Nestled within the Cascade Mountains, smack dab in the middle of Washington, is a 1.25-square-mile Bavarian village called Leavenworth. A little slice of Christmas, Leavenworth is home to The Nutcracker Museum, several German-style pubs, and snow drifts not found in our ever-temperate city, as well as a Berkshire Hathaway, Wells Fargo, and McDonald’s disguised in ye-olde-style print.
On one side of the downtown, you’ll find Gustav’s Family Restaurant — where I ate what was supposed to be a burger but, in reality, was closer to moist, ground up packing peanuts. As you walk down the not-even-half-mile strip, you’ll find beer halls, one-of-a-kind shops, shops pretending to be one-of-a-kind, and a plethora of twinkling winter lights. While the food in Leavenworth leaves a lot to be desired — especially for Seattleites used to the high-quality noms available in the city — the festivity and incredible amounts of both cider and beer do a good job of filling the void.
At the opposite end of the strip of Gustav’s sits the Festhalle, a 1,400-person venue with wonderfully high ceilings and a stage large enough to support any band, including the 11 acts that performed at Timbrrr! Winter Music Festival on January 25th and 26th. The annual festival, now in its fifth installment, is the winter accompaniment to Timber! Music Festival (and don’t worry, the festival itself was filled with more marvelous puns: the signs above the bars said “timbeer”), held in Carnation, WA during the summer. Both festivals focus on highlighting PNW artists.
For Timbrrr!, the Festhalle was decorated with twinkling lights, a giant, inflatable snow globe, a somewhat-less-giant, still inflatable can of Rainier, two “timbeers,” and, most incredibly, a Caffe Vita coffee stand with free coffee. I’m not usually one to drink nitro at 6 p.m., but that didn’t stop me.
The festival took place over two nights, with five acts the first night and six the second (although the True Loves’s double set on Friday might count for two bands). Before the true inception of the festival on Saturday night, festival patrons could enjoy sledding (I went; I conquered; I fell, in that order) and a multitude of free acts at select locations in Leavenworth throughout the day.
As for the free acts, Ladies, who performed at Icicle Brewing, and Whitney Mongé, who performed at Munchen Haus, get a special mention. Ladies’s set was so packed that I had to listen from the floor below, and their harmonies still wormed their way into my heartstrings. I sat down for Mongé’s set with the intent to grab a cider and rest my feet before the night show began, and she was so intensely captivating, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Other daytime performers included Glass Heart String Choir, Young Chhaylee, Nick Foster, and Tekla Waterfield, who all played in front of packed houses.
Day 1:
Racoma kicked off the festival on Friday night, with a set of soothing, alt-rock tunes. Their set focused on a night of “new:” bassist Spencer Templeman joined the band for his first show with them, after learning all the songs in the three weeks prior to Timbrrr!, and the band also tested out some unreleased tracks that they’re planning to record. Mixed in with their old tunes, the additions melted into Racoma’s set. Even with the recent addition of Templeman, the band jived. Templeman, drummer Eliot Stone, and guitarist Sean Collopy kept the beat on track, and frontman Glenn Haider’s vocals were the glue that pulled everything together. His voice is as smooth and pure as butter scooped right from an angel’s bottom.
With their low-key but still confident stage presence, Racoma made for a wonderful opener. As the 1,123 patrons trickled onto the floor, Racoma grabbed attention without demanding it. They’re slick, they’re tight, and it’s hard to imagine anyone not liking this band. They’re not doing anything outside of the box, but the box is incredibly pleasant.
Then, Slang took the stage. Made up of Portland musicians Drew Grow, Janet Weiss, Anita Elliott, and Kathy Foster, it was obvious when they took the stage that this was going to be some kind of show. With Grow in the typical Portland hipster uniform of a jean jacket, beanie, and converse, Weiss in black behind the drums, Elliott wearing a brown dress and boots, and Foster attired in what I can only describe as business wear, they didn’t look like they belonged together, but they felt like they did. As soon as they started playing, the room felt bigger, like it needed to make room for them.
In keeping with the trend of newness, Timbrrr! Was only Slang’s fifth show together, which, frankly, is almost unbelievable. The tightness with which they played and the obvious comfort they had with each other on stage would envy bands in their fifth year. All four band members were incredibly skilled at their instruments, and it showed.
