Folklife, Sasquatch draw hundreds of thousands to NW music festivals

Wayne Coyne and Flaming Lips perform for a sold-out crowd at the Gorge during the 2011 Sasquatch Festival. (Alyssa Kleven/MyNorthwest.com Photo)

From hipster to hippie, the Memorial Day weekend has become
a Superbowl of sorts for local music fans as the Sasquatch
and Northwest
Folklife festivals crank up for their
respective annual runs.

With over 25 stages, 800 acts and 6,000 individual
performers taking over Seattle Center Friday through
Monday, Folklife is the largest free outdoor festival in
the United States. And despite its name, it’s way more
than just drum circles and Woody Guthrie sing-alongs.

“We have every type of art form for every type of fan. So
we’ve got everything from participatory dance to
performance dance. We have sort of your standby singer-
songwriters to sea shanties to roots of hip hop
celebrating the future of folk music,” says Michelle
Demers-Shaevitz, program coordinator for the Northwest
Folklife Festival, which draws over 200,000 visitors
during its four-day run.

There’s plenty of musical diversity of another kind over
at the Gorge Amphitheater in Eastern Washington, where
tens of thousands of primarily younger people make their
annual pilgrimage to the Sasquatch Festival. Now in its
11th year, the festival has grown into one of the biggest
and most respected of its kind in the country. This
year’s lineup features such notables as Jack White, Beck,
Bon Iver, The Shins and over 100 more acts ranging from
rock to electronica.

“It’s the diversity of the music. You can walk around and
see the best of hip hop with the Roots to the rock of Jack
White,” says Alyssa Kleven, who’ll be leading coverage of
the four-day festival for My Northwest.com with a blog,
photos and videos throughout the weekend.

Kleven also praises the majestic scenery of the Gorge and
the mix of people, many of whom are drawn by the allure of
camping throughout the festival.

It’s that vision that led local music promoter Adam Zacks
to create the festival back in 2002. But he admits while
he saw an opportunity to create a destination event in the
vein of Lollapalooza, he couldn’t have ever imagined it
growing into four sellout days drawing tens of thousands.

“I can’t say I envisioned it getting to the size it is
today. It’s pretty maxed-out at four days, the capacity
it is, but I envisioned it being multiple days to
introduce the camping aspect in a more meaningful way,”
Zacks says.

Whether it’s Sasquatch of Folklife, putting both festivals
together is a massive endeavor that begins almost
immediately after the festival ends.

“Our online application system is flooded in the fall with
amazing acts from all over the Northwest and British
Columbia, and we spend months going through the
applications,” says Demers-Shaevitz. “We also have a
wonderful group of community co-ordinators, there’s about
80 and they work within their specific specialty or
community to help us put together shows that reflect that
community.”

By comparison, Zacks does most of the booking for
Sasquatch himself. He tracks thousands of bands and
begins reaching out to their management the year before,
competing with all of the other festivals to lure the top
acts to the remote outpost.

“It’s a lot of unglamorous phone calls and e-mails,” Zacks
says. And it takes a lot of negotiation and kid gloves to
create a well rounded and balanced four-day schedule where
every band thinks they deserve top billing.

“It’s especially difficult when a band has a new record
that’s coming out. They of course think it’s going to be
a massive hit and nobody has a crystal ball to know, but
you have to decide their placement on the bill months in
advance. So you just do your best to finesse it,” Zacks
says.

An open mind and good shoes are the keys to getting the
most out of Sasquatch and Folklife. While plenty of
people go to see their favorites, it’s the ability to
discover something new or unexpected that is the hallmark
of both.

“I’m a big fan of wandering during our festival. There’s
so much music going on you’ll be surprised as you walk by
a stage, how much you’re drawn in and you might find
something new. So I would say come with comfy shoes, a
well scanned program and sort of an adventurous spirit,”
says Folklife’s Demers-Shaevitz.

Regardless of what you’re in to, you should bring plenty
of layers, because our notoriously unpredictable Northwest
weather can range from hot to hailing in the course of an
afternoon. That’s exactly what happened several years ago
at Sasquatch, bringing what Zacks calls his biggest
crisis.

“It was gigantic hail and massive volume completely out of
nowhere. And there was a good hour where we thought we
may have to just shut the festival down. So that was
scary and weird. And then the clouds parted and the sun
came out and it was gorgeous. And it became this big
bonding moment for everyone that was there and it was
great,” Zacks laughs.