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It isn’t too late to get the best kind of Christmas gift you can buy — a live concert experience for the music lover in your life, especially if a banjo and strings is their jam. Their heart will sing with roots rock band The Lil Smokies, presented by Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music at The Monarch in January. Tickets are also on sale now for OFOAM’s Ogden Music Festival 2022.

The catchy-named snOwFOAM is featuring The Lil Smokies in 2022, its fifth year doing the annual midwinter concert. Always held at the end of January, snOwFOAM was started to fill a void after the Sundance Film Festival left Ogden.

The past snOwFOAM concerts, which started in 2017, have included Amy LaVere and Will Sexton, The HillBenders, Booker T. Jones and Amy Helm. The Lil Smokies were scheduled for Jan. 22, 2021, but the show was canceled due to the pandemic.

OFOAM presented The Lil Smokies at the 11th Annual Ogden Music Festival in 2018.

An all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, OFOAM, founded by Michelle Tanner and Reba Nissen, produces festivals and events with the best, award-winning Americana, bluegrass and soul music they successfully scout out around the nation and bring to Weber County and the greater Wasatch Front region every year.

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Always with music education for kids in mind, Tanner, the OFOAM executive director, says in the past they would arrange for junior and senior high school music and drama students to be bused for a morning show. They’ve also thrown sponsor appreciation parties with an artist meet and greet before the evening snOwFOAM concerts. Swamp Cabbage supported the last Sundance Film Festival at the Ogden Eccles Conference Center in 2016, she said.

Kids 16 and under are always free to OFOAM festivals and events. During the pandemic, when they weren’t able to present live shows, Tanner said they brainstormed ways OFOAM could fulfill its mission to get traditional instruments into the hands of youth. “We came up with the concept of improving the instruments we offer for the Ogden Music Festival Instrument Petting Zoo and loaning the instruments out during the remainder of the year to youth who may not have an opportunity to learn to play an instrument,” she said.

OFOAM received grant funds for the instruments as well as the instructional component, and WILL & WAY — Weber Instrument Lending Library for Weber Acoustic Youth — was born. They plan to have WILL & WAY youth showcases at the Ogden Music Festival, which is set for June 3-5, 2022, at Fort Buenaventura in Ogden.

Tanner says they tried for several years to get The Lil Smokies at Ogden Music Festival after seeing their performances in Idaho and Logan. The hard-to-define, ’70s folk/rock-sounding, bluegrass instrument playing band from Missoula, Montana, has earned a national following performing constantly at top venues such as Red Rocks. Their latest album, “Tornillo” (2020), was produced by Bill Reynolds, who also worked with The Avett Brothers and Band of Horses.

Another way OFOAM has expanded its reach to Ogden’s underserved communities this year was partnering with several Hispanic/Latinx organizations for the Dia de los Muertos at The Monarch’s weeklong celebration, during which they presented a concert with Las Cafeteras supported by Mariachi Esperanza youth performers and WSU Ballet Folkorico dancers. They also provided an educational outreach program during the day for music students featuring Las Cafeteras, who also performed at Youth Impact the afternoon before. Activities included the Ogden School District Art & Student Showcase, the Latino Film Festival, an ofrenda/altar, arts and crafts with sugar skull kits and an on-site vaccine clinic.

snOwFOAM 2022 with The Lil Smokies is at The Monarch on Friday, Jan. 28, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 and children 16 and under are free.

Tickets for snOwFOAM 2022 and Ogden Music Festival 2022 are on sale now at OFOAM.org. Stay updated on more details and announcements by following OFOAM on Facebook @OFOAM.

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