Friends of Folk Festival honors Dick Orleans’ legacy

By the time the music starts at the Friends of Folk Festival on Tuesday, June 23, Performance Park Amphitheater will resemble the Estes Park music scene that Dick Orleans worked so hard to foster. Now in its 11th year, the free festival presented by the Estes Arts District continues to carry forward the spirit of Orleans’ Friends of Folk open-mic nights, where amateurs and professionals alike could step up to the microphone.

“He was everybody’s friend,” said Amber Lausted, a Friends of Folk committee member and Estes Arts District web manager and digital marketing coordinator. “A gentle soul, insightful, helpful, a great mentor to a lot of people.”

According to Lausted, the first event took place in 2015, a year after Orleans’ death in 2014, when his music community friends decided to hold a tribute performance at Performance Park. By the following year, the festival had become one of the Estes Arts District’s signature events, carrying on Orleans’ mission of providing a platform for artists to perform.

“After Dick passed away, all his music buddies got together and said, ‘Let’s do a performance in honor of Dick on his birthday to celebrate him,’ which happened to be a Tuesday that year,” Lausted said. “We decided to take on this festival because one of the founding members of the Estes Park Arts District, Greg Miles, has played with Dick for many years and knows him well.”

The festival’s name comes from the Friends of Folk nights Orleans hosted around town. Those open mics became a musical doorway for many Estes Park performers, including Jon Pickett, a local musician who will serve as this year’s MC.

“It’s an absolute honor,” Pickett said. “It means a lot to me. It’s an interesting shift going from musician to MC, but I’m excited to do it.”

Pickett moved to Estes Park in March 2002 to work at the YMCA of the Rockies. He soon found himself part of what he described as a “ragtag group of hippie musicians” who would show up at Orleans’ open mics around town.

“Dick would let us walk in late at his open mic and play at just about every venue in town,” Pickett said. “He had a way about him that was very kind and welcoming, and everyone just knew him as the music man.”

Orleans’ affable spirit still shapes the festival, even as the lineup has expanded beyond what some listeners might expect from a folk event.

This year’s performers include The Burroughs, known for “sweaty soul music”; The Goonies, an ’80s cover band; Banshee Tree, which plays indie psychedelic pop and rock; Equally Challenged, with funk, Latin, rock, and groove influences; Morrigan, a storytelling folk artist; and Maggie Ray & The Last Wild Ones, whose sound blends folk, pop, indie rock, and alt-country grit. Singer-songwriter Mel Soul will perform as a wandering minstrel between sets.

“We’ve expanded on what people think of as folk music, because technically, folk music is storytelling,” Lausted said. “When you look at the family tree of music, folk music really is connected to a lot more than people realize.”

Pickett expects that broader definition to help make this year’s festival feel especially alive. He said Maggie Ray’s performance will be a kind of homecoming, since she previously lived in Estes Park before moving to Oregon. He also pointed to Morrigan as one of the newer voices in the community and said Banshee Tree has shared bills with his band, Chain Station, over the years.

“It’s a small mountain town that has grown into a very tight-knit community around music and art,” Pickett said. “This year’s Friends of Folk is going to be a really special vibe. I’m already feeling electricity due to talk around town.”

While visitors are welcome, Lausted said Friends of Folk remains a local celebration at its core. She estimated the festival typically draws 400 to 600 people throughout the day, with earlier sets attracting listeners looking for a more relaxed concert experience and later performances bringing out dancers.

“We did it on a Tuesday to avoid going through the community of tourists that are here and the construction, and pretty much everybody in Estes Park works weekends,” Lausted said. “It’s a community event, so we wanted to make sure the majority of locals are able to come out. When I go onstage, which I don’t like doing, I know half the people in the crowd. You’re really talking to your friends who are there to celebrate a fantastic music festival and raise funds for scholarships.”

Those scholarships are another major part of Orleans’ legacy. The Dick Orleans Legacy Scholarship is open to people in the Estes Valley with a passion for the arts. Lausted said the scholarship began early in the festival’s history and is designed to help local creatives keep developing their work, whether they need support for equipment, recording, or other costs that help them continue.

“It’s based on a need to help develop creatives’ ability to do what they do,” Lausted said. “The scholarship is open to anyone who needs it for whatever creative project they want to do.”

Pickett received the scholarship in 2020, during the COVID-19 shutdown, when many working musicians faced financial difficulties.

“What I had requested the money for was to help with rent that month,” Pickett said. “I was in a low spot, and just being able to survive and keep playing music was my goal at the time.”

Pickett knows that may sound less romantic than buying a new instrument or recording an album, but he said the support mattered because it helped him stay on his path.

“It’s there for you to keep being who you are and not get knocked down off your path,” Pickett said.

Pickett has since continued to host open mics in Estes Park, something Lausted sees as a continuation of Orleans’ work. She remembered hearing Pickett onstage with Chain Station at a previous Friends of Folk Festival, announcing vendors in a voice that reminded her of Orleans.

“Jon goes, ‘Amber,’ just like Dick Orleans used to do,” Lausted said. “And now that Jon’s doing the open mics, he’s helping to do the same thing Dick was doing.”

Pickett is careful not to claim Orleans’ role outright. He said people have told him he is “the new Dick Orleans,” but that is not how he sees it.

“I will never live up to him,” Pickett said. “I will never fill his shoes, but I am a musician in town. All the open mics I started are because of Dick. He showed me how special it is to play in front of others. I don’t see myself as filling his shoes, but rather as following in his footsteps, which I am proud to do.”

This year’s festival runs from 2:30 to 9:30 p.m. and will include food from Crepes on Wheels, WesTex BBQ, and Johnny’s Good Eatin. Adult beverages will be available on-site, but outside alcohol is not permitted. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early and bring chairs or blankets to secure their spot.

As MC, Pickett said he intends to bring the same generosity and humor he learned from Orleans, with enough levity to keep the day moving and enough reverence to ensure that people understand why the festival exists.

“I come with my glass half full, and that’s one of my songs,” Pickett said. “I’m sometimes annoyingly positive, so I’m going to bring positivity. I plan to bring people together with a glass-half-full attitude and levity. I like to laugh, so expect dancing and laughter.”