This weekend I spent fifty-three hours on a farm, hugged by woods that echoed with Americana and roots music. I observed everything from alt-country starlets professing their fear of Westfalias to toddlers sprinting past my campsite conspiring to employ superpowers and epic nose-picking seminars; one common element throughout was a cool and collected slouch toward simpler times.
Foghorn Stringband and Weinland were the brave openers on Friday afternoon, and each serenaded the campers-to-be while they erected tents and hauled folding chairs and coolers from the parking lot into the site's maze of dusty trails and ferns.
Every band had something nice to say about the festival. Megafaun started the trend by sharing that just in the hour-and-a-half they’d been there, they could tell it was “the kind of place people want to come back to.” After that, they made a lot of owl hooting noises as a shout-out to their friends in Breathe Owl Breathe, and sang songs – including a Neil Young cover and another about the two brothers’ grandpa (whose signature is tattooed on their left arms).
With little more than a five minute break between sets, Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside briefly introduced themselves, complimented the crowd’s “cool new haircuts” and chewed up the next hour with hyper-enunciated, surf-rockabilly tinged country tunes dealing with controversial political issues such as sucking people up through a straw, taking off all their clothes, and putting them against walls “even if it was against the law.” Sallie Ford raised some thought-provoking questions during her set that kept me musing all night, like, “Baby won’t you be with me?” and “I’m going to the country, baby don’t you wanna go?” In turn, I asked myself, who knew a voice like that could explode from such a timid looking lady in cat glasses?
Back at the woods stage, the Cave Singers played a twilight-hour set in the environment I always imagine them playing – outdoors, framed by sticks and leaves and buffered by ambient forest sounds. As usual, they kept the excitement level at threshold with foot stomps and hand claps while lead vocalist Pete Quirk belted raspy stories into the mic, lacing them with harmonicas and maracas along the way.
Hoofing it back to the main stage I caught Dr. Dog charming hundreds of still-energized audience members with equal parts selections from albums Fate and Shame, Shame. They were very professional, being doctors and all, even when the power to the microphones malfunctioned – they plowed through song after song as if nothing had happened. Sadly, this was merely the beginning of a weekend long trend of electrical problems at Pickathon. But it hardly registered as an inconvenience with everyone so damn happy to be there. The second to last song was dedicated to bassist Toby Leaman’s wife, to whom he has been married to for five years. Said song was a crowd pleasing cover of David Bowie’s “Five Years.”
I hadn’t remembered my last Pickathon experience being so dirty, but that’s because then I didn’t participate in the Foghorn Stringband Square Dance. This took place at the Mt. View stage with about five hundred people swinging, cornering, do-si-do-ing, and hand clapping in a field of dry grass and dust. It must have been a sight for Bill Martin–Portland’s own professional square dance caller--who was absolutely slack-jawed by the giant plume of dust we all kicked up. My advice is to not take square dancing lessons after hastily finishing off a bottle of blush wine. And there we were, drunk, dirty, and dizzy – and it was only the first day.
The evening was transitioned from rowdy to magical when Maryland’s Cotton Jones lulled the late night crowd at the Starlight stage with a mellow mélange of xylophones and dueling male-female harmonies. It was the perfect before-bedtime set. I spent the rest of the night in and out of sleep – listening to the echoing sounds of campers singing and laughing around their campsites ‘til sunrise.
