Bluegrass festival returning next year along with an explosive new addition

CHRISTY LATTIN
CHRISTY LATTIN, clattin@lahontanvalleynews.com
November 17, 2007, 12:05 AM

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October just wrapped up, but plans are already being made for the return of a bluegrass festival in Fallon next October with a major new addition - a cowboy fast-draw championship.

The Desert Oasis Bluegrass Festival will be held Oct. 3-5, 2008, at the Churchill County Fairgrounds at the same time as the World Cowboy Fast Draw Association's "Fastest Gun Alive" championship. The weekend will also see the return of bicyclists from around the region to participate in the No-Hill 100 bike tour, sponsored by the Churchill County Parks and Recreation Department.

The Fallon Convention and Tourism Authority board awarded a sizable grant of $17,500 to the Nevada Bluegrass Project, headed by Cindy Gray, at its last meeting.

"The board felt it should fund as aggressively as it could to maintain the festival's good reputation and to get good entertainment to get that regional draw," said Rick Gray, executive director of the Fallon Convention and Tourism Authority.

Rick Gray (no relation to Cindy Gray) said Fallon last hosted the Desert Oasis Bluegrass Festival in 2001, the end of an eight-year stretch for the festival. He said it started small and grew to a large event, but the county wasn't seeing enough returns to make it viable.

The bluegrass festival committee approached the tourism board in late July to request a grant for a festival this year, but the board felt the timeline was too short to achieve a quality festival.

"The biggest bang for our buck is well-planned events," said board member Scott Tate at the July tourism board meeting.

Gray said the tourism board, under the direction of the city, may take an underwriting role for the festival in 2009, rather than a grant, if the 2008 festival proves successful.

The festival will be married with a new event in Fallon, the World Cowboy Fast Draw Championships. The Cowboy Fast Draw Association, founded in 2002, has held its events in Deadwood, S.D., the past five years. The Wild Bill Hickock Days festival was built around fast-draw competitions, but room rates and airfare have escalated in the past few years.

"We got killed by our own success," said "Quick" Cal Eilrich, executive director of the Cowboy Fast Draw Association. "To make it more affordable for our membership, we needed to move."

Eilrich assumed leadership of the association in April 2006 and has grown its membership from 350 to more than 1,000 in a year and a half. He said members hail from 20 sanctioned clubs around the nation, plus shooters from Australia and Canada. He's meeting with representatives from Korea later this month to invite them to next year's championship.

No, gunslingers aren't walking 10 paces from each other and turning to have a shoot-out. Instead, the shooters stand 21 feet from a target and are timed electronically. They shoot wax bullets that are captured by the backstop system, but they are using real pistols without any modifications, Eilrich said.

Most competitors dress up in styles straight from the Old West ... 1873-1899 specifically, because that's when the Colt .45 was introduced. One third of the competitors are women, Eilrich said, and they look far better than the men.

"Some will be dressed to the hilt in a ball gown, a lot dress like saloon girls, and a lot come out in old, long red underwear. It's a wide variety."

For locals looking to try their hand at fast draw, a Town Folk Alley booth will be available where people can take 10 shots for $5, all completely supervised. Eilrich is also hoping to establish shooting clubs in Fallon and Fernley to gather interest in the championship.

"There's nothing that duplicates the feeling of drawing a gun from a holster and shooting it," Eilrich said.