Pickathon 2008 – Pendarvis Farm, near Portland, Oregon
We ended up at Pickathon at Mrs. Toad’s behest, would you believe. Yup, the woman who describes almost every band I listen to as ‘moaning minnies’ actually tracked down and booked tickets to this particular festival without so much as a single prompt from my good self. This all happened late last year, after my brother’s wedding. We’d been driving around America afterwards with a limited supply of CDs and the ones she loved the most consistently seemed to come from Portland. At the time it was The Shaky Hands and The Builders & the Butchers. Since then she’s discovered bands like Horsefeathers, the Cave Singers (apparently they’re actually from Seattle) and Alela Diane (again, signed to a Portland label – Holocene – but not actually from the Pacific Northwest). At the time we thought they were all Portland bands, so we booked our tickets and decided to spend a couple of weeks in this part of America, and see if we couldn’t get a bit closer to such an incredible music scene.
Leaving aside Portland itself for a bit – that’s for a later post – the whole festival was truly wonderful. The location was amazing, the bands were superb, the people were incredibly friendly, and we quite simply had an amazing time.
Perched up in the Oregon hills, the setting offered nothing so plain and simple as a campsite. Instead, you had to climb up into the woods and try your luck. We had decided to skip the Friday evening to see The Builders & the Butchers and Eef Barzelay play in Portland (and earn a monumental hangover in the process) so we had to go quite some way to find a suitable spot. The difficulty of finding somewhere to pitch the tent meant that people were spread thinly throughout the woods, with little clusters forming here and there, and none of the sea of identical tents that you see at larger festivals. It was quite magical actually, being perched up in the depths of the woods, and having to clamber down to the trail and walk for about ten minutes to get to the main festival area.
To add to the atmosphere, the Wood Stage was actually perched right up in the depths of the forest as well, creating a tiny amphitheatre surrounded by green, splashed with what dapples of sunlight had managed to actually find their way through the thick canopy. We missed performances by Sam Crain and by Bombadil in this unreal arena and I really regret having done so. But then, we did get to see the Builders & the Butchers. We did, however, catch the superb Langhorne Slim on Saturday afternoon, and we were both smitten – it was a great performance.
Generally we eschewed the main stage and its smaller neighbour, the Fir Meadows Stage, because they lacked a little for the friendly intimacy that seemed to be the beating heart of this festival. The gentle slope that banked towards the main stage, backed by towering cedars, made a gorgeous place to lie in the grass and relax though, and the view across the wooded valley was beautiful. The food was to be found there as well, and as well as finally presenting somewhere in America where the coffee isn’t thin, grey, flavourless dishwater, the edibles were excellent. There was Thai (I even ate a veggie and tofu (tofu!!) rice roll with a bit of sweet chili sauce and liked it so much I had more the next day), some fine calzones and, the pick of the bunch, a phenomenal Mexican stall. Mexican food in Britain has become something like curry – it is little more than generic brown sludge that doesn’t in the slightest resemble the cuisine from which it is descended. The quesadillas at this place were fucking brilliant, and we had loads of them!
The music at Pickathon is quite specific: American roots, be it blues, bluegrass or (new to me) jug. The more traditional of this stuff I can really do without, but the acts booked overlapped with more vaguely defined Americana such that there was almost always something on that I wanted to see. And when there wasn’t, well I may not put pure bluegrass on the stereo myself, but the sawing fiddles and exceptional guitar playing that delivered everything from joyous stomp-alongs to heartbreaking balladry gave the whole place a wonderful atmosphere. If you are just lying in the sun, reading a superficial but largely entertaining book, not really paying attention to anything, what would you rather hear in the background, a mediocre indie four-piece trotting out the same old shit, or some old-time goodness, full of genuine happiness, genuine heartbreak, and not a sniff of cloying celebrity aspiration in sight.