With Grow as frontman, the band has a cool, female-backed vibe. Foster, on the bass, and Elliott, on the guitar, both had a laid-back, easy-as-pie aura about them, and Weiss (of Sleater-Kinney fame) killed on the drums, especially when she brought out a harmonica. Behind not only a drum set but also a harmonica, it was hard to see Weiss, but the presence she brought to the music was palpable.
Grow himself was an impeccable frontman. He moved on stage in an incredibly natural way, with no premeditation about his movements; he was just feeling it. At times, he used his guitar almost as a prop, pushing it forward and pulling it back to the beat of the music. My literal only complaint about this band is that they live in Portland instead of Seattle.
In the vacuum that Slang left, up stepped Jenn Champion and crew, looking fresh out the skate park, wearing snapbacks and sneakers. Champion’s latest release, Single Rider, reached number 16 on KEXP’s Listener’s Top Albums of 2018 list, and she’s been getting a fair amount of buzz. However, the best way I can describe her live performance at Timbrrr! is less than stellar.
While Champion sounded fine, there were a lot of incredibly distracting elements to her show. Most prominently, her bandmates, MaryLeigh Roohan (who somehow managed to pull off a crop top and low rise jeans — kudos) and Andy Alseri, kept switching instruments throughout the set, with no clear motive. It’s great that you play more than one instrument and want to show that off, but when switching occurs between what seems like every single song, it becomes a detriment. The set list could have been much better parsed to make the transitions less abundant and more cohesive.
Champion was not on her game, either. The transitions between songs were extremely weak — instead of waiting for a song’s instrumentation to end, she would fall back and often turn around, away from the crowd when her vocal part was done, making the end of the tracks not only confusing but also unsatisfying. Throughout several tracks, Champion coordinated her movements with Roohan, but it just looked awkward, as Alseri was off in a dark corner by himself, and the movements also weren’t powerful in any way. There was one softer tune where the idea was that Champion would take the lead, and Roohan stood still with her head down until about midway through the song, when Roohan “awoke” and began snapping along with Champion. But, the “awaking” was lackadaisical at best, and, on top of that, I found myself watching Roohan instead of Champion during the first half of the song, anyway, wondering what she would do next.
If you weren’t watching the stage, though — or, if you were tripping — their set was decent. While Alseri mostly played a synth keyboard and Roohan rotated more or less between bass and guitar, there still seemed to be a decent amount of music in a backing track (like the drums). The whole audience was dancing along, and I found myself tapping my foot to the infectious dance beats. Yet, the set would have been more powerful had Champion come out alone and just done her thing, or even had she had a full band without a backing track. This in between ish just isn’t working.
In contrast, when Parisalexa walked on stage, she commanded attention. Paris started off her set by asking the crowd to cheer if they were from Seattle, then if they were from Oregon, and then if they were from neither of those two areas. After her survey, she thanked everyone for coming and made sure the crowd knew her name: Parisalexa. If there was ever a way to take advantage of playing a festival, this was it.
The young R&B songstress has been a force to be reckoned with in the local scene for the past year-plus, and, watching her live, it’s clear that’s because she’s putting in the work. Throughout her set, she controlled the crowd with finesse, getting them to sway their hands in the air only a few songs into her performance, and, later in the set, she beckoned her audience to come closer, and everyone immediately obliged. She chatted with the crowd between songs, emphasizing that she writes from a true place of artistry and that her songs serve to make everyone feel like the baddest bitch in the room.
Her set seemed slightly short, but that might have actually served as a boon to Parisalexa, because it left the crowd wanting more. Apart from her wonderfully confident stage presence, her vocal was also nearly flawless (the beginning of her set seemed a little run-heavy, but she did hit all the notes). While Paris’s rather expressionless eyes personally weird me out a little, that one fault is clearly made up for by her sheer talent, both in musicality and leadership.
The True Loves rounded out the first night of Timbrrr! 2019 with an hour-and-a-half-long double set. This instrumental soul band is well known in the local scene, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better set of established musicians. The band’s founding member is drummer David McGraw, but, at Timbrrr!, guitarist Jimmy James stole the show.
