution to the Gila River Festival and to the local music scene. Wally recorded his song at Mountain Air Productions. Jeff Goin’s song, Roll On, Gila River, will be recorded at Barefoot Studio by the Silver City String Beans. Watch for it on our website soon. Both songs will be featured on KSIL, a Silver City radio station featuring folk, alt-country, bluegrass, roots rock, and more fine music.
The fourth annual Gila River Festival is an opportunity to celebrate the Gila River as a source of inspiration. The theme for the festival brings together experts and laypersons, artists and scientists from many disciplines, to converge on the topic of the Gila River as experienced through creative expression. We will bridge the arts and sciences through workshops and activities, such as rock art, nature writing, field sketching, song writing, performance and photography. The festival includes intensive workshops co-led by artists and scientists, a keynote speaker, lectures, hikes, kayak trips, and performance over a four-day period.
The Gila River Festival is a community-based event that explores the role of the Gila River in our hearts and minds, and the interconnectedness of all of its communities of life. The festival will foster a body of multidisciplinary work sourced from a common touchstone -- the Gila River. While not all who participate will be artists, per se, the purpose of the festival will be to honor and awaken individual creative expression.
4th Annual Gila River Festival Highlights:
Celebration Inspired All!
Held during a beautiful September weekend, this year's successful Gila River Festival "A Source of Inspiration" was not only an opportunity to celebrate the Gila River through the eyes of artists, writers, musicians and performance artists, but also for participants to engage in the creative process themselves. Check out the fun by viewing the photo gallery of Gila River Festival images.
2008 Guggenheim Fellow Michael Berman (www.fragmentedimages.com) led two outdoor photography workshops. Aspiring photographers were thrilled to get expert advice from Berman, whose black and white photographs have appeared in Charles Bowden's Inferno, as well as many other publications. The Gila River Festival, along with Blue Dome Gallery, also hosted an opening of Berman's Gila River photos.
Saturday was a big day for the Gila River Festival in downtown Silver City. The 75 foot long Gila River mural was dedicated on the corner of Bullard and Yankie streets. The Mimbres Region Arts Council's Faye McCalmont and artist Diana Ingalls-Leyba, the driving forces behind Silver City's mural program, introduced conceptual artist Zoe Wolfe, who talked about the mural's evolving design. Created by kids during the MRAC Youth Mural Camp this past summer, the young student-artists pointed out the plants and animals they had painted and rendered in colorful tile work.
Saturday evening, participants heard the debut of the two winners of the Gila River Festival songwriting contest, when Wally Lawder played his original composition Banks of the Gila and the Silver City String Beans did a cover of Jeff Goin's Roll On, Gila River. Winners of the songwriting contest received a professional recording of their songs, generously donated by local recording studios, Barefoot Studio and Mountain Air Productions. The next surprise was a long - 11 minute! - ballad, The Flood of 2009, written and performed by Gurnie Dobbs of Gila. Edie and the Silver Blue Roots continued the river theme with their first number, and filled the dance floor for a few hours with their infectious R&B jams.
The Gila River Festival also featured a nature writing workshop on the river with Silver City's Sharman Apt Russell, author of several books, including Anatomy of a Rose, An Obsession with Butterflies, and the recently published Standing in the Light.
The festival keynote speaker, art historian Dr. Gray Sweeney, kicked off the event with his entertaining talk on the role of art in the settling of the Southwest. Highlighting the artists associated with the US-Mexico Boundary Survey, beginning in 1848, Sweeney zoomed in on painting details, many of which featured angels beckoning settlers to the lands along the Gila River.
Friday night's community performance, "The Elements: Forces of Nature" featured music, dance, and poetry performed by community members of all ages. The program told the story of the elements - water, earth, air, fire - through the myth of the Goddess Sophia.
And outdoor enthusiasts were treated to a variety of field trips and workshops - truly something for everyone. The most popular events, selling out within two weeks, were the two kayak trips on the Gila. Guides Steve Harris (Far-Flung Adventures, Rio Grande Restoration), Todd Schulke (Center for Biological Diversity) and Adrian Oglesby (The Nature Conservancy) showed participants how to float the mellow stretch of the Gila from Mogollon Creek down to The Nature Conservancy's Gila River Farm in the Cliff-Gila Valley. Along the way, kayakers were treated to stories about the natural history of the river, and threats to its ecological integrity.
Rock art photographer Anthony Howell led a field trip to the Gila Lower Box, where hikers enjoyed the beauty of a stunning canyon and observed pictographs and a granary, artifacts of the area's Native American population. On a separate trip to the Lower Box, led by HawkWatch International's Mike Neal, birders scanned the skies for migrating raptors. One highlight of their day was a good look at an immature Golden Eagle. Another birding trip took birders far upstream, to glimpse water birds at Lake Roberts.
Thank You!
The Gila Conservation Coalition and festival organizers thank all of the wonderful foundation supporters, sponsors, presenters and volunteers that helped us organize a successful 4th Annual Gila River Festival.
The 4th Annual Gila River Festival was supported in part by the New Mexico Humanities Council, Kalliopeia Foundation, New Mexico Arts--a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, McCune Charitable Foundation, and Silver City Lodgers Tax.
Major Sponsors of the Festival
American Byways
Center for Biological Diversity
Mimbres Region Arts Council
Trail of the Mountain Spirits National Scenic Byway
Sponsors of the Festival
Amigos Bravos
Audubon New Mexico
Barefoot Studios
Breathe Inn
Dennis Weller
Gila Hike & Bike
Gila Native Plant Society
Jesse Steven Hargrave
KSIL
Mountain Air Productions
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
Friends of the Festival
Carol Morrison
Conservation By Design
Desert Woman Botanicals
Gila Gestalt Therapy
High Lonesome Books
Hometown Initiative
O’Keefe’s Bookshop
Prudential Silver City Properties
Ron Henry
Southwest Environmental Center
Southwestern New Mexico Audubon Society
Stream Dynamics
Tatiana Maria Gallery
The Nature Conservancy - Bear Mountain Lodge
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Silver City
Video Stop W. Jay Garard, D.D.S.
Festival Organizers
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument
Gila Conservation Coalition
Gila Conservation Education Center
Gila National Forest
Gila Native Plant Society
Gila Resources Information Project
Southwest New Mexico Audubon Society
Mimbres Region Arts Council
The Nature Conservancy
Upper Gila Watershed Alliance
Special Thanks
Diana Ingalls Leyba, L & I Arts G
ila National Forest
Mimbres Region Arts Council
Morningstar
Silver City-Grant County Chamber of Commerce
Silver City Lodgers Tax
The Nature Conservancy
Gila Conservation Coalition
305A N Cooper Street
Silver City, NM 88061
575.538.8078 voice/fax
info@gilaconservation.org
Organized in 1984 to protect the free flow of the Gila and San Francisco Rivers and the wilderness characteristics of the Gila and Aldo Leopold Wilderness areas, the Gila Conservation Coalition (GCC) is a partnership of local environmental and conservation groups and concerned individuals that promote conservation of the Upper Gila River Basin and surrounding lands.
