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Show Wed/Thurs/Fri, December 8-10, 2010 The Park Record A-18 World Bazaar Outlet in Park City ORIENTAL RUG S Come in to the ultimate shopping experience in Park City WORLD BAZAAR OUTLET SAVE AN ADDITIONAL 3 0 % OFF Jeremy Ranch Exit next to the Fresh Market from the mark down prices with this ad, must bring or mention this ad 435-649-411S Hours 10 -6 EVERYDAY 3126 Quarry Rd 4-A Park City, Utah 84098 LIMITED TIME OFFER Help train our winter staff! 412 American Bistro 306-Main Street 435-649-5044 412 Main Street 435-649-8211 *Exp. 12/16/10 • Offer not available with other discounted items • Entree of lesser value will be free CORE SAMPLES By Jay Meehan Yankee Fork confederacy The Braun family first set up shop in south-central Idaho after "Musty" moved the clan from North Dakota back in the '50s to accept a gig in Jackpot, Nevada. The next generation, "Muzzie" and his brothers Gary and Billy, would carry on the family tradition and set the Salmon River Valley on fire musically as the "Braun Brothers." Muzzie turned out to be quite the songwriter and even garnered comparisons to olf Willie among other poets working the country side of the tracks. But it would be when Muzzie put together a group featuring his offspring and himself that the Braun family fame began to spread. It wasn t long before "Muzzie Braun & the Boys" with sons Cody, Willie", Gary and Mickey in tow appeared on the Grand OP Opry and even showed up twice on the Tonight Show Well, as boys are wont to do, the kids grew up in the biz and on the "twisted wicked road," hitting, as the song says, "a million miles by 17." They would then go on to do some traveling of their own and form the nucleus of two of the most incendiary rockin' country bands working today. I'm not sure what phenomenon is responsible for the sheer magnetism fluxing around "Reckless Kelly" (Willie and Cody) and "Mickey & the Motorcars" (Mickey and Gary), but there must have been something in the water up the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River where Muzzie and his wife JoAnn raised their crop of hot pickers and soaring vocalists. Both bands got traction as part of the ever-burgeoning Austin, Texas, music scene and ever since have been attracting a quite wide-ranging cross-section of head-bangin', two-steppin', swing-dancin', cowboy croonin', mosh-pittin', and beer-swiggin' buckaroos and buckarettes to their shows across the country. Each August, however, the brothers schedule their own road gigs around what has become one of the West's best music festivals: The Braun Brothers Reunion up in Challis, Idaho. Not far from Stanley, another of the Braun*s Sawtooth Mountain stompin' grounds, Challis sits on the cusp of the White Cloud Range just around the bend from that gorgeous and historic Yankee Fork country. Muzzie and JoAnn, along with a mess of volunteers from both Idaho and Texas, do most of the heavy organizational lifting for this hard-rockin' 44 I'm not sure what phenomenon is responsible for the sheer magnetism fluxing around Reckless Kelly and Mickey & the Motorcars, but there must have been something in the water up the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River." "gallopalooza," which includes many musical friends of the Brauns over the three-day party weekend. The past few years have seen the northern Utah contingent making the trip northward for the Reunion grow as word spreads among the faithful. It's becoming more and more of a "must do" calendar item for Park City, Heber, and Kamas folk as was evidenced a couple of years back at Deer Valley when Robert Earl Keen mentioned the Reunion and Reckless Kelly from the stage and received a surprising - to him anyway - eruption of recognition from the crowd. Its become a flat-out infectious gathering of musicians and improvisational celebrants. And the same goes for Reckless Kelly shows any- where. When they came to play The Stateroom in Salt Lake last year, the show sold out so quickly they immediately added another - which also sold out. Of course, the fact that the Heber-centric "Barfly Wranglers" opened for them both nights didnt hurt ticket sales any up in the mountains. And that very same scenario is about to repeat itself this upcoming weekend with a slightly reconfigured Barfly Wranglers opening for Reckless Kelly once again at The Stateroom- both Friday and Saturday nights. Suffice to say, there's been plenty of buzz about the shows up in the Wasatch Back since word began to spread. Scuttlebutt has it that Saturday night has either already sold out or is very close to it. Reckless Kelly's biggest fan, "Reckless Shelly" Martinez, might still be holding on to a few tickets, but pickings are definitely slim. At press time, Friday is still looking ticket-rich, however. Some fans have booked rooms and, not unlike last year, will be painting the town in a reckless fashion throughout the weekend. A couple of things that make Reckless Kelly such a crowd-pleasing ensemble, apart from their overall passion and great sound, are the depth of their original material and the • virtuosity of their musicianship. Obviously, Willie Braun's compositional brilliance and lead vocals along with brother Cody's multi-instrumentality, both honed up the creativelynutritious Yankee Fork, speak well of Musty and Muzzies pioneering trail. Jay Meefum is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications goifig back to 1973. WANDERING THE WEST \ \ By Larry Warren / i s. N i / / V\V V AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN • THE PARK RECORD. subscribe to the Park Record and get ali of your Park City and Summit County News, Delivered twice a week to your driveway or mail box. Also includes the Sunday Issue of the Salt Lake Tribune free with your paid in Summit County Park Record Subscription. Subscribe now for $3700 for a full year of The Park Record. Must mention this ad at the time of subscribing. Only valid for New in Summit County subscribers Call our office Monday thru Friday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM @ 435-649-9014 and ask for the Circulation Department or you can email us directly at Circulation@parkrecord.com. Buck Valley After its amazing opening day Saturday, with the entire resort and all but one of its lifts open with our early bounty of snow, Deer Valley Monday dropped its lift ticket price by two thirds to $30. The deal ended today, but while it lasted it was the deal of the year in American skiing. The $30 price tag signified the 30th anniversary of what SKI Magazine readers name again and again North America's number one ski resort. Would you believe Deer Valley, with its pricey real estate, was once called Frog Valley and was best known as the place where Parkites dumped their garbage? It was also home to a smelter spewing pollution from unfiltered smokestacks. It was quite a journey from dump to the icon it is today. In the 1930s, Sun Valley opened with a flurry of publicity as America's first ski resort. It kindled an instant interest in the sport, which already was popular in Park City. In Park City, hundreds of miners were unemployed and FDR's Works Progress Administration was created to hire the unemployed and put them to work on public works projects. Miners were sent over to Frog Valley to cut trees and clear ski runs as a public recreation project. Salt Lake's Junior Chamber of Commerce organized a ski train from Salt Lake to come in on the rail line which ended about where Snow Park Lodge is today. World War Two ended any notion of further development of a ski area there, but afterwards, in 1946, two Park City skiers tired of driving to Brighton to find a ski lift leased the Snow Park ground and put up their own lifts. Otto Carpenter and Bob Burns hand-built the lifts from pine and aspen logs and scrounged old mining equipment. At the top of one lift they placed a Hercules truck engine as the drive system, and at the top of the other, a Ford Model A engine did the job. Carpenter once told me they needed to keep the truck batteries warm so they'd turn over a cold engine, so during cold spells Carpenter and Burns took the batteries home and in the morning had to hike to the top, through unbroken snow, with heavy truck batteries to get the lifts moving. The Snow Park lifts ran, on weekends only, for the next 18 years, with Park City ski legend Mel Fletcher putting a 44 Stern had plenty of time to plan his dream resort. He would break new trail by building a ski resort that would operate like the fine hotels he owned,' including the Stanford Court on Nob Hill in San Francisco." Park property. He had plans for a comeback. Stern had plenty of time to plan his dream resort. He would break new trail by building a ski resort that would operate like the fine hotels he owned, including the Stanford Court on Nob Hill in San Francisco. There would be ski valets, concierges, and every employee would treat every guest like gold. And typical ski fare like chili dogs were banished in favor of pasta # bars, gourmet sandwiches and salad bars served in log lodges reminiscent of the grand national park lodges of the West. For its public face, Stern's friend Stein Eriksen moved over from Park City Ski Area and ushered in the era of "ballroom skiing" on perfectly groomed slopes. It all added up to the "Deer Valley Difference." The first five chair lifts were fixed-grip triples in an era when many lifts were doubles. Each year it seemed, the resort pushed farther east and west, until only a rope line would separate it from Park City Mountain Resort's McCony Bowl. Here's to ski visionary generation of Parkites on skis Edgar Stern and the team that with his Snow Park Ski Club pulled off his dream. Edgar and ski school. But by 1964, died two years ago, but not the landowner, United Park before seeing his resort mature City Mines, was opening its and win the #1 ranking among own resort over in Beef ski resorts. Add top-five resort Hollow, where the Park City Park City Mountain Resort Mountain Resort base is today. and the always improving and UPMC didn't want competi- expanding Canyons Resort, tion and would not renew the mix in the Greatest Snow on Earth, the legacy of the Snow Park lease. A few years after opening, Olympic Winter Games and all the mining company bailed on the rest, and we live in the its struggling resort, selling it to Greatest Ski Town on Earth. Aspen and New Orleans That's my story and I'm developer and hotelier Edgar sticking to it. And I promise Stern. never to dump any garbage in Stern soon found himself Frog Valley like the old timers overextended in a recession did. and sold out as well. But he held back much of the ground Writer, filmmaker and author he had under lease - an east- Larry Warren has made the west-running mountain bran- West his beat for the past three ching off from Park City Ski decade. He is the general manArea, including the old Snow ager of KPCW |