EVANSTON — “I don’t like to get down in the dumps too much, but it seems that my old friends are back again, and they like to hear me play a sad and lonesome song,” wailed Joe Storey during his opening number at the Bridger Valley round of the Wyoming Singer-Songwriter Competition.  Storey finished fourth place out of nine, securing advancement to the state final contest in Ten Sleep over Labor Day weekend.

The judges awarded pianist Ellie Pacheco, one half of Rock Springs-based, multi-instrumental duo Austin and Ellie, with top performer and top song with “The Way We Would Go,” a tune about falling in love with her first serious paramour.

Seasoned performer Chuck Dittman won second place performer and second-winning song with “Wicked Week.” Both he and third-place finisher Micah Paisley hail from Green River. Paisley, a top-10 finisher at last year’s state final and the only performer to play an electric instrument, the bass guitar, won third overall song with “Flip Through the Static.” Dittman’s “Cupcakes in Paris” and Pacheco’s “You Would Have Loved Him” tied for fourth and fifth best song.

“I was super worked up today. I’ve never played these songs in public, I was still working on them yesterday,” Pacheco said.

Audience votes tied Pacheco and Evanston’s Rachel Smith as top performers, placing Paisley again at third.  Smith’s songs “Villain” and “Ready to Jump” also landed third and fourth audience-favorite songs of the day, the latter of which she describes having written during “a pretty intense period of my life.”

With her top-three ranking of audience favorite, Smith earns herself an opportunity to perform — but not compete — at the Ten Sleep festival.

The July 5 preliminary round was the first of many upcoming throughout the state, and only the second ever hosted in the southwest region.

“This is spectacular country, I’m so glad we could make it. It got a big boost last year because of Kira,” said organization President John Gardzelewski of Lyman-native Kira Dawn Walk, artistically known as Kira Dawn, who won the state’s competition last year. 

This year, Dawn served as one of three judges in addition to the 2022 winner Steve Davis from Green River, and Artistic Underground and Salt Lake City, Utah performer Sean Baker.

“We have diverse judges who have all proven themselves in one way or another,” Gardzelewski said. “It’s great having Sean here because a lot of us from Wyoming know each other, but he doesn’t know any of the contestants. Sometimes we have professors, and they focus on lyrics, and we’ve had musicians and poets, too. We like to have a diverse set of judges and it’s very common for the fan favorite not to win.”

Five Uinta County residents competed during the Lyman round: Storey from Fort Bridger, his sister Jacy Storey and Smith, both from Evanston, Josh Jaques from Lyman and Gaven Norris from Lonetree. Dittman, Paisley and Pacheco, all from Carbon County, and Riverton’s Cyliss Ragsdale, rounded out the contestants.

“I asked my family not to come, they make me nervous,” recent high school graduate,18-year-old Norris told the Herald. However, after his crowd-pleasing performance, he mentioned that he regretted that his family wasn’t in attendance after all.

“Each artist gets three songs, a fifteen-minute set, just one instrument (per song) and themselves. They’re judged on lyrics and song composition equally, taken as a whole, and we don’t factor in the performance,” Gardzelewski explained.

“This is so unique; they have to submit their lyrics,” added Catherine Johnson, board member, grant-writer and Gardzelewski’s wife. “We’re a volunteer-run organization, and we do it because we love it. We run on grants, donations and fundraisers.”

The organization began as a Laramie-area-only contest in 2013, before expanding statewide in 2018. 

Johnson later clarified that “we’re increasingly requiring that they submit proof of Wyoming residency after one of our top three winners last year ended up being from Utah. We didn’t know that at the time, and his winnings were forfeited.”

The Wyoming Singer-Songwriting Festival in Ten Sleep features a stage on the back of an old Ford pickup truck. The weekend will offer songwriting workshops, live performances, often times around nightly campfires set at the base of the Big Horn mountains.

“There’s just a huge sense of community and collaboration. There’s no competitiveness, just connectedness,” said Gardzelewski.

The final event will narrow contestants down to the top 10. This year’s winner will take home $5,000 and several opportunities to perform at next year’s state fair, and at events like Fridays on the Plaza in Cheyenne. $2,500 and $1,500 will be awarded to second and third places respectively.  “Everyone is invited to come, it’s really fun when the crowd erupts,” Gardzelewski added.

An existing 31-minute 2024 documentary called “The Great Wyoming Singer-Songwriter Competition” can be found at online video platform service Vimeo.

“I’m hoping that it gets picked up by Netflix so our artists can be discovered,” Gardzelewski said.

Upcoming preliminary rounds will be hosted in Casper on July 19, Cheyenne on July 25, Sheridan and Saratoga on Aug. 10, Douglas on Aug. 17 with two final preliminary rounds on Aug. 30, in Ten Sleep, shortly before the finals. Entry fees are $30. More information can be found at: wyomingsinger-songwriters.com.