Sorry for the delay in getting our Sasquatch! review up. Timothy Norris, one of our photographers, had his laptop stolen recently from Little Radio in LA. It contained all of his photos from Sasquatch as well as many others. If you have any information, please contact Little Radio. We will be adding more photos to our review soon, so check back in!
There’s something endearing about big furry creatures. Whether they go by the term Sasquatch, Wookie, Yeti, or Bigfoot, we like them all. For our third consecutive year, we headed up to The Gorge in the middle of Washington to sling cream at my favorite festival, Sasquatch. There are three main reasons why I like this festival so much:
1.The lineup is always top notch
2.It’s the most beautiful venue in the country
3.We have prime placement backstage and our whole crew gets to help sling cream.
When the official lineup was announced a couple months ago I was amazed that they could pack so many headlining bands onto a bill for a space that holds just over 20,000 people. The lineup for Saturday was my most anticipated of all summer. Somehow they got three of Coachella‘s top 5 headliners – Bjork, Arcade Fire, Manu Chao – to perform on Saturday in a venue that’s a third the size.
Every trip to Washington in Bessie is an adventure. This time around we shot north to Vancouver for
Virgin Festival the weekend before so the travel time the week before was greatly reduced. After picking up some Julie’s Organic Ice Cream in Seattle, we topped off the freezers with some other treats and a 150 pounds of dry ice (always best to error on the side of too much dry ice…just in case), Timothy and I hopped on I-90 and started heading east. The electronic warning signs above the road alerted us to a couple accidents ahead and sure enough, just past Snoqualmie Pass, we came to a dead stop. Normally traffic is quite the bummer but when you’ve got a truck full of ice cream it’s not so bad. We handed off bomb pops and stickers to passing cars and brightened some people’s day before traffic freed up and we found our way to Ellensburg.
I guess there are a lot of weekend warriors that head to Sasquatch. When we pulled into the campground and got situated, it seemed like everywhere around us there was a party going on. I didn’t think too much of it because I can usually sleep pretty sound once I pop some earplugs in. This wasn’t the case this time though because there was a techno dance party going on a few hundred feet away and sometime around four or five in the morning, a bunch of people decided it’d be fun to bang on the truck and scream ICE CREAM over and over again.
With very little sleep for the crew we made our way backstage to set up shop. As excited as I was for this day, I was very cautious not to hype it up too much so that I could only be let down. Once everything was dialed in, I grabbed some grub from my favorite caterer’s (aka, the one’s that feed us…thanks Irene) and headed out to have lunch with The Hold Steady. More people need to check them out. It’s straight ahead rock n’ roll, the way it should sound. Once back at the truck we fired up our stereo and blasted some tracks off Icky Thump, the new White Stripes album that comes out June 19th. Every once in a while I could hear music from the far stage and was a lil’ bummed I had to “work” and didn’t get to catch Lonely, Dear, The Slip, Two Gallants, Electrelane, Ghostland Observatory, or Grizzly Bear. After someone with the Beastie Boys dropped off a setlist for their Instrumental Show on the Wookie Stage I decided it was going to be necessary to catch the first few songs because “Gratitude” was going to be the second song they played and, with full band, it’s my favorite Beastie’s song.
Manu Chao is a huge international star. He’s played to 180,000 people in Mexico City and 150,000 in Cuba. And we were all lucky to have him on the main stage for Sasquatch. I came down the hill after the Beasties and started dancing to his high energy tunes. After a quick checkup at the truck I came back to jump around some more. He’s got a handful of more dates around the US so keep an eye out for him. He’ll also be at Bonnaroo, so don’t miss him if you’re in Tennessee.
Arcade Fire had been hanging around backstage all day and Knife, Gooch and Phil even got to play some basketball with them. It’d be hard to argue against Arcade Fire being the best live band in North America. Every time I’m lucky enough to catch them I’m amazed at how consistently high energy and engaging they are. The band seemed to have grown from their last tour by adding an organ, second string player, and I believe another multi-instrumentalist. I’m guessing this was so they could fill out live versions of songs from their latest album, Neon Bible. After a near two-year absence it was great to see them in action again. The new songs sounded just as good, if not better, live. I was surprised that the song I found myself dancing to the most was the Springsteen-esque “(Antichrist Television Blues)”.
Bjork was the final act on Saturday and Knife held down the truck for most of her set while the rest of us ran out to post up by the soundboard. Recently Bjork performed on Saturday Night Live and that performance made me want to see her even more. It was the perfect setting for my inauguration. With two guys on “electronics”, a drummer, a keyboardist, and a group of Icelandic backup singers/horn players, her songs came to life as she danced around the stage like a pixie hell bent on getting the audience fired up.
The highlight of the whole festival came after Bjork when Knife and I were cleaning up the truck to get prepped for Sunday. Todd came by and told us there was a dance party going on and that we should come over. Once we got all our chores done we walked over to a deck near the main dressing rooms with a box of Julie’s Organic Ice Cream. I handed out some treats to Bjork and the Icelandic singers then joined the dance party with Knife, Todd, Toby, Brantley, and a lot of the Arcade Fire cats. I just plastered a smile on my face as I grooved along in amazement, wow.. life is great.
Sunday was a bit more chill….literally. There were plenty of bands I wanted to see, just not as many as Saturday. Things got off to a great start thanks to Caffe Fiore Coffee making scrumptious coffee drinks for everyone backstage. Michael Franti stopped by with his son and told him that, for once in his life, he was welcome to as much ice cream as he could eat. I’m guessing by the end of the day he probably consumed at least 8 treats, if not more. Once we knew he was properly jacked up on sugar we thought it’d be a good idea to give him and his friend squirt guns. Which means we had to bust some open to defend ourselves.
One of the highlights of Sunday was seeing Bad Brains. HR came by the truck earlier in the day for a Banana Fruitiki bar and then about an hour later I ran out to the front, just behind the pit, and jumped around to “Sailin’ On.” I love rocking out to bands that I never thought I’d get a chance to see. Other highlights were hanging out with Money Mark, hanging out with Patrick Wolf and his band, and giving Smoosh some ice cream and buttons.
The only downside to the Gorge is the weather. When it’s nice out, there’s no better place to see a large show. When the weather decides not to cooperate, everything can go downhill quick. Last year it hailed during Neko Case’s set and this year the winds picked up and were so strong that The Polyphonic Spree had to exit the main stage after three songs. Eventually they got things back up and running but, because of the downtime, Michael Franti volunteered to give up his main stage slot and moved to the Wookie stage for a set that reportedly went on for hours.
On Monday morning I woke up with a horrible kink in my neck which made it hard to do much. We loaded up Bessita with a bunch of treats in custom White Stripes ice cream boxes and sent her down to road to sling cream to people on their way west. I loaded up Bessie, bid farewell to the crew and headed east. I was able to stop and dish out some treats on my way to Missoula where I setup shop for the next few days.
Thanks to Levi’s, Guitar Center, Warner Bros, White Stripes and Julie’s Organic Ice Cream for making everything possible. Thanks also to all the Ice Cream Crew who showed up to help us give away over 1500 treats.
Check out our past Sasquatch! reviews:
