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Steamboat Springs — Huge concerts - with more than 500 people in attendance - have never been my thing.

It doesn't matter what kind of music it is, or whether I like the band, or if I know every song on every album. At some point, when you get far enough away from the stage, there's an irreparable disconnect that no amount of fandom can bridge.

For that reason, I didn't especially expect to enjoy very much of MusicFest. And even though the music was good and the crowds were very, very happy to be there, that expectation pretty much held true until Tuesday night, when I started going to the shows the festival offers at smaller venues.

It's possible that more than a few people walked up to the door of the Steamboat Mountain Theater and were immediately disappointed - the scheduled act, Joe Ely, wasn't going to be performing.

Having only a basic knowledge of most country music recorded in the past 20 years, that schedule change didn't affect me much, and I went in anyway.

This was the first time I had showed up at the door time for anything other than a classical performance in at least four years. The punctuality turned out to be worthwhile. At 8 p.m., most of the seats in the theater were empty, and a movie screen on stage showed movie trailers and video spoofs.

The best of these was a hilarious send-up of VH1's "Behind the Music," featuring MusicFest artists and chronicling the rise and fall of a poorly conceived country music duo. Along with the other clips, that video did what it was supposed to do: charge the room with a sense that MusicFest fans are in on something fun and that in some way, being there makes them outlaws.

It had about the same effect as pumping an arm-wrestling contest full of testosterone by playing "Eye of the Tiger" on loop and screening "Road House" on mute.

The prelude worked - by the time Doug Moreland, Dub Miller and a rotating cast of other musicians made it to the stage, the 200-seat theater felt like someone's living room.

And as the featured artists comfortably told stories about the house behind a bar where they all lived, drank and played music for years, the night took on a personal quality that you don't often find with big-name, touring acts.

The crux of a music festival is its headliners and sold-out shows. But the good parts are always smaller, with less planning and more music.