(Crista Munro | Photo courtesy of SFFPresents)
The Sisters Folk Festival is one of the most respected folk, country, and bluegrass music festivals in the country. For the past seven years it’s been under the capable guidance of Executive Director Crista Munro, who’s stepping down from the position this summer, proud of her accomplishments and ready to discover the next chapter of her career.
“Essentially we had a business manager, Ann Richardson, and a creative director, Brad Tisdel,” Munro explains to Cascade Business News. “The board was managing those two people and they were trying to co-manage the festival, and it just wasn’t a successful model. They put the call out for an executive director, I applied and got the job, then moved here from Eugene in July of 2019. At the time I was working on festivals in Colorado from Eugene and it was going from a similar model. So it was a smooth transition and that fall was my first Sisters Folk Festival.”
Then the 2020 pandemic happened and the Folk Festival was cancelled that year, but with a little creativity and imagination it miraculously returned under heavy restrictions for 2021.
“It was pretty crazy and we were definitely one of the few people doing in-person events. There were shutdowns and confusing rules that were constantly changing about how many people could be in an area. We were trying to thread the needle and so we planned to have it and just hoped we wouldn’t go back to a lockdown. It was really important to keep the music and the programming going. It was a big pivot when I hadn’t even been on the job for a year.”
Thankfully the festival had a proficient finance manager who came on right about the same time Munro did, and that made all the difference in navigating through a difficult period.
“We got on every kind of program we could qualify for and we survived with grants and kept going through it. So we emerged from COVID pretty strong with some money to invest in new programming. When I came on I could see that we had an aging audience and we were being threatened by cancellations from wildfire smoke, which did happen in 2017.”
It was Munro’s intention that the organization needed a second festival earlier in the summer, and that was one of the things they used grant money on to invest in expanded programming.
“That’s Big Ponderoo at Village Green Park,” she adds. “We’re having our fourth one at the end of June. It’s been a really great way to expand our audience. We’re getting a younger demographic. It’s more of a traditional event with two stages, big production value, light show, and a little bigger-named performers. It’s Americana, bluegrass, and alt-country music, so it’s a bit more rockin’ than the Folk Festival. It’s the kind of festival where you bring your own chairs, your own tarps. It’s open air and people dance in front of the stage.”
The Big Ponderoo is still going to be Munro’s baby this year, and she’ll step away after that.
“I’m going to take a gap year after doing Colorado festivals for three decades, and at last count had produced 55 events. June 30 will be my last day but I’ll be in a supporting role behind the scenes helping the new executive director, December Carson. She’s a lifelong Oregonian and coming down from Portland, where she’s currently working at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, so she’s very well-connected in the music industry.”
For Munro, the most rewarding element of her tenure at the Sisters Folk Festival is that they survived and thrived after 2020, when many festivals and organizations were not able to do so.
“One thing I hope I’ve brought to the organization is how we look at this through new eyes and stay relevant, to see problems in the distance and plan for those,” she says. “Our revenue has doubled in seven years. We have two more full-time employees. I’m proud of the way that we’ve grown and we’re super financially stable. We own our building and our property and we have tenants. That and the addition of Big Ponderoo was a large part of that.
“It’s been a real privilege to work in the community of Sisters. It’s supportive and appreciative of the events and what they bring to the community in terms of not just economic benefit but putting Sisters on the map. I feel really lucky that I got to finish the music production part of my career in Sisters and it’s left a wonderful feeling.”
