Each summer a small town in Idaho just about doubles in population in a sort of Woodstock style music festival that has been going for nearly three quarters of a century. It’s all about the fiddle. The farming community of Weiser, Idaho, north of Boise and right on the Snake River and the Oregon border,  is the home to the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest & Festival. 

This all started in 1953 when “Dad” Roberts, who was in his 80’s and living in the mountains, brought his fiddle to town and won the contest. Looking like he had stepped right out of the eighteen hundreds, he and the festival became an instant hit. It’s been going strong ever since.

Now beginning fiddlers and the best musicians in the world can mix it up. The contest is held in the high school, but many say the best part of the gathering — called “The Weiser” happens in the campgrounds — when the jams begin. Young kids and legends in their 80’s come to jam and it’s impossible not to smile when you start soaking in all that music.

Idaho has deep roots in fiddle music. During the gold rush days many miners would pull out their fiddles for the days they could not mine. And on many a cold night they wrote songs that tell the stories of life in the mountains — when it was just small towns and wilderness. While the contest and festival celebrates the old time music, many of the old songs have just about disappeared. So amateur musicologist Gary Eller has devoted the past two decades to finding some of the old songs. He created the Idaho Songs Project, and travels the state talking about the old music he has found in archives — to help preserve this past history.

And the festival also preserves the past — and brings young musicians and many of the older pros together in a wonderful effort to celebrate the old days of the Western frontier.