The one regret I have for the weekend is that I was not able to make both celebrations. I was pretty well swamped in Meeker, so René Harden filled in and did a great job on the fireworks, the fun day in the park, the New Eden Color Run and the rib cook-off.
Both towns put on great fireworks shows each year, but sometime I would like to see the fireworks over Kenney Reservoir. That would be an amazing sight and a photographer’s dream to have that reflection off the lake.
I heard all events in Rangely were well attended and were a great success amid a day of beautiful sunny weather.
Meeker was equally lucky a couple of times that rainstorms came in, dropped their water and moved on.
Saturday evening weather could not have worked out better for those organizing the Chris Cagle/Damsel concert, which was held outside at the Rio Blanco County Fairgrounds in Meeker.
About an hour before the concert was set to begin, Meeker was smacked with a really windy onslaught accompanied by a deluge of rain that fortunately lasted only about five minutes.
There was enough rain and wind to dissuade the folks from going to the concert, but by the time Damsel began their opening act, the skies were blue, the sun was quite warm, most of the fairgrounds grass was dry or a blanket could be used to be comfortable.
The roads around the fairground had a few puddles, but, to use a well-known cliché, it appears that no one’s spirits were dampened, or not for very long.
The crowd was quick to form and fill up the concert area right after the storm, and people kept coming in droves up until the 7 p.m. concert’s scheduled start. The music continued for two hours.
The concert was a little low in starting, but that was because the bands wanted to make certain that all the sockets were dry enough and couldn’t shock any of the musicians.
The concert was a great success with Damsel performing a combination of their own music, some lesser-known tunes and some of the well-known country tunes of recent times. These two ladies will be seen on a higher level in just a few years. Just watch.
(They were a reminder of way back in the early ‘70s when I lived in Carroll County, Ark. The two summers I was there, I was editor of the newspaper in Eureka Springs. The first summer we had a cute little opening act that no one had ever hard of by the name of Barbara Mandrell. She was unknown that summer of 1974 but was a star on the rise by summer 1975. The Carroll County Fair in 1975 had another, not quite as attractive singer, I thought. She was still cute and had a heck of a voice. I recall her name being something like Reba McIntyre. She didn’t do too badly in the next year or two and seems to be doing pretty well these past 40 years.)
Damsel has that same star quality, sporting two attractive ladies with great voices singing their own great songs as well as others’ songs.
One must admit here that having grown up in Boulder in the very late 1960s and early ‘70s, country music was not what you would hear blaring on the radios of the high school kids.
We had our rock bands and even more so the folk bands of the day — Crosby, Stills & Nash, Bob Dylan, John Denver, The Hollies and The Buckinghams, the Beatles were still hot but performing as individual artists, we had the British Invasion bands like Freddy and the Dreamers, the Dave Clark Five or Jerry and the Pacemakers and…
Oops, got lost there.
But Chris Cagle gave one of the most uplifting, patriotic and family-oriented concerts I have ever seen.
One must also admit that one had never heard of the gentleman before.
But he won’t be an easy one to forget.
He stood mighty strong on patriotism, also mighty strong on how lucky he has been to make it back into the business after quite a bit of initial success around the early 1990s and he went crazy over his role as a father and the importance of family.
In between, he did a heck of a job belting out some very enjoyable music — music that had all the people on the ground and in the chairs stomping their feet and clapping. He even had a large contingent of young and older men and women gathered about six deep around him on stage.
A great choice was made by someone to bring Damsel and Cagle (who claims to have family and vacation ties to Breckenridge and Durango) to our fair community of Meeker. He obviously enjoyed himself and the community and those at the concert on Saturday certainly enjoyed him.
He also made the comment that if he didn’t love his ranch in Oklahoma so much that he would likely settle in Colorado.
n n n
Not enough good words can be said about the efforts of Hallie Blunt, in particular, and her brigade of helpers who, at the last minute (maybe four weeks) put together the Range Call Pageant when it was beginning to look like there wasn’t going to be one this year.
Except for the power outage just as the pageant was beginning, the entire production was very professional — from the sound system and the lighting to the staging closer to the audience to the script that was presented.
The story of the Meeker Massacre is undoubtedly interesting, but it came so much more to life this year because of Blunt and her ties to the children and adults in town, as well as the ties her entourage of assistants had, it had several times more volunteers than last year, which was my first.
There were enough volunteers on hand to expand the script past last year’s and there were enough Indians and children to make it all seem much more realistic.
The script this year took a little of the pressure off Meeker, the Indian agent, than last year’s script. It shared some of the fault with the “powers that be” in Denver and a few high-ranking officers who helped contribute to the uprising, but the script still made Meeker seem less than an angelic character for his stiff-armed attempts to control the Utes.
It was great to see much more of the community involved as well as the grandstands quite packed.
Perhaps the pageant is due for a big upswing over the next few years, and that is a good thing.
Job well done Hallie Blunt, who led the charge. But she was joined by a large number of helpers and a large increase in the volunteers who joined in.
The production was one that all members of the cast and crew should be most proud of.
n n n
So whether in Rangely or Meeker over the past weekend, I would say the residents of Rio Blanco County did a fine job of celebrating the 238th birthday of these United States of America.