Playing a cherry-red six-string, James flitted his hands across the guitar in ways only available to a master. Not only did he play in the traditional way, but he once flipped his fretting hand around to the front side of the guitar, once moved his strumming hand up to the guitar’s neck, and once used his mouth instead of his strumming hand. And, during all of this, the faces he made were truly priceless; as talented as all the other musicians in the True Loves are, it was hard to watch anyone but James.
Other notable moments were the conga solo by percussionist Iván Galvez, an on point brass section made up of tenor sax player Gordon Brown and trombonist Greg Kramer — who looks like Haley Joel Osment’s long lost brother — and bassist Bryant Moore’s back-and-forth rapport with James.
About 45 minutes into their set, the True Loves brought out Seattle soul singer Tiffany Wilson for an Aretha Franklin tribute. Wearing all black, Wilson’s pure-white braids stood out on stage, and she looked phenomenally striking. While, at this point, the audience was waning, Wilson came out as if she was playing a sold-out Madison Square Garden. With the energy of a true headliner and a voice as powerful as lightning, she did Aretha proud.
Day 2:
After a day filled with sledding, terrible food, and good cider, Hyways was first to take the stage for night two of Timbrrr!. A self-described “cosmic country” group, they were perhaps an odd choice for a music festival focused on the PNW scene. Frontman Mike Giacolino, drummer Pat Schowe, steel guitar player Jay Kardong, and bassist Nils Petersen definitely have chops, but their performance seemed a little lost on the audience, especially with tracks like “The Line,” which is about the Mason-Dixon line. Nonetheless, the group was a solid early opener to the night.
When Tres Leches hit the stage, the energy really started flowing. The band, comprised of Alaia D’Alessandro, Zander Yates, and Ulises Mariscal, plays vivacious art-punk. It was hard not to notice D’Alessandro, wearing a red-leather jacket with giant fur-trimmed sleeves, rocking a guitar with effortless cool. Much like Slang the previous night, Tres Leches was the surprise of Saturday, masterfully captivating their audience with their honest musicianship.
The set started with D’Alessandro on guitar, Mariscal on drums, and Yates on vocals and bass, but, a few songs into their set, the group began to rotate through their instruments and the lead vocal lines. As opposed to the meandering feel of Jenn Champion’s set, Tres Leches switched things up purposefully and with confidence. Instead of seemingly random switches between songs, they switched only three or four times during the show, and each change created a new mini-set of different instrumentation within the larger picture. Yates joked with the crowd that they rotate because they all have short attention spans.
Whatever the reason, it worked. While my favorite set up was D’Alessandro on guitar, Yates on drums, and Mariscal on bass, each version created a new and different sound that filled out — instead of detracted from — the Tres Leches sound. While Yates and D’Alessandro both sang in English, when Mariscal took lead vocals, he threw in a few songs in Spanish that added a unique layer to the performance. Even though I’ve long since forgotten most of my high school Spanish class, I still felt like I understood what Mariscal was trying to portray through the emotion in his voice. As all three band members ran around on stage, the energy was as infectious as the plague.
Spirit Award was up next, and, man, those are some cool looking motherfuckers. When the three of them walk into a room, it’s hard to resist the urge to throw on some shades, put your feet up on a desk, and kick back, James Dean style. The band’s most recent release, Muted Crowd, is a 10-track journey into the world of cultism, and, given that a lot of the songs on the album sound incredibly similar — as is the point — I was interested to see how those tunes would translate into a live show.
Unfortunately, they really didn’t. Given Spirit Award’s aesthetic, you want to like them, but the sameness of their tracks makes for a somewhat bland live show. Frontman Daniel Lyon, bassist Chris Moore, and drummer Terence Ankeny are all exceptional musicians, but they’re also very into their own artistry, and that’s sometimes a barrier to the translation and transfer of energy required in a live performance. They often seem somewhat unreachable — again, a la James Dean — and that’s not what’s going to pull your audience in.
And then, Monsterwatch came on stage and gave what was, hands down, no questions asked, the performance of the festival. Frontman John Spinney is a fantastic ball of flashing, frenetic energy, and he’s backed up beautifully by drummer Jack Cornwell and bassist Ben Parker. Standing in the line at Timbeer, it became quickly apparent that I picked the exact wrong time to get a drink as Monsterwatch started their set.
