Phil Lesh & the Terrapin Family Band will be doing a deep dive double set for three hours to close out Friday night on the Woods Stage. Nathaniel Rateliff is bringing his full band The Night Sweats for a set of recent material Saturday and then closing out Sunday with a whole other band of friends to play acoustic roots versions of his earliest material!
Pickathon carefully curates each set at the festival, and they design the stages to have a kind of larger narrative and magical heft. That heft pushes artists to great creative heights. I've seen it myself at the festival and talking to the founders, I started to understand their larger vision, which is pretty groundbreaking in terms of the festival world. They'll expend any effort, and push beyond the possible just to get the kind of performance that can change you. Sounds like hype, but I've been there and been changed, plus I can tell you that things get pretty wild on Pickathon stages!
It's a big schedule and a big lineup, but I picked out a few things that got me really excited:
-Turkish psych rockers Altin Gün and Houston experimentalists Khruangbin on the main Mt Hood stage, ringed with a living garden
-NW doom metal heroes YOB opening for Nathaniel Rateliff's acoustic band on the Woods Stage, which is made of branches and nestled deep in the woods
-Mississippi hill country bluesman Cedric Burnside burning up Pickathon's roadhouse, the Galaxy Barn
-folk supergroup Bonny Light Horseman (Anais Mitchell + Eric of Fruit Bats) amidst the award-winning architecture of the Treeline Stage
-late night space-outs in the neon drenched goodness of the Starlight Stage with futurist jazz leader Makaya McCraven and N. African guitar god Mdou Moctar
-in-depth interviews on the Lucky Barn stage with Nashville's Lambchop and Portland's own Laura Veirs
