Jackson Hole Underground

From Aaron Davis in the Planet, we learn that Taj Mahal, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi will join Emmylou Harris at the 4th annual Targhee Fest on July 18-20.

A quick search of Pollstar finds that Béla Fleck and Sam Bush are headlining the Targhee Bluegrass Fest on Aug. 8-10.

Also headed our way, to Center for the Arts, are the Neville Brothers and Dr. John (June 10), Del McCoury (June 22) and Leo Kottke (Oct. 18), among others.

And there are rumblings that Widespread Panic will return to Snow King.

Gives us plenty to look forward to, while making plans for Jazz Fest.

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On arriving at Teton Village on Friday for the WyObama party, I ran into snowboard star Travis Rice and showed him my Obama T-shirt.

“I told a girl I liked Obama,” Rice recalled of a recent encounter, “and I totally got her digits.” [Translation for those over 40: She gave him her number.]

Then I walked into the Village Cafe and found a table of snowboarders relaxing over burritos and beers. “Are you guys here for the Obama party?” I asked, skeptical.

They reached into their pockets and produced dog-eared, folded, slightly soggy bits of paper: their voter registration receipts. They proudly held them aloft.

Barack Obama has made it cool to give a shit.

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On the night of July 13, 1960, America held its breath.

An air of suspense gripped the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. Delegates were split on whom to nominate for president. A rising tide of youth crashed against the establishment.

John F. Kennedy was the winner of most of the primaries, but party bosses preferred Adlai Stevenson, the former Illinois governor, or Lyndon B. Johnson, the more experienced senator. Candidates’ staff workers walked the floor of the convention with walkie-talkies, trying to marshal delegates in their favor.

One by one, in alphabetical order, each state cast its vote. Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin …

“The candidate leaned forward — Wyoming, on the next call, could make it,” the historian Theodore H. White wrote of JFK in The Making of the President, 1960.

“This could do it,” Kennedy told his friend David Powers, as the two watched on TV in a hotel room.

“‘Wyoming,’ chanted Tracy S. McCraken, Wyoming’s national committeeman, ‘casts all fifteen votes for the next President of the United States,’” White wrote.

“As Wyoming voted, the hall heaved.”

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Tonight the Teton County Planning Commission resumes its hearing on the proposed Teton Meadows Ranch development south of town.

Public comment begins at 5:45 p.m. in the Snow King Grand Room.

What can I write about this project that won’t amount to throwing gasoline on the fire of a simmering class war?

I sat through three and a half hours of last week’s meeting and listened, when public comment began, to a filibuster by South Park “Neighbors” opposed to the proposal. Without a hint of irony, they listed a litany of reasons why their suburban neighborhood is unsuited for human habitation besides their own.

A common thread in many of the comments: “my property values.”

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Every time Galactic plays the Mangy Moose they make us feel like we’re at Tipitina’s in New Orleans, hot and sweaty.

But when they bring along rapper Chali 2na of Jurassic Five, the place gets nuttier than the Audubon Zoo.

Standing 6-foot-6 with a smile as wide as the Mississippi River, the J-5 singer had the joint jumping last night. He was commanding and smooth, busting out rhymes with a positive vibe.

Apparently, the promise of hip-hop meets psychedelic funk gets the testosterone pumping. By my rough estimation, the density of the crowd measured 10 dpsi — dudes per square inch. I’ve done Bikram yoga in cooler conditions.

Guys were charging toward the stage like it was the Tower Three Chute. Fellas, the front row ought to be reserved for the ladies (and the occasional photographer).

The dance floor was a mosh pit, and the crowding a chafe for much of the night. But Galactic was able to churn up enough energy to let us do as they do in New Orleans: roll with it.

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