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ABOUT
Woollystar is a music gathering on the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada, located just outside of South Lake Tahoe near Markleeville on our beautiful high-elevation private desert ranch. Consider this your personal invitation. We plan to keep Woollystar intentionally small in the years ahead, preserving the intimacy, the connection, and the magic that make it so special. It’s a perfectly curated music event, campout, and community experience, where the vibes are genuine and the setting unforgettable. Get your tickets here.
SCHEDULE
We intentionally keep Woollystar small, creating an intimate experience where the connection between artist and audience feels personal and real. Each year, we invite a carefully curated selection of bands and musicians from across the country. Artists whose songs are rooted in lived experience, storytelling, and folklore.
For one unforgettable weekend, they come together in one place. One weekend to soak it all in. To discover new sounds. To dance under the stars. Or to simply sit back, breathe deeply, and let the music carry you.
This tiny fest is about more than just the amazing music, it’s about community. Families return year after year. Children reunite with friends they’ve met along the way. Strangers become neighbors. We’re creating something lasting, a special experience that draws you back every year.
THE MUSIC
WORKSHOPS
Friday 1:30pm-3:00pm at the River Stage
SONGWRITING WORKSHOP WITH NEVER COME DOWN
Songwriting 101: No Wrong Way
Whether you’re inspired by the lyrics or the melody, come take a peak into the process of songwriting and arranging with Never Come Down. They will break downa few of their original songs and speak to the methods and devices that help them “build from the bones up”.
Saturday 10:00am-11:00am at the River Stage
YOGA WITH RICHARD FAHLANDER
Begin your Woollystar day with yoga that awakens the senses in this special place. Accessible to all, together we breathe the fresh alpine air and flow with the effervescent river.
Richard Fahlander is a seasoned yoga teacher with a private practice in Concord, Massachusetts. He has taught in a variety of settings with students of all ages and abilities. "For me, yoga provides a way to ground transcendent notions into the physical world. This conversation at the intersection of mind and body is a journey of awareness. Through the interplay of effort and ease we discover balance in the moment. With gratitude, we begin where we are, go where we go and have our fill. Led by breath, our practice becomes meditation in movement - the nuances of which ripple into the rest of our lives."
Saturday 11:15am-12noon at the River Stage
BEGINNING PERFORMERS’ WORKSHOP WITH CHUCK AND JEANIE POLING
The goal of this workshop is to help prepare you to perform. Performing live music can be a wonderful, transcendent experience for musicians and audiences alike. Hopefully, I can pass on some tips I’ve learned over the years and help you avoid some common mistakes to make your show go smoothly. This workshop is for musicians who are at least moderately proficient at their chosen instrument (and/or voice), and is particularly focused on solo guitar/vocal performers as well as small combos of two or three musicians.
All workshop attendees must have a ticket to Woollystar for the day of the workshop.
THE RANCH
Our private ranch sits at the base of the mountains, just on the eastern side of the Sierra, where the high desert opens into breathtaking 360-degree views. At 5,800 feet in elevation, spring arrives with fresh mountain air and the unmistakable scent of blooming sagebrush dotted with tiny yellow flowers. Running through the property is the West Fork of the Carson River, flowing strong with recent snowmelt after a long winter. The setting is both expansive and peaceful with stunning sunsets, wide open skies, and the calming rhythm of the river nearby. It’s a place where you instantly know you’re somewhere special from the moment you arrive. Where desert meets alpine, and time slows down, Woollystar is the place to make memories.
FILM SCREENING
Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it. Celebrated bestseller, Pulitzer Prize winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, openly queer but intensely private, Oliver was America’s unlikely contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly 50 years in order to open herself – and her readers – to the known and unknowable world. From a lonely childhood to literary fame, Oliver’s life was shaped by devotion to nature, paying attention, and the long journey toward learning to love and to be loved. Her poems inspire liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers, naturalists and urbanites, speaking directly to contemporary anxieties about attention, presence, and the human relationship with the natural world – issues that feel especially pressing in an era of climate crisis, digital distraction, and social fragmentation.
Featuring interviews with her close friends, including John Waters, never-before-seen personal photos,
notebooks, and correspondence from her archive, and recitations of her work by Stephen Colbert,
Lucy Dacus, Steve Buscemi, and Oprah Winfrey, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the W orld
considers the poet’s long lifetime of work in context, capturing the uniqueness of her world and the
natural beauty that inspired her.
