Sasquatch! Festival Preview

The Paste Summer Festival Preview 2007

May 26-27 George, Wash.
SasquatchFestival.com
Selected Acts: Björk, Arcade fire, The Hold Steady, Neko Case, Beastie Boys
Landscape Architecture: The festival is held at the Gorge Amphitheatre, a nine-time winner of Pollstar's Best Outdoor Music Venue award.
Fun Fact: Comedienne/actress Sarah Silverman will host both days of the festival.

One of the challenges for any festival is to transform a field or a park into a world of wonder; but no forest of lights, art instillations or wandering masqueraders will ever inspire the awe of the Columbia River Gorge that serves as the backdrop for Sasquatch. Most of the revelers (limited by the venue to about 22,000—a mere quarter of some of its brethren) pitch a tent, and make the fest a two-day home.

Much like Bonnaroo, Sasquatch! launched in 2002 squarely on the hemp-clothed backs of the jam community and their surf-folk cousins, with first-year performances from String Cheese Incident, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson and Galactic. But by the next year, headliners like Coldplay, Modest Mouse, The flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie quickly morphed Sasquatch! into the indie-rock celebration it is today.
-Josh Jackson

Spotlight: Jesse Sykes
LIKE, LOVE, LUST AND MIC WRESTLING
That Jesse Sykes and guitarist/bandmate Phil Wandscher have musical chemistry is obvious from listening to any of their three, masterfully moody records. But what isn’t obvious until we begin chatting is that the partnership extends beyond music—Wandscher rolls his eyes as Sykes talks, Sykes elbows Wandscher when she thinks he’s saying the wrong things. With one mic between them, an intermittent game of Keep Away ensues. Either these two are a couple or they need to stop living in denial.

“He was reluctant to get involved musically when we first started going out,” Sykes says, laughing. “[He said] ‘I don’t want to be in a band with my girlfriend.’ But I think it’s always inevitable when two musicians live together—you’re in the living room messing with something and he goes, ‘Oh that’s really cool.’ The first record [2002’s Reckless Burning] happened just because we were spending time together.”

Perhaps inevitably, this sort of relational dynamic is what the band’s more adventurous latest—Like, Love, Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul—is all about, stemming from an encounter with a colorful, fiftysomething ‘biker-type’ couple in Reno, Nev. “I noticed he had three script tattoos on his wrist—three Ls. And I said, ‘What does that mean?’ And he said, ‘Like, love, lust, baby—it’s all you really need.’ And he pointed to his wife. Before he even said that I could tell there was this amazing amount of love between these two people.”

The second part of the record’s title, “The Open Halls Of Soul,” is also the conclusion, a country-gospel song about “celebrating your own demise” as Sykes puts it. “I just wanted to combine them all because it just told this amazing story—the complexity of love and the vastness of it all.”

Vast complexity? I’m sure this happily sparring, musically creative couple knows nothing about that. Sasquatch (5/27)
-Reid Davis

Spotlight: Viva Voce
HOME SWEET STUDIO
Portland psychedelic rockers Kevin and Anita Robinson, aka Viva Voce, make all their records at home. It’s fitting that their laid-back, organic jams would come straight out of the environment in which they were written. “There are cables running from the bedroom to the spare room to the bathroom to the living room to the kitchen, and amps in the basement and outside,” says Kevin. “Pretty much our whole house is sacrificed.” But hopefully not for long—he says they’re in the process of building a studio in the backyard “so we can have that separation of business in the yard and home life in the house.”

While there’s certainly tension that comes along with being in a band with your significant other, the Robinsons wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’ve been in bands with other dudes,” says Kevin. “And it wasn’t this cool or this fun.” Sasquatch (5/26)
-Kate Kiefer