Each year we engage 60 some singer-songwriters to perform at our festivals each season. Many of these are returning songwriters, however we do bring in a handful of new writers each year. Our Songwriters are recruited at other festivals, by reputation, attending live shows, referrals, finalists from our annual songwriting contest, and direct inquiries. We do not book songwriters from blind submissions or press kits sent by management companies.
Headliners and Hit songwriters write primarily for the country music world. Invited hit songwriters have written one or more #1 hit songs on the billboard charts. Past performers include, Brett Jones, Gary Nicholson (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame), Leslie Satcher, Wynn Varble, Kostas (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame), Tony Lane, Sunny Sweeney, Karen Staley, Randy Montana, Erin Enderlin, Angela Kaset, Matraca Berg (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame), Rafe Van Hoy (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame), James T Slater, Chuck Cannon, Gretchen Peters (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame), Billy Montana, Erin Enderlin and Even Stevens (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame) among others.
Other songwriters are professional singer-songwriters that play in the pubs and restaurants during the festivals. All shows are in a songwriter round format with two to three songwriters. You will play four to five shows during the festival.
We encourage you to send us your information if you believe you’re good enough to share the stage with our other songwriters. Your information should include your bio, a CD of your current music, links to your web page, social media (Instagram & Facebook), Youtube videos and Spotify.
We will look at are your tour schedule, awards, other festivals you may have played, are you a good quality musician, liner note on your CDs, the number of followers on your social media pages, number of monthly listeners on Spotify & Apple Play and Youtube videos. We appreciate your understanding that we get hundreds of requests from songwriters to play our festivals. If we are interested in booking you, we will contact you. We only contact songwriters we are interested in booking, and due to the number of applicants do not contact songwriters when we don’t plan to book. We do not invite songwriters through management companies or bookers.
Many of our songwriters are discovered at our annual Rocky Mountain Songwriting Contest. Past winners include Liam Buel Slater, Michelle Rivers, Reese Sullivan, Dallas Remington, Goldpine (Ben & Kassie Wilson) and Daniel Neihoff, all regular songwriters at our festivals. The winner of our annual contest receives an automatic invitation to return to the Red Lodge Songwriter Festival the following year as a Rising Star and the top five get strong consideration to play our other festivals. We will begin accepting songs for the 2025 contest on October 1, 2024.
Prior to submitting your information we encourage you to look at a map and see where Red Lodge, Montana, Cody, Wyoming and Livingston, Montana are. You are responsible for getting to our host communities so be sure you know how your going to get here and the expense of traveling here before you apply.
Invitations for our 2025 festivals will be sent in December of 2024.
Thank you for your interest.
- Mike Booth – Executive Director
- Rocky Mountain Songwriter Festivals
- P.O. Box 830
- Red Lodge, Montana 59068
