Looking for a last minute FREE outdoor entertainment this weekend? Butte is hosting its annual Montana Folk Festival. The festival site will be located adjacent to, and partially within, the fascinating Uptown Butte Historic District. A mix of open air and tented sites will provide a variety of performance venues ranging from intimate stages to amphitheater size.

The Amphitheater Stage, which offers a panoramic view of Butte and the surrounding mountains, is being developed on the site of the historic Original Mineyard, with its dramatic deep shaft mine headframe that is a remnant of Butte’s days as an underground copper mining center. Saturdays entertainment starts and noon and goes well into the evening, and starts back up at noon Sunday. For a link to the full schedule of events over the weekend, click here.

Here is a little of what will be going on:

• Family Area, and Folklife demonstrations and workshops that focus on a new theme each year that highlights Montana’s heritage. In 2014, that theme will focus on the influence of automobiles and roadways on Montana lifeways — “The Culture of the Car: The Influence of Automobiles and their Roadways on Heritage and Culture in Montana and the Mountain West.” –
• Entertainment: the Montana Folk Festival features performances and demonstrations by over 250 of the nation’s finest musicians, dancers and craftspeople. It will feature 25 Artists/groups on seven stages including a dance pavilion dedicated to non-stop participatory dancing, a family stage with performances appealing to both the young and the young-at-heart, and a Montana folklife stage.
• Festival Marketplace: Two Festival Markeplaces and the Festival Food Courts.
• A Little History: The Montana Folk Festival is the successor event to the National Folk Festival that was presented in Butte from 2008 to 2010. First presented in St. Louis in 1934, the National is the oldest, longest-running and most diverse festival of traditional arts in the nation.

http://montanafolkfestival.com