stillisstillmoving.com

Call it Willie fever.  Call it Williemania.  Whatever it is, Choteau’s got it.

“There’s just an excitement fac-tor,” said Drena Lindgren, who manages three of the town’s hotels.

“Everyone is walking around with grins on their faces, saying ‘Willie’s coming, Willie’s coming.’ It’s like Santa Claus.”

The buzz that part-time Choteau resident and late-night TV talk show host David Letterman was paying to bring Willie Nelson to the small town’s annual July 3 concert began weeks before the country legend signed the contract.

With the hours before Nelson takes the stage ticking away, the buzz has become a boom.

“When I saw everybody down getting tickets it was like this fever,” said Tanya Richem, who co-owns Celebration Station gift shop. “It was crazy! I didn’t real-ize until that time what a big deal this was. So I said, ‘Why not be a part of it?’”

Through Nelson’s official merchandiser, the store is selling 200 Willie-related items including t-shirts, tank tops, earrings, CDs, hats, posters, hoodies, shot glasses and, of course, bandanas. County Commissioner Sam Carlson, who is also an artist, created a life-size Willie Nelson caricature that Richem will have outside her downtown store should anyone want to stop and get their picture taken with it.

“The community is going to be really fun that week,” Richem said. “We’re working really hard to offer things to people. If they’re coming here, we want to make it worth their while.”

..

With a rodeo, a smoker, parade, keg-hockey tournament, duck races, art show, golf tournament and other family events, the community usually draws 3,000 people for their Independence Day celebration. Some in town suggest that with the big name concert, two to three times that many people could converge on the town.

“It’s definitely going to be a boom for Choteau,” said Trading Post co-owner Holly Stoltz.

Lindgren’s motel rooms have been booked for weeks, so she tells the approximately five daily callers to bring tents. She’s already begun reserving spaces on her lawn. She keeps a waiting list in case rooms open up, and has a longer list of people wanting tickets, should any come available.

Teton County residents waited in line for six hours over two days, snapping up the 3,000 tickets made exclusively available to them. The rodeo grounds where the outdoor concert will be performed holds 3,200 people.

The remaining 200 tickets were handed out through four weekly lotteries. Thousands of postcards flooded Choteau’s post office from across Montana and as far away as Texas, New York, Alaska and California.

Classified ads from people wanting tickets have been run-ning in the town’s newspaper.

In the spirit of the free concert, Great Falls Willie Nelson fan Mike Masters offered a day of waterskiing and tubing on his boat in exchange for tickets. No one’s called to take him up on the offer.

Like others he knows from Washington state, he and his family are heading to Choteau without tickets, hoping the sound from the outdoor concert will float to his campsite at a nearby park.

“I don’t know of anybody really selling them,” said Choteau KOA Kampgrounds owner Shane Boyle. “I think you’ve either got them or you don’t.”

Of the 50 camping spaces available for recreational vehicles, a half-dozen were still available late last week. Several people without tickets booked spots with the hope of picking some up when they get to town, he said.

After catching Willie fever himself, Boyle waited in line for hours to nab six tickets, which he’s giving away as part of the Rocky Mountain Front Treasure Hunt, which uses GPS coordi-nates to send people around Teton County searching for the tickets.

Carl Richards, manager of Big Sky Motel, said he’s turned down more than 100 people seeking rooms, sending them down the road to Conrad, Augusta, Fairfield and Great Falls.

The week of the Fourth of July is always a busy one for Choteau, with families and schools planning reunions to coincide with Independence Day events. The town’s motels were too full to even accommodate Nelson’s band and crew.

“The third and Fourth of July around Choteau are always a madhouse,” said John Henry’s Restaurant & Casino owner Jeff Howard. “We’re making sure every nook and cranny is filled with food and beverages. We really don’t know what to expect. We will definitely have all hands on deck.”

Consequently, Howard and his employees won’t be attending the concert; instead they will be working as long as the concert-goers are stopping in.

Gabrielle Rasmussen and her family, which runs the Log Cabin Café, are stocking up on extra everything. In addition to feeding the hungry hoards of Nelson fans and rodeo buffs, the café is cook-ing for the band and crew.

That means baking three dozen pies Monday, in addition to a carrot cake, triple-chocolate cake, cheesecakes and other goodies. The southerners wanted home-cooked food, requesting burgers, hotdogs and salads for lunch and the business specialty for dinner.

Rasmussen said that means slow-cooked pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, collared greens and lots of homemade pies.

No matter how mad the rush, the family will close it’s doors in time to make it to the fairgrounds for the concert themselves — their tickets a reward for serving coffee at 3:30 a.m. to the crowds waiting in line for a chance to see Nelson.

“It does add an extra element — a burst — to the town,” Ras-mussen said. “There will be a lot of people in our town.”

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kim Skornogoski at 791-6574, 800-438-6600 or kskornogoski@greatfallstribune.com

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 6:59 pm and is filed under News and Reviews, Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.