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Covering the Bitterroot Valley – “Where Montana Begins!” – Established 1985 – Locally Owned & Independent
Find the latest updates and information on the COVID-19 pandemic at www.bitterrootstar.com Volume XXXV, Number 42
Making music for life
Section A
’ ! l a c o L t a t s e B ‘The
Will there be live music concerts in the ‘new normal’? Debra and Jason Hicks, founders of the Joan Zen Band, like many professional musicians across the nation are not immune from the catastrophic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. The Bitterroot Star asked Debra Hicks to share with us the impacts of this epidemic and the measures invoked to counter it on her business. Hicks and her husband Jason met in 1997 in California where they were playing in a band together and were married in 1998. The two moved to the Bitterroot in 2002 and stayed briefly with Jason’s mother, who had recently relocated to Stevensville. They soon purchased a travel trailer and spent several months at Kirby Erickson’s place near Hamilton. Erickson and Debra’s uncle Rob Kunkle were good friends, and both were well known and well appreciated musicians in the Bitterroot throughout the 1980s. The two of them played a lot at
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Hamilton Skate Park vandalism complicates park opening
“Music is one of those things. You must have it to live,” says Debra Hicks, soulful singer with the band Joan Zen, one of the valley’s perennial favorites. The band is supportive of many local non profits. “...The only reason to do music in the Bitterroot is to give something of yourself.”
Haigh’s Bar (remember that happening spot, now supplanted by the Spice of Life?). “We just felt like we had come home,” said Hicks about the move to Montana. “We’ve been here now for 18 to 19 years and from the git-go we felt like we were where we were supposed to be.” Pretty soon she and Jason decided to start up a band and the first to step up and join them was another old time, all-time favorite Bitterroot musician Donald Maus. Deb had been given some names of people to talk to when she got to Montana including musicians like Don Maus, David Horgan, Chuck Florence and Eli Nuno. Maus was the first person they called, and he jumped on the offer. Hicks said they began rehearsing with him. By March 2003, they were playing their first gig. Then Jason was sitting around talking to Tim Bozick, owner of the Bitterroot Brewery, and Bozick said he had heard that they were musicians and he invited them to play at the brewery.
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“Jason said, if you do that it’s going to be a scene, it’ll be a party,” said Hicks. “He let us do it, and it was pretty much a scene. And it was a really fun scene.” They also started adding other musicians to the band pretty quickly. The next to join were David Horgan and Chuck Florence. They also started down the road of supporting local nonprofits, something that was going to become one of the defining characteristics of the group over the coming years. Their first was a gig in support of the Bitterroot Youth Homes, soon followed by one for S.A.F.E. Hicks said getting involved with the non-profit scene was kind of by choice. “I wanted to dive into what the community was working on together and what was important to Montanans and to the type of people I knew liked my music.” She said one thing she liked about Montana was that See MUSIC, page 6
Sometime during the night last Tuesday, April 28, or perhaps in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday, someone spray painted a couple of messages on one of the Skate Park’s concrete walls and on the inside of the Band Shell at Claudia Driscoll Park in Hamilton. The park was closed due to the COVID-19 emergency but was due to open May 1. Due to the vandalism the park, as of Monday May 4, remains closed. According to Mayor Dominic Farrenkopf, all the parks were initially closed due to concerns about the coronavirus and the need for social distancing and the avoidance of large groups. In the case of Claudia Driscoll Park and the Skate Park located there, he said there was extra concern due to the proximity to the hospital and the Emergency Services. He said the risk of skateboard injuries requiring emergency services in what might become an overloaded system was also a concern. Farrenkopf said that when
the vandalism was discovered, the park was fenced off to protect things while the graffiti was cleaned up. He said a couple of employees of Evergreen Skateparks, the company that built the skate park, were working in Stevensville and were able to quickly respond to their situation and have already assisted in cleaning the paint off the concrete. The city plans are to paint over the graffiti on the Band Shell. He said they were currently taking down the fence and making some repairs on the gazebo at the park. He said the city was also considering beefing up the police presence in the area. Mayor Farrenkopf said the city’s aim was to get the park open again as soon as possible. “We would really like to give the park back to the kids,” he said. He noted that some people had commented in social media about the graffiti containing a positive message. The graffiti did appear to be tastefully done. It was not sloppy work. The messages were simple and positive: “Paint WiT UR HEART” and “LOVE
URSELF.” Farrenkopf said that the quality of the work was not an issue. “The city made a promise to the citizens when the Skate Park got approved that concerns about the park being defaced with graffiti would be honored and that graffiti of any kind was not acceptable. He said the city was going to clean it up and keep its promise to the people in the neighborhood and to the citizens that this type of activity would not be tolerated. Anyone who saw anything or has any information about the vandalism is asked to call the Hamilton Police Department at 363-2100. As of Monday, the park was still closed. Farrenkopf said that the final decision to open would be made by Dr. Calderwood, leader of the county’s COVID-19 Incident Management Team. The opening has been complicated, he said, by the state’s orders and the definitions and classifications being used to regulate the re-openSee PARKS, page 2
Recent graffiti at Claudia Driscoll Park in Hamilton caused an uproar on social media, with many people pointing out that the artwork had a positive message.
Restraining order for Darby Lumber Lands II project denied By Michael Howell
Musician Jason Hicks, who founded the band Joan Zen with his wife Debra. They have been playing for local audiences for nearly 20 years, and now they’ve resorted to virtual concerts in order to work through the pandemic. Photos courtesy of Joan Zen.
In a decision issued on April 29, Federal District Judge Dana Christensen denied a request from the Friends of the Bitterroot for a Preliminary Injunction/Temporary Restraining Order to stop the Bitterroot National Forest from proceeding with a timber sale associated with the Darby Lumber Lands II Project. The Forest Service acquired the former Darby Lumber Company lands back in 2005 and 2013. The land had been heavily roaded and logged by the company. Many of the roads were not built to Forest Service standards and have not been properly maintained, resulting in heavy sedimentation. The Forest Service designed the Darby Lumber Lands II Project to develop a suitable transportation system throughout the Project
area, and to improve watershed and forest health. Specifically, the Project will decommission 39 miles of road, place 16 miles into long-term storage, construct 4.3 miles of permanent road and 1.9 miles of connector routes. This will result in a net reduction of approximately 38 miles of open road during the summer months. The Forest Service authorized the project in July 2019. It then awarded a timber sales contract to Pyramid Mountain Lumber in mid-September 2019. Friends of the Bitterroot (FOB), a local non-profit conservation organization, was presented a copy for review in late October 2019 and filed suit to stop the project on February 19. Then, on April 10, 2020, FOB filed the motion for a preliminary injunction/temporary restraining order.
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Road work on the project is set to begin in early May. Timber harvest is estimated to begin in October once the road work is complete. The judge notes that a plaintiff seeking an injunction must show that: (1) it is likely to suffer irreparable harm absent a preliminary injunction, (2) it is likely to succeed on the merits, (3) the balance of equities tips in its favor, and (4) an injunction is in the public interest. When the gfovernment is a party, the analyses of the final two elements merge. In order to obtain a preliminary injunction, a plaintiff must allege more than the possibility of harm. A plaintiff must demonstrate that absent such an order, irreparable harm is likely. Analysis of this element probes the timeframe of See DENIED, page 3