While Spinney and Parker spun around on stage, Cornwell bounced up and down on his drummer’s throne, not missing a beat. The buoyancy was undeniable. Where Monsterwatch succeeds most, though, is in starting a set with energy at a nine and slowly cranking it up to 12 by the end of their set. Several songs in, Spinney ventured into the crowd with a mic stand and sang from the pit. After he returned to the stage, he came back into the audience for the following song — sans mic stand — and moved so vigorously that he landed, laying down, on the floor right in front of me.
About halfway through the set, Spinney grabbed the neck of his guitar and swung it behind his back, and the whole crowd held its breath in exhilarating anticipation of a guitar smash. As the moment dragged on, it became apparent that it was just a tease, and the music recommenced. The trio hyped up the energy, moving even more manically around the stage, for the second half of their set, until Spinney once again grabbed his guitar, and, this time, smashed it.
As he sent the main body of the guitar flying through the air, bits and piece falling off of it, it created a literal final arc to the performance that left the crowd cheering wildly as Monsterwatch exited the stage.
Following Monsterwatch was Kyle Craft, of Portland, OR, who plays rock ‘n’ roll music and looks like a cross between David Bowie and Mufasa. Craft came on stage with a full band of talented musicians, but, especially after the flamboyancy of Monsterwatch, Craft standing mostly in one place behind the mic, eyes closed throughout most of his set, just did not translate. The mix also seemed — as my partner described it — anemic. Nothing was fully fleshed out, and that left the audience unable to engage with the music.
However, Kyle Craft guitarist Jeremy Padot was a shining beacon of musicianship. He bounded across the stage, pounding out rhythms on his instrument and drinking directly from a bottle of wine.
The good news is that Kyle Craft and company are all clearly talented musicians, and the faults with this particular performance seemed more as if it was an off night than a true problem with their performing style. However, many of the songs chosen for the setlist did seem to lollygag together, and, at one point towards the end, I found myself pondering whether we’d already heard the song they were playing.
Closing out Timbrrr! 2019 was Oakland, CA group Shannon and the Clams. (I also found it slightly strange that a California group was chosen as the final headliner for a festival surrounding PNW bands, but, alas.) Timbrrr! emcee and KEXP DJ Troy Nelson introduced the band as one of the best he’s ever seen live, which, as the group started their set, I found to be a bit of an overstatement. However, as the night went on, I started to agree more and more with Nelson.
A rock doo-wop quartet, Shannon and the Clams had a unique way of slowly pulling you into their artistry. Their tunes — with namesake Shannon Shaw on bass and vocals, Cody Blanchard on guitar and vocals, Will Sprott on keys, and Nate Mahan behind the drum kit — are all vastly creative and different, such as when the chorus of one tune only consisted of a haunting, staccato set of “hoo” and “ha.” Shaw and Blanchard also switch off on lead vocals, which keeps things interesting. It was engrossing to wait and see what they would do next.
Wearing 60s-era garb — I was particularly fond of Sprott’s pink, plaid suit and teal, western-style bow tie — Shannon and the Clams’s set was akin to the best underwater sock hop in Bikini Bottom. Shaw’s bass skills were impeccable, and Mahan’s accents were some of the best I’ve ever heard. Shaw also stated several times throughout the show that she was suffering from a cold (at one point she asked Blanchard for help on the vocals by saying, “that’s the voice I want. I’m Ursula; you’re Ariel), but she used the rasp in her voice to her advantage, adding in a growly timbre. If this is how she performs sick, I’d be amazed to see what she does hale.
Because Timbrrr!, as opposed to other music festivals, takes place in only one room, the structure of performances is unique in that your ticket brings you access to every band, instead of having to pick and choose what you want to see. And, at $90 for a two-day pass, it’s also fairly affordable (but you do have to take the price of lodging into account). The weekend, overall, provided a few lovely nights in a twinkly wonderland. While the set list definitely could have been tweaked to provide more of a building line of energy each night, Timbrrr! is still a young festival, and it will be exciting to watch it grow.
Best performances(s): Monsterwatch hyped up the crowd like no other, and Parisalexa commanded the stage.
Best surprise(s): Slang and Tres Leches both brought the noise to their early sets.
Best non-music accommodation: Free coffee from Caffe Vita.
Best merch: The Timbrrr! onesie.
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