Generally we found ourselves gravitating towards the Galaxy Barn as the day drew to a close. The American’s frankly chidish attitude to alcohol (I am not blaming the organisers here, the state enforcers were sniffing around like randy mongrels so they had to be incredibly careful) was tedious, with only a couple of designated beering pens allocated, but it did mean one thing: you didn’t end the day absolutely wasted. This was a refreshing change for a couple of reasons: firstly, I was able to properly enjoy all the music I went to see, and secondly, finding our way back up to our tent in the middle of the woods was Blair Witch Projecty enough, without adding a bladder-full to the mix to make life even harder. It bloody hard to find a single tent in the middle of the woods in the pitch black with no more than the camera light on the back of your mobile phone to guide you. And then on the Sunday night some bastards moved their tent clear across the path, which made life even more confusing. My phone’s battery was fast disappearing when I was finally able to successfully locate Toad HQ and calm an increasingly fretful Mrs. Toad, who was increasingly certain that we would end up having to sleep rough in the middle of the forest.
The last night, before almost losing the tent, was spent sitting around the bonfire outside the Galaxy Barn, talking to random strangers about their work promoting blues music in Portland, their time spent living in Israel and Jordan, and random band members about how much they loved the festival. I’ve never been anywhere where so many of the musicians hung out (check out the new vocabulary – awesome!) until the end, mixing with punters and chatting and enjoying each other’s performances. We ended up chatting to members of Bombadil and Loch Lomond, given we knew them from the eariler interviews we’d conducted, and they. And at one point Shawn (or Sean) from Langhorne Slim came over to congratulate me on my excellent choice of attire (a Langhorne Slim t-shirt) and chat about things in general. If I have ever met a nicer bloke, I don’t remember it. He was so genuine and sincere and just, well, incredibly nice, that it really served to highlight what a special festival this really was.
All in all, thoughout our stay in the Pacific Northwest, the people we have met have been some of the most incredibly open, friendly and helpful people in my life. American friendliness can be irritatingly claustrophobic when it’s forced or learned by rote, as it often is. But here people just seemed so sincere, with their ‘have a great day’s and their interest in what you were doing and their eagerness to be helpful and to include you in what was going on, that it was impossible to be cynical. Even for me. The two most over-used phrases, by miles, in this part of the world are ‘hang out’ and ‘awesome’, but they are just so true. Instead of being superior and English about it, you end up wanting to just hang out with everyone and wishing you could say ‘awesome’ with such incredibly heartfelt sincerity.
Toad’s Pickathon pictures | Toad Vimeo page | Other Pickathon Features
The Cave Singers – New Monuments
Oz St. Fossils – Tryin’ to Get Home
Jolie Holland – Stubborn Beast
The Gourds – Dying of the Pines
I’m so incredibly jealous that you got to visit Portland and, at that, meet Langhorne Slim. I went to college about two hours north of Portland, and it became a frequent visiting spot because the drive between Washington and Oregon is wonderfully green, and because Portland is cheap, friendly and clean. So peaceful. Did you get to walk around and/or visit Powell’s Books?
I also hadn’t realized that those of us on the American west coast must sound like idiots to people who speak the Queen’s English – I’m so used to saying things like “hang out” and “awesome,” and it doesn’t sound painfully west coast until I realize how strange it looks written on your blog!
OK, going over to my blog and rewriting my last post right NOW… fine. Replacing all my “awesomes” with “brilliants” :p
Seriously, great to hear you’ve enjoyed our forest so much and our music too. You make the quaint old-fashioned tunes I was raised with sound “atmospheric” making me want to go dig up some bluegrass. Thanks for the tunes!
Wait, wait, the awesomes were a good thing! Don’t stop, where’s the fun in that?
I’m stoked that you had a wicked awesome time, dude.
Mrs. C&B has also developed a real taste for Langhorne Slim, so I hope to catch him live as soon as may be. The Builders and the Butchers are finally coming to DC in late September as well, so I’ve got my ticket and am …, well, … totally stoked I guess.
Langhorne Slim is a lovely, lovely chap. Mrs. Toad and I are complete converts. Not that we needed convincing, but it always adds something extra when you’re pulling for someone on a more personal level. The Builders & the Butchers were incredibly nice guys too. Ray (drummer) even has a line in Nintendo pop which is rather good. I’m trying to persuade him to share a little because it’s rather good actually.
Did you manage to catch the everybodyfields by any chance? I’m curious to know how they came across live.
