Are you interested in performing as a Rising Star songwriter at one of our festivals?

We invite a handful of new songwriters each year to play our festivals along with many returning songwriters. 

We hire two levels of songwriters for our festivals. Hit Songwriters and Rising Stars.

Our Hit Songwriters write primarily for the country music world. Invited Hit Songwriters have written one or more #1 hit songs on billboard charts. Past performers include, Brett Jones, Wynn Varble, Kostas (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame), Tony Lane, Karen Staley, Randy Montana, Chuck Cannon, and Even Stevens (Nashville Songwriter Hall of Fame) among others.

Our Rising Stars are incredible songwriters that play in the pubs and restaurants during the festival. They perform the bulk of the shows. These shows are in a songwriter round format with two to three songwriters. You will likely play in a different venue with different songwriters each day. We pay our Rising Star songwriters a talent fee for performing shows on a combination of days—Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We offer host housing however we do not pay expenses. The fee is reflective of the experience of playing with other great songwriters and enjoying visiting Montana and Wyoming.

Our Songwriters are recruited at other festivals, by reputation, seeing live shows, referrals, our Songwriting Contest, Master Class and direct inquiries.

We are looking for songwriters who make a significant portion of their income from songwriting and performing those songs. We review a songwriters show schedule, social media presence, youtube videos, songs on spotify, bio and website before making our selections.

Over the past eight years we have created a songwriting family where songwriters are in constant contact with us and each other. It is those personal relationships that make this festival work. Thus we do not hire songwriters through bookers or management companies. If you are obligated to a management company we encourage you to pay them their booking fee. We deal directly with the songwriter, and accept applications only from songwriters themselves. Invitations for the following year’s festivals are sent out annually in December.

If you are interested in being considered as one of our Rising Star Songwriters in 2023, please send a CD of your original music and bio to the address below. Songwriters for our 2023 festivals will be chosen by December 1, 2022. Thanks for your interest. 

Other Ways to Participate

There are lots of opportunities to participate in the Rocky Mountain Songwriter Festivals. Our tagline is “Where the Songwriters Meet.” In 2022, more than 100 songwriters were directly involved with our festivals and many more attended as fans. In addition to joining us as a performing songwriter, there are other ways to get involved.

No matter what your ability or status, there is a place for you at the Rocky Mountain Songwriter Festivals. We have classes for you to hone your songwriting skills, a songwriting contest to see how your composition stacks up with others and open mics. Many of our Rising Star songwriters were introduced to us by participating in our songwriting contest or master class.

• Improve your skills at our Master Class for Songwriters
• Enter Our Songwriting Contest