The internationally renowned music fest, Pickathon, is carefully curated to surprise and delight each year. For the last 23, years Pickathon’s organizers and its community of volunteers break some kind of new ground. Every summer, each incarnation presents new music, and new ways to present live music. Imaginative art installations, spectacular creative stages, and a zeal for sustainability make Pickathon a very unique experience that is quintessential Portland.  The event is executed through the efforts of a dedicated coalition of volunteers and organizers led by founder, Zale Schoenborn.  This year, the festival moved deeper into the woods with new and smaller performance spaces, creating a more intimate and engaging experience.

Portland Radio Project joined thousands of music enthusiasts to experience this boutique, highly influential music festival. This year Pickathon had been highly anticipated. Like so many live music events, it was scuttled over the past two years due to the pandemic. It felt like a small miracle, to see some familiar faces in the crowd and reconnect with the experience of discovery in the warmth of community that Pickathon always offers.  We had all been through so much together, while apart, and it felt good to hear new songs and stories about lived experiences and losses suffered.  It was an exuberant and welcomed reunion.

There were fewer headliners this year.  This may have been strategic, or just making the most with what you have. Budgets to secure talent have been stretched thin across the concert business as everyone is struggling to get back on their feet after the pandemic.  Either way, it was a deft move by the Pickathon talent team.  New and emerging music has always been a point of differentiation for Pickathon as music festivals go. Leaning into this strength makes sense.  Many artist find that their appearance on a Pickathon stage is an entrée to the next level of their music career according to Schoenborn. This year, there were more bands and artist that were entirely new, or more likely, performing under the radar of most music fans. The event also featured a wider array of area DJs playing bumper sets to cleanse the aural palate before the next band took the stage or to drive the bacchanal dancing in the woods.

Kassi Vallazza has performed along with Portland’s impresario and ubiquitous musician, Lewi Longmire.  If you were lucky, you’d could catch her at  Laurelthrist where she frequently performed her beautiful, and well crafted songs.  With the release of her 2019 recording Dear Dead Days , which feature Longmire and other Portland musicians, she earned a wider audience and stronger reputation as one of our most exciting new singer songwriters. Vallazza opened the festival in the Grove, a new stage set in a small natural amphitheater well shaded by trees.

Kassi Vallazza opens Pickathon 2022

If you haven’t been, you may expect Pickathon to feature primarily country and bluegrass performances.  While you can certainly find many new artist within Americana, bluegrass and country genres, what sets the festival apart is that it’s thrillingly eclectic.  This year, jazz and hip-hop had many strong representatives. It’s also apparent that the post-punk is alive and well. As evidenced by the new band TV Priest , who’s debut performance in an industrial freezer in London earned them a contract with Sub-Pop in November, 2019.  The band will remind many of The Fall, or any number of post-punk bands with a propulsive dissonant groove and brash front man, but their performance in the Galaxy Barn on the first night of the festival was a kind of urgent wake up call for a post-pandemic media saturated world. Lead singer, Charlie Drinkwater, has a charisma and sense of drama that puts him in league with Nick Cave, or perhaps a “punk Elvis”. 

TV Priest at the Galaxy Barn

They are an extremely entertaining band that delivers the kind of emotionally ephemeral experience that only the best live music brings its audiences.

Wet Leg held the mantle of headliner, taking the largest stage and the premium time slot. They also only performed once. Just about every act gives viewers two opportunities to see them at Pickathon. The band’s meteoric rise has been hard to ignore. It’s been awhile since a debut album has earned so much praise and enthusiasm. Wet Leg’s Angelica showed up on Obama’s 2022 Playlist . Their Friday evening show was mired with technical issues at the start, which kept the band from gaining the momentum they were working to generate.  This didn’t stop their performance from being a pure delight.

Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers are confident and talented performers. Their music, with its endlessly catchy hooks and deadpan humor feels in sync and also perfectly detached with popular culture. It does seem that Wet Leg sees their swift rise to fame as slightly amusing.

Hester Chambers of Wet Leg

 

Pickathon always features some of the most exciting new performers in jazz.  They were first to spot Kamasi Washington  years ago, prior to his 2021 Grammy nomination.  Stand out jazz performances this year came from Virginia based drummer Nate Smith+KINFOLK and Sons of Kemet. Sons of Kemet record in London, their music pulls from jazz forms including New Orleans brass band, hard bop, and Caribbean rhythms.  Sons of Kemet, which is on the venerable jazz label Impulse , is relentlessly creative performing with double drums, tuba and Shabaka Hutchings on the tenor saxophone. Their compositions are hypnotic, bringing together generations of jazz influences and voices that give them instant resonance. Sons of Kemet evoke the struggles and joyfulness with an almost spiritual reverence. The audience at Cherry Hill, another new stage for Pickathon, was ecstatic!  Near the end of their set they were joined on stage by Grammy award winning Portland artist, Ezperanza Spalding, who improvised vocals along with the four musicians.  It was one of those rare experiences that stood out in a weekend of transcendent performances.

Shabaka Hutchings of Sons of Kemet

There was a lot of speculation as to why Pickathon had changed it’s foot print so significantly since 2019.  The iconic shade structure that once provided protection from the August sun around the main stage was gone.  This stage, newly christened as the Paddock stage, was only called into service once the sun went down.  Those of us who have followed Pickathon can assume this change was in the wake of the 2019 accident.  Although it was also very apparent that Pendarvis farm’s geography had changed as new housing developments had begun to encroach around the venue.  Adjustments had been made to create a new parking area and entrance.  Seeing the bulldozers at work preparing a tract of land for development behind the performances on the Woods stage created a feeling of melancholy that was hard to shake. It made the weekend in the woods feel even more precious.

 

 


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