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Album Cover Photo "On Your Way"

Photo Courtesy Bend Magazine

Brad emceeing a performance for SFF's Studio to Schools grant in the spring of 2019.

Album Cover Photo "Feel the Fire"

Sisters Folk Festival 2024

Americana Song Academy 2019

12/16/2024

Sisters Oregon, The Whole Town is the Stage that Brad Tisdel Created

By BOB HOWARD // Brad Tisdel leaves a huge legacy after 25 years guiding the Sisters Folk Festival 

For 25 years, Brad Tisdel has been the guiding force, the energy, and the vision behind the Sisters Folk Festival.  Sisters has become a unique music town that reflects his passion for bringing people together to celebrate community.  Sisters easily claims the title music town with more music per capita than any town in America. It is a highly sought after tour stop for folk, indie, and americana artists from across the country.  A small town with a song a day. 

Brad is leaving his current role as full time Creative Director at the end of the year.  He has formed a new company to focus on his interest in talent booking.  His first assignment will be to coordinate talent booking for SFF Presents in 2025.  Brad says, "I want to pursue new opportunities to expand other interests in my life that have been put aside for a long time."  

Brad’s relationship with the Sister’s Folk Festival started in 1995. After graduating from college, he left for Montana and took some time explore his passion for songwriting and music. In 1994, he released the self-titled album, Tisdel and Thom with blue grass mandolinist and guitarist David Thom in Missoula, Montana. One of the tracks on that album was a tune titled “See the Light.” Shortly after the song was released, Brad submitted the song to the Festival's first songwriting contest in 1995. The much-celebrated singer-songwriter, Dave Carter, also submitted a song and won the song contest. While Brad's song was the runner-up, it began a 30-year relationship with the Sisters Folk Festival.

Brad will never accept credit for the transformation of Sisters around the folk festival.  But it is hard to imagine Sisters without Brad.  Brad took the reins of the festival in 2000. Together with Jim Cornelius, the Editor-In-Chief and co-owner of the Sister's Nugget, and Kathy Deggendorfer, artist, rancher, and businesswoman.  They transformed the future of the festival.  Their focus was arts education. “When I started in 2000, the festival had run out of steam. With the help of Kathy and Jim, we changed the model; they brought a lot of sponsors and foundation support to the organization.” "I was working in the Sisters schools; I was a singer-songwriter, so I think they felt like I was a good a combination of talents and skills and experience to help create and develop this program for Sisters Folk Festival."

The story of the Sisters Folk Festival is a story about the creative and educational intensity that Brad brought to Sisters in 1995.  After he first came to Sisters he stayed.  His focus turned to the community.  The result was the Americana Project at Sisters High School, founded in 2000.  It is an innovative music and arts education program with broad community outreach. This elective music class at Sisters High School provides students with an outlet for creative self-expression, including guitar playing, writing songs, performing, and recording. The offering included the Luthier Program, one of only two instrument-building programs in public high schools in the United States. When Brad talks about the Americana Project his eyes light up. Service to music and kids,” that’s what I’ve done, what I have tried to do, I created the programs that I would have loved to have when I was a kid, amplify art.” "I have worked hard for over 2 decades trying to create something meaningful."   

The Board has grown an amazing team around Brad's creative talents.  In 2019 Crista Munro joined the organization as the executive director.  “I was thrilled to be hired for the executive director position at Sisters Folk Festival. I had known Brad for several years, having attended Folk Alliance conferences in my role as the Executive Director of FolkWest. We collaborated on bookings since our festivals were just a week apart. I was familiar with Brad's work with SFF and all he had done to build a strong foundation of support in the Sisters community. I couldn't wait to get to work with him, the other SFF staff, and board members to continue the 22+ years of successful cultural programming in Central Oregon.”

With the support from sponsors, his team put a stake in the ground and jump-started the festival setting a new course for the future of this tiny central Oregon town that started as a logging camp. "I became artistic director in 2003, and I started doing the booking.  We grew all the way through 2019 in programs and stages throughout town. 30 years later Sisters has become a magnet for artists and music lovers from all over the world. In 2024, over 5,000 attendees enjoyed 32 artists, 7 stages, and 16 hours of shows presented during the last weekend of September. "It's always been our goal and my role to provide the best possible platform for artists to do their best work for an audience."  

In 2002, Brad relates, "we began the Americana Song Academy." "I had been to the song school at Planet Bluegrass in 1998-99 and I pitched the idea of starting a songwriting camp for the Sisters Folk Festival. I had been working as an artist in residence at Caldera which was a new performing arts camp, so we landed on that being the location." They needed at least 12 participants and four students from Sisters High School. "That goal was easily met, and we started with four instructors." Today, the Academy continues with 75 students and 12 artist/mentors and a team of 40 that help serve the camp.  "Ultimately the camp was small and mighty at the beginning, and it just grew throughout the course of the last 20 to 23 years."

Lincoln Crockett, an extraordinary multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and healer, has known Brad for many years.  He has long been on the production teams at many song academies and the festivals.  He says, "Brad Tisdel makes it happen. In fact, he couldn’t NOT make it happen. He’s gently intense, both goal-oriented and soulful. He knows how to lead people and lean on people. He’s a wild visionary and a responsible statesman all in one, born and raised, dyed in the wool."

Ultimately Brad says, "the song academy amplified the festival and that was intentional." The different entities and elements of the organization would complement and grow concurrently, diversify the organization, and more importantly programmatically.  We could connect adults and students in the schools and community much more closely to the arts." 

The impact on students at the academy has been huge. Since 2002, well over 1,000 campers have come.  It is an immersive experience. This year, one student shared her first-year experience with me: Aimée Okotie-Oyekan, "If Music Was a Mirror: Field Notes from the Americana Song Academy."

In 2021, SFF Presents began a series of video profiles of artists teaching at the song academy. Their stories capture the essence of the experience at camp. 

 

 

 

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SFF Presents now produces two festivals and a concert series at the Belfry, concerts are produced throughout the year.  

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