Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival has existed in Seattle since 1971 and has happened every Labor Day weekend with the exception of 2020-2022 due to Covid restrictions. I’ve been a Seattleite my entire life. I was born the weekend before the festival’s 8th anniversary, also its final year of being a free festival. I grew up attending Bumbershoot with friends and family many times over the years up until September 2, 2001, when I saw David Lee Roth perform at Memorial Stadium. Since then, Bumbershoot has changed hands management a few times, and based on my experience this past weekend, the new changes have been a net positive. Back in 2001, Bumbershoot was a four days long, often oversold, crowded, difficult-to-navigate, bloated event that involved wristbands one needed to collect at the beginning of each day to allow you access to the stadium to see each evening’s headliner in the stadium, which served as the Main Stage. I skipped many a year and many an act due to this ridiculous first come, first serve approach to seeing a headliner at a festival. To me, it defeated the entire purpose of what seeing a fest should be. After all, if buying a ticket didn’t allow you access to the main event, then why would anyone humor that flawed system?
Bumbershoot is in a far better state of affairs than during the years I chose to stop attending. The four days have been trimmed down to two, the stadium and arena have been removed as venues, the wristbands are for proof of admission, corporate sponsorship was practically invisible, and the attendance and navigation problems of the past were long gone. I wasn’t sure how I would end up approaching reviewing the fest, but when I arrived, I could instantly tell that the experience itself would be a lot different. My goal was to see music I was unfamiliar with and to catch a few bands I knew that I would enjoy with the intention of experiencing them with hearts and ears as open as possible. I am only one person, so I couldn’t see every act, but I caught as many as I could. If I missed a band you were looking forward to reading about, I apologize in advance. In the interest of trying to hear the world with fresh ears, sometimes a more well-known act would remain unseen for taking a chance at a new experience.
The festival performances take place on four separate stages: The Mural Amphitheater, The Fischer Pavilion Stage, the KEXP fountain stage, and the Vera Project stage, which was the most intimate stage and also happened to be the only indoor location to see music. There was a lot of trekking back and forth to be done, and sometimes, I’d only get to catch a little bit of someone before I was off to the next band or act that I was interested in.
The first group I got to see was a duo from Seattle named NAVVI. Vocalist Kristin Henry and producer Brad Boettgeer took the stage early, with relaxed, almost trip-hop-like beats they both played on their Native Instruments MASCHINE Groovebox Samplers. At times, they reminded me of the best parts of Massive Attack, Dead Can Dance, or an imagined 21st Century Eurythmics. Effortlessly perfect vocals, a comfortable, relaxed energy from their on-stage demeanor that was a pleasure to see. Seeing them perform just after one o’clock was practically jarring as this was a band that seemed like they would be perfect to see in a dark club full of smoke machines and moody lighting in a room with low ceilings at 1:00 am instead of this 1 PM slot. But every fest has the newer acts that get to work their way up to performances later on in the day as the years move on.
Automatic was my first real highlight of the fest; they impressed me quickly, and by the end, I was a fan. In the cracks between the stage rigging and the mosaic behind the stage, I watched an elevator on the Space Needle ascend to the top as lead singer Izzy Glaudini sang the chorus of their opening number, “Skyscraper:” “change if you want it, or stay the same, there’s no difference in the end.” As someone from a city now almost unrecognizable compared to the last time I experienced this fest, my emotions hit me just right, and an intangible feeling washed over me. Sometimes, you don’t get to hear the songs you need to hear until the universe wants you to hear them. When that happens, and it’s the first time hearing a band, it has a way of sticking to you. They won me over before the first song was over.
