A Howling In The Woods: Pickathon 2014 in Photos

Pickthon Music Festival
Pendarvis Farm
Happy Valley, OR
August 1 – 3, 2014

The Pickathon independent music festival is held annually on an 80-acre organic farm located approximately 20 minutes outside of Portland, Oregon. Founder Zale Schoenborn started the festival 16 years ago as a small local event with only a few acts on the bill, but it consistently grew beyond his initial expectations and the decision was eventually made to transfer it to its current location, back in 2006. The Pendarvis family, who owns the property, and Zale turned out to be kindred spirits, and their partnership has gone on to yield what I easily consider to be the greatest music festival that I’ve ever had the opportunity to experience. There are a lot of reasons that make Pickathon so amazing, from their reduction of waste by eliminating single-use items, the child friendly atmosphere, and on-site camping among the firs, to the lineup, the fact that most acts perform more than once over the weekend (this helps to minimize scheduling conflicts), the one-of-a kind stages, and the incredibly intimate environment (ticket sales are restricted to 3,500 to reduce crowd density). But whether it’s simply a combination of all of these factors, or an additional element that’s just out of reach, there’s something that’s both intangible, yet very real, which is difficult to describe and makes the experience unlike any other.

Earlier this month, I returned to the Pendarvis Farm for my second consecutive Pickathon, covering it for Ghettoblaster Magazine again, just like I did last year. I’m not going to go into any real specifics about my experience; if you want to read a detailed breakdown of the events and my glamorous rustic exploits, you can simply head over to Ghettoblaster to read about that there. What I am posting, however, is an extensive photoset of the festival, conveniently divided into separate galleries for each of the 3 days, below. Among this year’s performers were X (doing an acoustic set), Parquet Courts, Mac DeMarco, Warpaint, Mikal Cronin, Angel Olsen, The War On Drugs, Woods, and a number of others.

So… what say yooz guyz take a scroll through the digital images that I collected, which present a microscopic–yet, no doubt, essential–portion of these performers’ souls, captured by siphoning the sacred residue of their auras into my futuristic picture box? Eh? Go ahead, folks… go ahead and give ’em a looksie. Point yer eyes at these.