This is the final year of the three year run for the festival in Butte. We plan to attend for the first time July 9-11. If you've been and can share tips about getting around, what to avoid or what not to miss it would be great. I believe there are many venues, lots of ethnic foods and entertainment. Looking forward to any experiences you may have had, good or bad.

Butte does a great job of having parking areas next to the interstate, then running you up the hill to the event in a bus. When you are ready to go, take the bus back.

Best advice I can give is determine in advance what act you really want to see, then get there early and get a good seat.

It is an excellent time. The lines for food can be a bit long, but it all is well worth it.

Awesome festival. The shuttles run frequently. I believe parking is at the civic center. hope you have a place to stay otherwise, it will be hard to find a place or something of reasonable cost at least. The acts do repeat so if you don't catch the one you want the first time, you can arrange to grab a seat the second time. One of the stages is in an open area. if you don't mind sitting in the sun, many folks sit on the hillside. The schedules just came out in Helena today. Probably is on line. Hope you enjoy.....

Just looking at the schedule, as I am not sure if I want to go Saturday or Sunday. I do know that I want to see Dale Watson.

We attended the festival on Saturday and had an enjoyable time despite interesting weather all afternoon. We visited 3 of the 5 stages and enjoyed Mexican, Irish, Delta Blues, Bluegrass, N. Carolina hillbilly and French Canadian offerings. Butte really did a nice job. I felt the crowds were good and hope this last of three years brought out big numbers. We wish we had gone the other two years too.

Next year the national festival moves to Nashville for a three year run but Butte will continue with their own folk festival on the same weekend next year so there is still an opportunity close to home for this type of event.

Any other feedback from those attending?

We went on Sunday and had a fantastic time. The weather was perfect (last year it was too hot), and we saw some great acts....a Norwegian woman with a voice like an angel who plays a mean Norwegian fiddle....gospel singers from South Carolina, the Legendary Singing Stars (see below)....a polka band from the Pennyslvania coal fields....a hot Moroccan rhythm band...a smokin' hot Louisiana zydeco band that played the best cover version of "Promised Land" that I ever heard (even better than Elvis!)...and finally Super Chickan and The Fighting Cocks, they were a great party blues band (the Fighting Cocks is an all-women backup band).

We went too and had a great time. We are not used to the crowds, being from MC, so it was hard to find a parking space, see some of the exhibits and wait in lines. But the bluegrass, zydeco, Delta blues, salsa dura, Hungarian gypsy, Apalachian old time music were awesome. There were 3 other acts I wish I had heard.

I agree, the parking situation was somewhat daunting. We were very unhappy with it last year.

This year, we said screw it, and drove uptown as far as we could until we found a legal parking spot on the street, despite all the naysaying from previous years. That turned out to work real well. Much, much better than parking next to the interstate at a designated spot and waiting for a shuttle.

One thing that I don't think that people don't understand, is that Butte is a city with a capacity of 100,000 that has a population of 25,000. So parking is a lot simpler than the organizers from the National Folk Festival imagined. (I think next year when it is held in Nashville, that the parking will become the nightmare it was 4 years ago).