Standing in the grass at six p.m. on Saturday in Tolt MacDonald Park, two and a half days into Timber! Music Festival 2019, I still kept waiting to feel something. The past two days had been filled with a host of talented musicians, but, preoccupied with my worries about getting sunburned (I did), not drinking enough water (I didn’t), and how to be able to eat any kind of vegetables at a camping festival (still unclear), I was hungry for an act to come out on stage and transport me to a place where it didn’t matter how hot the sun was or how much I wanted a popsicle or how many children there were putting their ears right up to the speakers and running wildly around me. I was waiting for someone to put on a performance that not only captured me during the set but left me on a high afterwards, fundamentally changing my attitude in the way only music can.
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Timber! Music Festival is a family-friendly, three-day, four-night camping festival in Carnation, WA, about 30 minutes east of Redmond. One of the many events organized by Artist Home, the festival, although three days long and fairly filled with people, has a uniquely curated homey feel. While there were two stages — Main and Campfire — each was used in isolation, with no overlapping acts. The sole performances kept the entire audience of Timber! together, from parents with babies to teenage girls trying to get away from their parents to your really drunk aunt.
Thursday night, hosted solely on the Campfire stage — a smaller, more intimate venue in a corner of the woods with strings of lights twinkling overhead — kicked off with Portland singer-songwriter Jacob Miller. As festival-goers started to trickle in, Miller wooed the crowd with his jazz and ragtime-inspired, soft, soulful tunes.
After Miller came Hillstomp, a sort of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink blues rock duo out of Portland. One of the most engaging performances throughout the entire festival, festival organizer Kevin Sur introduced the band as the most requested by fans for the lineup in Timber!’s seven-year history.
Given Hillstomps gritty, dive-bar-performance vibe, it was a little odd to see them as the second slot on opening day — vocalist and string player Henry Hill Kammerer dubbed their music “situationally inappropriate” as toddlers bopped their heads to tracks with titles like “Lay Down Satan” and “Cardiac Arrest in D” — but, nonetheless, Kammerer and percussionist John Johnson made it rampantly apparent why so many fans wanted to see them.
With Kammerer rotating through playing guitar, banjo, and tambourine, and Johnson using an upside down paint bucket as his main instrument, spoons and backwards maracas as drum sticks, the standard kick drum, toms, and cymbals, as well as a washboard and, at one point, a guitar (while still playing his kick drum), Hillstomp managed to create a 10-piece sound with two humans. It was pure, fresh, and fun, and I could have watched them all night.
The night oscillated back to Portland singer-songwriter Anna Tivel next, her dreamy lyrics and swaying lilt creating a pocket of intimacy and dark innocence, before jiving back up for Dirty Revival. Much more of the Hillstomp variety, Dirty Revival is a seven-piece soul band out of Portland, led by lead vocalist Sarah Clarke. Extraordinarily soulful, Clarke led the “boys” in her band through a vibrant performance that had the crowd dancing throughout the entire set, including a seven or eight-year-old girl in a pink dress who fearlessly grooved by herself after her dad sat down.
The penultimate performance of the night came from Haley Heynderickx, a Portland folk artist. Wearing a true flower crown made from festival dandelions, Heynderickx’s easy-going attitude made her set feel like a cozy fall evening sitting in your best friend’s living room. In Heynderickx, Kimya Dawson’s sound meets the style of Bad Bad Hats.
Chummily chatting with the audience between songs, Heynderickx imparted the crowd with lovely nuggets of wisdom such as “love works; Tinder works” and impeccable dad jokes like “how do billboards talk to each other? In sign language” that really made her set feel tangible in the same way your middle school relationships are — even though you don’t really know that person anymore, you’ll always share one distinct moment in time.
Seattle staple electronic artist Chong the Nomad closed Thursday night after a heartfelt introduction from Sur, who described her as one of his favorite composers in Seattle. Having never seen her live, I was excited for the opportunity, as the city always seems abuzz with her name.
From the second she stepped on stage, Chong was captivating. Truly a performer, Chong took control and dominated the stage with her incredibly infectious happiness and tumultuously authentic dance moves. What made Chong’s set so memorable, though, was that she genuinely seemed to be having fun, and that feeling emanated throughout the entire audience as we got up, moved closer to the stage, and started to bounce our booties.
