Thousands of Do Good Fest music fans to meet Harwood’s The Glam Cowboys

June 20, 2026 | By Lisa Scagliotti

The Glam Cowboys and their teachers with the Beats for Good contest prize from National Life (left to right) music teacher Brian Boyce; band members Cora Potts, Cali Neville, Tarin Askew, Eireann McDonough, Eliza Whitehair; music teacher Molly Desrochers. Courtesy photo.

They’ve played Zenbarn and Higher Ground. They’ve played host to other high school musicians and bands from around the state when their school hosts an annual fall Battle of the Bands competition.

Now the Harwood Union High School rising seniors who make up the band The Glam Cowboys will get to take their act to their biggest stage yet when they open National Life Group’s Do Good Fest on July 11. 

The one-day music festival on the hilltop at the company’s headquarters in Montpelier attracts an audience of thousands and a combination of established big-name bands and some popular new national talent that music fans may be seeing in Vermont for the first time. The artists that will play the Do Good stage this year are Neon Trees, Toad the Wet Sprocket, SmashMouth and Augustana.

The theme for the annual summer festival is literally to “do good” with proceeds always directed to nonprofit entities that serve a particular cause. This year’s event will benefit organizations that focus on youth mental health. 

Along the way, the festival offers an opportunity for Vermont youth musicians to shine with its Beats for Good contest that chooses the concert’s opener from a slate of high school bands and solo acts from around the region. 

The Glam Cowboys rallied their fans and community in recent weeks to win the popular online voting. At the Harwood Music Department end-of-year picnic on June 9, the folks from National Life visited the school with a TV news crew and hosts from a Burlington radio station to give them the news. They said the Harwood musicians came out on top out of nearly 7,600 votes cast. 

The 2025 Do Good Fest attracted a crowd of thousands to Montpelier. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti

Along with the opening spot on the Do Good Fest lineup, the band also won two cash prizes – $5,000 for the school music program and $1,500 for the band members themselves. 

The contest also names two runners-up and makes donations to their school music programs of $2,500 and $1,500. This year, they are the band Tidal Wave from Addison Northwest School District and Blake Matteson from Franklin West Supervisory Union, respectively, according to festival organizers. 

Harwood music teacher Brian Boyce praised the Glam Cowboys band members for their effort to land the Do Good honors. “As soon as they found out that they were finalists, they launched a top-notch promo campaign to rally folks behind them,” Boyce said. “It's great to see them flourishing as songwriters, performers and music business professionals.”

In addition to raising the student band’s profile, the festival prize for the school is a welcome perk, Boyce said. With school budgets tighter than ever, music programs aren’t seeing their budgets grow these days. 

The Harwood district so far has not made cuts to its music programs, but funding to grow music and arts is nonexistent, relying on fundraising. For example, school community members have launched a campaign to raise $1.3 million to fund long-overdue renovations and upgrades to the school’s auditorium to support performances and programs with modern equipment and technology that the school’s regular budget cannot afford.

It’s too soon to know how Harwood will use the Do Good Fest prize money. It likely will be directed to music education in ways not determined just yet. 

“The $5,000 gift is incredible and couldn't have come at a better time,” Boyce said. “We know that we would like to invest in our popular music education program, but still need to talk through the possibilities.”

Harwood student band The Glam Cowboys won the chance to be the opening act at the National Life Group's Do Good Fest in Montpelier on July 11. Courtesy photo

The Glam Cowboys band is comprised of now-rising Harwood seniors Eireann McDonough on lead vocals, Tarin Askew on guitar and vocals, Cora Potts on drums, Cali Neville on bass, and Eliza Whitehair on keys. The band formed in 2024 and has performed beyond the Harwood stage at venues including Zenbarn, Morefest, and on Mad River Valley Television’s In-Studio Live music series. They perform covers of rock, funk and blues tunes but also fill out their setlists with a growing catalog of original songs such as “Masquerade,” their entry for the Beats for Good contest. 

With school now finished for the summer, the band members will be rehearsing for their big show coming up in three weeks. They said the prize money will be put to good use to buy a new drum kit for their practice space. In addition to the big show in Montpelier, their summer calendar is filling up with more performances around the region. See their Instagram page @glam.cowboys for updates.

The Glam Cowboys is the first Harwood band to win the top honors for the Do Good Fest, but they’re not the only school musical act to land in the Vermont summer concert spotlight. Several iterations of the school’s acclaimed Assembly Band have had similar success. In 2015, the Assembly Band was picked to open the multi-day Grand Point North festival on the Burlington waterfront, organized by Vermont star singer-songwriter Grace Potter, who’s a Harwood graduate to boot. The Assembly Band also was a runner-up in the 2023 Beats For Good contest for the Do Good Fest, winning a $1,000 prize for the school. 

More information about the July 11 Do Good Fest schedule, lineup, tickets, etc. is online at dogoodfest.com.