Based on the number of advance tickets sold and the few RV spaces remaining, this year’s West Texas Western Swing Festival may be the biggest ever.
Snyder Chamber of Commerce Events Coordinator Josh Ortegon said ticket sales are “great” and only three 30-amp RV spots remain available on The Coliseum parking lot.
“They (RV spots) usually average 11 or 12 open,” Ortegon said. “This is the first time since I have been here that it has been this low. That is great for our community.”
Tickets remain on sale for the event, which opens with the annual burgers and beans dinner at 6 p.m. Wednesday. An informal jam session will follow. Members of the Snyder High School theater department will work the supper and receive a portion of the money raised, Ortegon said.
He said that people from as far away as Minnesota will be attending this year’s festival. Ortegon added that the festival is a good way for Snyder residents to enjoy a day or night visiting with people and listening to good music.
“I have had so many people tell me that they have lived here their entire lives and have never been to the festival. They said after attending, they loved it,” he said. “I want people to try it once. The people there are amazing and so welcoming. The dancing is fun, the music is good, there is great food and a lot of shopping.”
The festival will have two different sessions each day — beginning at noon and 6:30 p.m. — and will feature three groups per day.
Will Bannister will open the festival on Thursday. This will be his first time to perform in Snyder. He won the 2017 New Mexico Country Music Association country artist and country song awards.
Festival veterans Justin Trevino and Billy Mata will also perform on Thursday. Trevino was raised in the Austin area and received his first guitar at age seven. In 1997, he began recording in his home studio and has branched out to help other artists record traditional country music. Mata has been performing for more than 30 years and was honored in 2000 by being named the Academy of Western Artists male vocalist of the year.
On Friday, Kelly Spinks and Miles of Texas, Bobby Flores and the Yellow Rose Band and Jake Hooker and the Outsiders are scheduled to perform.
Spinks is from Brownwood and his band has performed throughout the state, including the Fort Worth Stockyards and Bob Wills Day. Flores is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, arranger, producer and composer who won a Grammy in 2002 for his string and brass arrangements and violin performances on Freddy Fender’s CD, La Musica de Baldemar Huerta. Hooker began playing bass at seven and formed his own band at 14. He said his influences are Ray Price, Johnny Bush and Farron Young.
Saturday’s finale will include Landon Dodd, Jeff Woolsey and the Dance Hall Kings and Jody Nix and the Texas Cowboys.
Dodd, the 2011 Academy of Western Artist’s male vocalist of the year, has performed at the West Texas Western Swing Festival several times. Woolsey and his band won the 2016 Ameripolitan Honky Tonk group of the year award and the Academy of Western Artists pure country group of the year award in 2016. Nix was a guest artist on the 1994 CMA Award-nominated album Tribute to Bob Wills by Asleep At the Wheel and two years later was inducted into the Western Swing Hall of Fame in Sacramento, Calif.
Tickets, which are available at the Snyder Chamber of Commerce office, are $15 for an evening only pass, $25 for a full-day pass or $60 for an all-week pass.
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