Headlining acts who will play at this year’s festival include Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Yo La Tengo, and Beach House, joined by first-alternate performers like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Dan Deacon, and Alvvays, among other notable acts.
Pickathon is perhaps unique among bigger-name music festivals in that each performer typically performs twice on two different stages, drawing crowds to smaller settings, and pushing audiences to see lesser-known bands.
An eco-friendly three-day music event which takes place on Pendarvis Farm in Oregon’s Happy Valley — about 45 minutes from Portland proper — Pickathon has long been renowned in the music world for it’s high-caliber, mostly lesser-known artists, typically highlighting rising stars from outside the billboard charts.
By not spending so much dough on massive artists, the festival aims to appeal to the harder-core of modern music aficionados, the small-but-vocal group of people who feverishly watch each new KEXP, Tiny Desk, or Daytrotter release.
This year’s lineup is an excellent representation of the festival’s creative booking efforts with newer, lesser-known favorites like Seattle’s La Luz, Fruit Bats, and Ezra Furman all scheduled to appear, along with many other bands that all but the most finger-on-the-pulse music fans will have yet to see live.
The other big draw to the fest is its small and family-friendly nature, themes that fly in the face of many of the nation’s larger, more drug-addled festival experiences. Even the event’s food and drink — which typically features a wide assortment of the area’s best food carts as well as craft beer, coffee, cider, and kombucha at non-gouging prices — sets Pickathon in a league of its own, albeit a very niche one.
This year’s Pickathon festival will take place from August 5-7, with tickets for the event already for sale on the company’s website.