While Day 1 had a much heavier focus on Portland artists, Friday brought more of the Seattle scene (besides Kelly Finnegan & The Atonements, a soul outfit out of LA who put on an incredibly professional, straight-out-the-50s show with help from horn players of the True Loves).
Indie-pop group Kilcid Band opened the day with their happy, doo-wop style and matching, marching-band-esque, bright-red pantsuits. Spesh got shoegaze-y. Seattle’s Tribute to The Last Waltz, as usual, brought a host of local guest musicians — including Kim West and Ryan Devlin of Smokey Brights, Pete Jordan of Cloud Person, and RX — and tore the house down with their camaraderie and pure musicianship. Mark Lanegan and The Passenger String Quartet closed the day on the Campfire stage with beautifully haunting melodies and a presence rooted in sentiment.
Standouts from the day, though, were second act Stephanie Anne Johnson and The Hidogs and fifth act, indie-pop project Hibou. Johnson, a Tacoma singer-songwriter made famous from her time on The Voice, has a quality about her voice that pierces through your flesh and gently encapsulates your heart in electric waves of rolling sound. Mimicking Johnson, pedal steel guitar player Dan Tyack played his instrument masterfully, casting a reminiscence of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in my head.
A master of her style, my favorite moment of Johnson’s set was her mashup of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” with Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow.” Floating along on her voice, I found myself thrust all of a sudden into a magical world where acoustic soul, indie rock, and rap met to create a whole new sound.
Hibou, the indie-pop project of Peter Michel, was the first act of the day to really invite us into their show. With a crew of live musicians rampant in the scene — guitarist Kurt Roy (of Sea Salt), drummer Jase Mitchell, and bassist Heather Dickson (of Tiger Rider) — Michel curated a set that physically made the audience lean into the performance.
The group was so well matched, had Michel not said that it was Dickson’s first show with the band, it would have been impossible to tell. While Michel held down center stage, Roy and Dickson bounced — but didn’t bop — around the stage, shifting back and forth on either side of Michel in a sort of slow-motion, organic stutter step, with added twirls for flair. As the set went on, the songs got grungier, and the entire group’s motion amped up to match.
The focus of their set, though, was Roy’s potentially-non-existent grandma, who started off the set on her 102nd birthday and ended somewhere north of 110. While I’m not sure if this blue-haired wonder was actually in the audience or not, Roy’s grandmother became a symbol for Hibou’s entire set: fun, loving, wholesomely nourishing, and extremely full of life.
Huey and The Inflowentials also played Friday, and, while their performance didn’t quite grab me, these kids get a special shout out for putting in the work. Since becoming a Sound Off! 2019 finalist back in February, I’ve seen Huey all over the place. Their songwriting can be slightly repetitive and the band could be tighter, but Huey and The Inflowentials is the quintessential definition of an up-and-coming band. They’re not quite there yet, but, if they keep doing what they’re doing, I think we’re going to see big things from them.
If not, I’d be down for a late-night, jazz-themed radio segment hosted by the whole crew. These cats know their stuff and have the disc-jockey voices to match.
Saturday, the final day, opened at 1:20 p.m. with Portland instrumental psych-rock trio Máscaras. Chris Acker and The Growing Boys came next, a country band based out of New Orleans (but Acker is originally from Seattle). Their set was filled with fun banter, unmistakable honesty, incredibly heartfelt and visceral, yet simple lyrics, and silly gimmicks like the “splash zone,” where Acker offered to pour water on too-hot, volunteer audience members. At the end of the set, Acker grabbed a drum stick, stood it up on his mic stand, and had the whole audience yell “timber!” as he let go.
Baja Boy, another Sound Off! 2019 finalist, played next. In Baja Boy, frontman Christian Taylor has brought together a host of his musical friends to create a bedroom-pop modern sound with 60s-inspired bass grooves, all played by kids under 21. Taylor, bassist/saxophonist Brook Austin Jones, and drummer Aidan Spiro all put on a wonderfully tight, emotive performance, but my heart was stolen by keyboardist Croix Stone. Wearing shorts from the Timber! store, eyebrows scrunched, head swaying to the beat, mouthing the lyrics, Stone was in his own world I desperately wanted to be invited to.
Next up, Sleeping Lessons put on one of the best performances of the festival. Frontman Charlie Deane, drummer Dan Moretti, guitarist Paul Kowalczyk, and bassist Terence Bonsey threw down their “dreampop ’til you drop.” Bonsey, especially, looked a lovable, genius madman, cascading about the stage with his fire-engine-red electric bass, waist-length hair thrashing uncontrollably. Indescribably fun, with an indie-pop sound and a punk performance style, this is a band to see live.
