Montana Wild Cats

You know this music came up the river. It came hopping the Great Northern Empire Builder. It came on Red River carts and painted ponies. It came in the clouds, riding the wind, down into the badlands, up through the ground through the roots of the cottonwood trees back into the big sky. And it reached Jack in Edgar, Montana. Kelly in Malta, Montana. And me in Chester, Montana. It's yours now. -Phil Aaberg "Three boys who grew up in Montana independently pursued careers in music and rose to international stature. Humble honesty and a clear deliberate nature remains, as men now their individual sophistication as composers and performers braid. A few miles from Three Forks the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers join, the confluence that is the great Missouri. This musical collaboration sees three rivers of creation and performance joined as one beautiful force: Montana Wild Cats" ~ Dr. Eric Funk Country Slickers, track one of the new Montana Wild Cats CD from Walrath/Roberti/Aaberg, in 12:47, achieves true, undiluted, sweeping greatness. Not only does it fly effortlessly between serenity, power, circuitous classicism, and easy front porch rag, it carefully and unhurriedly conjures up nearly every conceivable image and era of Montana. It's a series of scenes ... touches and echoes of big reverberating dance halls, prohibition gin joints, majestic river floats, big town blues haunts, small town summer evenings, 50s sock hops, chaos, disintegration, plains indians, and chiseled glacial peaks. All this invoked by the penultimate collaboration of three world class musicians. A long, tender, passionate love letter to Montana, and one of the most remarkable compositions and performances I've ever heard. Welcome to the Missouri's new high water mark. - Colin McWilliams (via Facebook/Montana Wild Cats)