Nope, ‘fraid not. They were always on when I was either watching someone else or doing interviews. Shame though, because I’d have liked to catch them.
I was lucky enough to catch Langhorne Slim supporting The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players at th Sherman in Cardiff back in 2005 & would love to see him again. So, yes, I’m jealous.
On another note, you may have noticed the absence of a certain Drunk Country Gent, well, he wanted me to pop by & let you know he’s knackered his laptop & is without internet connection at the mo. Lord only knows what he was doing with his laptop at the time, especially as he’s also mysteriously pulled a muscle in his back – best we don’t ask too many questions. Once he’s online again, I’m sure he’ll be popping in to post his usual verbose nonsense. Until then, relax & enjoy the silence.
Go Pacific Northwest!! Awesome.
BTW – check out the ginger beard dude in the piccie gallery. Its a winner for best ginger beard.
Yeah, yeah, great music, lovely people, verdant mountain forests, big-ass slugs (evidently, unless Mrs. Toad has truly microscopic feet), yadda yadda yadda. But you’ve said virtually nothing about the beer yet. Let’s cut to the chase here, people! Or will that be part of the Portland post?
Actually, from looking at your photos it appears that quite a few people with children were there, eh? Did people camp with kids, or were those just daytrippers? It looks like it was a fun place for kids actually.
It was good for kids – there was a daily eco bus to Portland and so people could stay at hotels if camping was a bit much. There was a special program to amuse kids and just about everybody had ankle biters in tow. They just ran around having a ball. on the rare occasion one was mislaid, they announced it on the main stage so they didn’t stay lost long.
but anyone going to stay in a hotel shouls stay at the trendy but cheap Ace hotel (turntable, vinyl and local art in rooms) versus a fuddy duddy place like the one we stayed in. The Ace was full. Boo Hiss.
The Ace sounds, well, ace. Camping with the kids would be good too though; they’re forever after me to camp in the confounded back yard. The slugs alone would be enough to attract my oldest. I just wonder whether there’s room in them there hills for a 4-person tent. It looks like you two were sort of perched on a hillside between a couple of trees?
Yes but at the base o the hill there were people in those sort of “house tents” the ones that have rooms in them with campbeds and stuff – with coolers, prep tables and barbies outside. We walked past a family that were happily perched in lawn chairs and making a huge stirfry and rice – in a rice cooker working off a car battery!
British style camping (like British style mountineering which involves hanging off temporary clips slotted in gaps in the rock instead of the precision bolted supports that other nations prefer) is designed to be a calvinist endurance attempt rather than enjoyable. The rules are that you must have a cramped tent, a sleeping bag that manages to be too sweaty whilst still too cold, a piss poor thin foam mattress that rolls up unless you lie on it dead centre and a bunsen burner with dehydrated steak and kidney pie cooked in a tin (unless you just eat beans and hot dogs out of a tin). You also have to forget one of the above or the tent pegs to round off the experience. Oh, and you need to camp in the pissing rain surrounded by midgies and ticks.
By the way, Langhorne Slim has a new Daytrotter Session out.
[...] This is the podcast to accompany all the Portland and Pickathon things I’ve been slowly but surely writing up over the course of the last couple of weeks. With all the video to edit it may take a while to get it all sorted, but just follow this Pickathon search and you’ll find it all. My full review of the festival is here. [...]
Fun to read your perspective. Loved the phone as a flashlight comment. We too had a grand and adventurous time at Pickathon camping. Being volunteers we had a special camping spot under the trees which provided more protection from rain and sun. Saw some families not prepared for a day of rain who jumped in their cars to buy tarps and such. Of course the rest of the weekend was grand. Met people from all over who traveled cross country, like the performers, to be there. We too had a blast meeting performers and actually hanging with them. Yes, Langhorne Slim (Sean Skolnik) is a gentlemen along with band mates, girl friend and road manager. We follow him around the west coast so he usually recognizes us and gives us the time of day. What an honor! All the acts were excellent and hard to catch them all. We found our selves with worn out and crumpled stages lists as you constantly are checking who’s playing next, where to go and performers highlighted so as not to miss. Can’t wait for next year!
Yeah, I wore the ink off mine pretty quickly!