The last best place

Nestled beneath Glacier National Park, the Flathead Valley of northwestern Montana is home to a rich, working-class, musical culture led by local, professional artists. Through decades of solo and collaborative work, two of the area’s most celebrated artists, Blackfoot songwriter Jack Gladstone and singing cowboy Rob Quist, have written music exploring the history of northwestern Montana and its connection to people and places today. Weaving together ethnographic research and family history with Place Studies, working-class studies, Indigenous ways of knowing, and Hayden White’s ideas about historical narrative, this article shows how musicians in the Flathead Valley have collaboratively developed a song-based historical discourse that allows long-term locals and visitors alike to experience an emplaced understanding of northwestern Montana and its past. I will also discuss how famous cowboy painter Charles M. Russell serves as an inspirational figure and model of artist-as-historian for these musicians as they navigate the current moment of radical changes in the region. Ultimately, I will demonstrate how considering the layers of history present in this music can allow the listener to move beyond assumptions about this place and its history to hear the fears, hopes, struggles, and inspirations of these working-class artists and their audiences.