Montana Logging and Ballet Co.

The Montana Logging and Ballet Company is one of the most well-known comedy and political satire groups of the 1980s and 1990s, performing around the U.S. since 1975. The four members of the Montana Logging and Ballet Company, Rusty Harper, Bob FitzGerald, Steve Garnaas-Holmes and Tim Holmes, first met each other in 1967 at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. The quartet has performed for thousands of audiences, including the U.S. Congress, several United Methodist General Conferences and many nonprofit fundraisers from the Democratic Convention to the Whitehall Montana Public Library. Musical satire allows these longtime friends the opportunity to entertain, but their core message offers audiences a chance to chuckle at themselves and view their diverse differences in a new light. Devoted to advancing social justice, the group performs only benefit concerts, frequently for humanitarian organizations. In 1987, the group sang at the first United Methodist Global Gathering in Louisville, Kentucky. There the group met Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for whom they wrote the song, Take the Barriers Down addressing apartheid in South Africa and around the world. Four years later, the group invited Archbishop Tutu to visit Helena, Montana, the group's hometown, who joined them there in a benefit concert to raise awareness of the racist apartheid system. Four thousand people came to that event which raised nearly one million dollars in college scholarships for black South Africans and Native Americans. The group is famous for their satirical commentary on current events, often taken from the newspaper of the day of a performance delivered in sketches, songs, body humor and lyrical acapella singing. The four members of the group include Tim Holmes, an internationally acclaimed sculptor and filmmaker; his brother Steve Garnaas-Holmes, a United Methodist pastor, poet, and writer of hymns for the United Methodist Book of Worship; Bob FitzGerald, manager and Rusty Harper, ideaman.

Helena, MT