Portland’s Summer Cannibals put on an intensely rocking show, with immense amounts of hair throwing and hip thrusting. LA’s Oh Sees threw down the loudest set of the festival, with guitar fuzz ringing out clear across the grassy field.
Later that night, after heading across the wobbly suspension bridge to the Campfire stage, Kuinka took the stage. Lead vocalist Miranda Zickler, cellist Jillian Walker, lead guitarist Zach Hamer, and mandolin player Nathan Hamer make up this Seattle indie-pop quartet that focuses on a revolving sound based around revolving instrumentation.
After advertising their biodegradable download cards that contain wildflower seeds, so once you’re done with the download you can plant a little garden, the four-piece proceeded to put on an incredibly vibrant set, filled with brilliant harmonies, flawless instrumentation, and punchy dancing that, according to the band, served as their cardio for the day.
Performing in the forest under a string of lights, Kuinka embodied our entire little PNW corner — rootsy, bluesy, authentic, vulnerable, filled with trees, and just waiting to be heard.
The closer of Timber! 2019 Was Filthy FemCorps, a Seattle marching band made up of women, female-identifying, and non-binary musicians who play songs made famous by female musicians. The second the Corps started walking up to the stage, instruments blaring, the crowd stood up and grew thick, quite literally coming together. As Filthy FemCorps touted their mission of inclusion and blasted out hits like No Doubt’s “Just A Girl,” the audience rallied around them, drinking in their pure joy and celebration.
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All Star Opera (ASO) is a six-piece hip-hop outfit dominating the local scene. Between their intensely colorful aesthetic, emblematic six-fingered hand logo, and their constant presence in the scene through their annual “Seattle World Tour” across the city and general community involvement (this year’s tour doubled as a benefit drive for clothing donations to Mary’s Place), you’d have to be living under a fairly decently sized rock not to notice this group of musicians.
Emcees Sam “Oz” Osborn and Carter Gyasi “Flow Carter” Gilbert-Bass, guitarist Will Greenberg, keyboardist Seth McDonald, drummer Tylee Toyoda, and bassist Keith Gledhill make up the Seattle sextet. It’s mesmerizing to watch these guys float across the stage. As Greenberg, McDonald, and Gledhill hold down stage right and left, respectively, Gilbert-Bass — who also plays trumpet in the band — and Osborn pour themselves into their bars. Osborn, especially, is a sight to see as he meanders purposefully around the stage, seemingly in a mushroom-like-trance where the world is just a ball of color for him to grab.
But, the whole experience of ASO is much like a mushroom trip: strings of colors float through softly guiding instrumentals, pulling the listener along for the ride.
Part of the reason ASO’s music is so incredibly osmosive, though, is because of its lyrical emphasis on today’s society. Their tracks run the gamut from fun love songs to deeply personal anthems to political commentary, and it all feels undeniably real. Watching all six band members, as well as guest vocalist Elia Ezker and guest cellist Natalie Mai Hall, you could practically see the love flowing between them, tangible and palpable as the grass under my feet.
So, standing in the grass at six p.m. on Saturday in Tolt MacDonald Park, I realized what I was waiting for was All Star Opera.
In today’s political climate, it’s too easy to see the differences. It’s too easy to get lost, to waste hours, days, weeks on trash talking the other side, to spiral down into negativity and segmentation.
Looking around during ASO’s set at the 20-somethings rolling their own cigarettes and dancing around with caution tape fraternizing on the dance floor next to parents with small children and bouncing babies, back to the stage, where an immensely eclectic group of humans came together to spread love, I suddenly felt America. I felt the differences, the weirdness, the ragtag-ness, the confusion, the anxiety — all of it — and the pocket of goodness that exists underneath it all, fighting to stay alive in a world of separation.
This feeling stayed with me throughout the rest of the festival — especially watching Kuinka and Filthy FemCorps roll through such honest, vulnerable performances — and I started to look back on the previous two-and-a-half days with a whole new fondness. Every hiccup and oddity (like shuffling an entire campground of people across a wooden suspension bridge at 11 p.m. [which actually turned out to be a super fun, almost amusement-park-like excursion]), was a treasure, just waiting to come out to play.
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