Last night of fiddle contest was special

Published by admin on Wed, 06/26/2019 - 2:42pm
By: 
Steve Lyon
If you were one of the 600-plus members
of the audience during the soldout
fiddle finals on Saturday night,
you probably enjoyed yourself as much
as I did.
Not only were the two rounds of the
national champion finals and the awards
ceremony exciting, the featured entertainment
of the evening was
simply outstanding.
One of the highlights for
me was J.D. Webb, who
sat in with the Roundhouse
Band, doing his version of
the old Christian favorite,
“How Great Thou Art.”
It was moving, to say the
least, and you didn’t have to
be really religious to feel it.
A regular every year who
parks his big old RV in
front of Slocum Hall, Webb
couldn’t have given it any
more, vocally, soulfully and
emotionally, than he did for that hymn.
No slight to the King himself, Elvis,
who famously also did a pretty good version
of the song, but Webb was right up
there with the best I’ve ever heard.
It was great to see the NOTFC finals
sell out on Saturday night for the second
year in a row. The volunteers handling
ticket sales said they even had to turn
people away. It’s expensive to put on a
major production like the fiddle contest
every June and revenue is important.
The auditorium at Weiser High School
can hold about 600 people, give or take
a few. The investment by the school district
in upgrading the lights
and sound system a couple
of years ago really allows for
a good show.
I don’t know where you
would put more people
when the contest finals sell
out. I suppose you could put
a big screen TV in the gym at
the high school for the overflow
and charge people $5 a
head. That’s not a bad idea,
actually.
The number of contestants
was up as well this
year, topping 200 aspiring
fiddlers, and that’s another positive for
the contest. Between the fiddlers, families
and fans, there were 30 or so states
represented and two foreign countries
(Japan and Italy) Mama Mia!
Again, a big shout out to the volunteers
who give of their time to make the
contest a success.
Here’s looking forward to a bigger
and better 2020 and the contest’s 68th
year in friendly Weiser, Idaho. • • •
Well, the weather last week was a bit
unexpected. Instead of talking about the
heat cranking up as the first day of summer
rolled around on June 21, the chill
in the air had me looking in the closet
for a sweater.
The National Weather Service, purveyors
of all statistics climatological,
even reported a trace of snow in Boise
on June 20. Evidently, it constituted a
record because the NWS listed it as such.
You didn’t have to go to the mountains
to shiver last seek. The NWS also
reported a record low temperature of 32
degrees in Baker City, Ore., on June 22.
The cold morning broke the record for
the day. The old record was 35 degrees
set in 2013. A freezing morning in Baker
in June seems out of the ordinary.
If you’ll recall, we hit 90 degrees in
mid-May in a pre-summer warmup.
Goes to show you that things can change
on a dime.
Steve Lyon is the editor of the Weiser
Signal American. Contact him at

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Signal American

18 E. Idaho St.
Weiser, ID 83672
PH: (208) 549-1717
FAX: (208) 549-1718
 

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