New festival hopes to bring back daredevil spirit of Butte

BUTTE — A local promoter is hoping a new festival in Butte will kick-start a summer that has already lost major events due to COVID-19.

“You know, this used to be a major festival city and we had Folk Festival, we had EK Days, and just as a community, it’s very important to just put that out and put Butte back on the map,” said Monty Klistoff of Next Gen Entertainment.

The two-day festival called Brawls and Kickstart Days is set for the end of July. The venue, a 12-acre field next to the Depot bar will include a freestyle motorcycle stunt show featuring local daredevil Levi Renz, a bare-knuckle boxing match, live music and vendors.

“We might have some normal boxing matches as well to just fill the card, but then there’s going to bare-knuckle boxing as the headlining show,” said Klistoff.

He hopes the festival will help infuse money into the local economy that has been devastated by the pandemic.

“Everybody’s ready to have a festival, everyone’s, you know, looking forward to bringing something back like that to Butte,” he said.

Klistoff says he wanted to bring a festival here that incorporated that daredevil spirit because that’s really what makes Butte unique.

“That’s just like the tenacity that Butte’s known for. It’s like, you can go do concerts anywhere in the state of Montana, but there’s nowhere else like EK Days where you have it all -- you have the fights, you have the motocross, you have the band and to bring it all together, there’s no other event like that in Montana,” said Klistoff.

The event still needs the full approval of the city and health department and is set for July 30 and July 31.