MUCHAS GRACIAS, HERMANOS/AS!

Dead, from Melbourne. Picture by Tommy Martino.

Man, excellent Total Fest. All kinds of stuff we can't get out of our heads. Like how Thrones doesn't need a bass to make the wildest music out there. Or how much we like Dead, and Brain Tumors. And Mr. Dad. And Benjamin Von Wildenhaus. And Seawhores. It's a little ridiculous to try to sum up in a single place, frankly. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the bands that played and lent gear to one another (especially Brothers of the Sonic Cloth and Dog Shredder), the folks that volunteered, the businesses that sponsored us, and you the folks who came and raged.

Hey, let's keep the momentum going! Lots of us put on shows across the other 362 days of the year, and we have some incredible ones coming up this fall in Missoula. Here are some spots to learn about them:
Minor Bird Records Blog (TF Organizer Marty's blog)
Missoula Punk News (TF Organizer Kate's blog)
I think those two are some of the best resources for DIY happenings in Missoula, MT. Weird Missoula is Tom Shahs website, and it's great as well. 

Some other endeavors we TF organizers do are listed here:
Shahs (Colin's band with Tom H.)
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (Travis's awesome film fest.)
Wantage (Josh V's label/distro)
Hans Bagworks (Paul's bikepacking bag business)
ART, BLOG, INK. (TF O

Michael Workman, who's (TF co-Boss) Kari's brother, shot and edited a couple of awesome Total Fest XII videos:
Red Fang at Total Fest XII
Seawhores at Total Fest XII

We absolutely love it when folks share photos and videos with us. Feel free to do that via our Facebook page, or through this email. See you before Aug. 2014, we hope!

TOTAL (VON) FEST WILKOMMEN BENJAMIN VON WILDENHAUS

Benjamin (Ben) Von Wildenhaus may be better known to the average Missoulian as the Federation X guitar player who doesn't sing, and who has a mustache. Certainly those are  important parts of the story, but the other parts are pretty interesting too. Ben has musical abilities and songs running pretty deep through his bones, and, and its varied, weirdo stuff that hardly packs easily into our unfortunately genrified vocabulary. A couple years ago he put out a fabulous record called Great Songs From Around and followed it up with a surprisingly excellent Christmas record, complete with Jewish, Pagan and a few other winter holiday songs.

Think of it as enhanced American primitive, if you can get over how bullshit that description sounds. It's music for space and space-creating music. Ben's played with country groups like the Quaalude Country Band, Miss Lana Rebel's Juanita Family and Friends and a pretty excellent handful of others you can read about elsewhere. It's a little druggy, kind of Touareg but mostly just kind of its own nicely meandering soundtrack.

We're going to do our danged-est to find a real mind-blowing place to put this.


Ben von Wildenhaus: The Limping Axeman from Riot Bear Recording Co. on Vimeo.