Automatic is a three-piece from LA comprised of Izzy Glaudini: Moog and Prophet synthesizers and vocals, Halle Saxon: Fender Jazz bass and vocals & Lola Dompe drums and vocals. My first impression was that they have badass solid drumming, which reminded me of early new wave and goth bands (I only found out while researching for this article that Dompe is the daughter of Bauhaus/Love & Rockets drummer Kevin Haskins). I compared their second song to somewhere between New Order and B-52’s. Lola’s vocals are powerful and commanding, while Izzy Glaudini’s vocals have more of a hypnotic and ethereal presence. It takes a real command of your instruments and a sense of melody and rhythm to keep a song minimalist and not overly busy with the structure with too many notes, and for large parts of their set, Izzy would sing over bass and drum grooves only to punctuate songs with a synth from time to time. At different moments I was reminded of Prince’s 1999 album with Lola being such a strong drummer that I had to remind myself she was playing an acoustic kit and was not in fact a drum machine. During their set, they played new unreleased material and announced it on the stage before playing it. In a world full of bands who would rather play a cover than test the waters with new material or play all the tested hits at a festival instead of playing a B-side, Automatic chooses to take chances. That’s not the act of a band who is unsure of themselves. They know who they are, they know what they’re doing, and they’re damn good at it. I am already looking forward to seeing them again. They might be my favorite set of live music I’ve seen in the last 10 years.
Back at the Mural Amphitheater, Helado Negro performed with a microphone in one hand, a drummer to his left, a multi-instrumentalist to his right, and a bounce in his step, and he shimmied and danced all about the large concrete stage. Something about this weekend that was different to me as an audience member was just how many acts had stripped-down versions of their bands on stage with them. It’s not a bad thing necessarily, I just hadn’t anticipated seeing so many bands play to pre-recorded tape and creatively find the best ways to make the couple of performers on the stage fill out their sounds. Is this a festival approach for bands that fly in for one gig, or is this a new phenomenon happening where performers more prone to creating their own music rely less on live musicians being on stage for their live performances? Helado chose an interesting array of songs and closed out his set with his 2019 single “Running.” While I was completely unfamiliar with him before this set, I look forward to listening to him more.
Jumping from stage to stage and seeing as many artists as possible means missing out on parts, and unfortunately, that meant missing most of Freddie Gibbs’s set. What I saw was the highest energy audience I had seen up until that point of the festival, which may or may not have coincided with the sun finally being low enough in the sky to provide ample shade for the audience. Freddy had the audience bouncing and dancing like no one else, and after ending his set with “Freddie Gory,” he left the stage and came back to play the only encore I witnessed all weekend. He kept the energy up, and the audience was thoroughly engaged throughout his final number. After his set as his stage setup was being broken down he came back out on stage with his small son in his arms to show him the audience as if to say ‘this is where dad works’. It was a very touching moment to see at a show.
Performing 17 songs from 7 separate releases, Pavement played a set that clocked in at just over an hour and dipped into every era of their career without feeling like they were playing anything but kick-ass sets. Malkmus came out swinging, joking around with the audience briefly before dropping straight into “Silence Kid,” the first song off of 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, surely the first Pavement song that many a Pavement fan in attendance ever heard and an excellent way to begin the show. As they worked their way through the set, Steve was in a great mood, joking around with the audience, atypically less serious and more cordial and funny, according to the fans in attendance around me. After switching guitars to his Guild SG just before “In the Mouth a Desert,” percussionist and backing vocalist Bob Nastanovich began to count off, and Malkmus chide him jokingly yelling “No! no! no! I’m not ready! New Guitar, new attitude.” before the entire band launched into the at times dirge’y abstraction of what a pop song can be. Drenched in distortion and feedback throughout their set, Pavement put on a show that most performers at a festival wouldn’t dare. Not just the hits, Pavement played long, drawn-out darker numbers like “The Hexx” before balancing things out. As the often spooky number from 1999’s Terror Twilight drew to a close, Bob exclaimed, “That was scary! That was a little scary. To which Steve responded, “Alright, this one is on the opposite side of the spectrum. You guys ready?” But Malkus doesn’t take a breath and starts “Shady Lane” all by his lonesome, leaving the rest of the band to catch up. Despite the song’s lyrics being sad and hauntingly beautiful subject material-wise, it is a more up-tempo, happier-sounding number than “The Hexx,” but it is hardly on the opposite end of the spectrum. That Malkmus, what a cut-up.
Throughout the show, Bob was all over the stage, screaming and pounding the tambourine like it had wronged him, grabbing the newcomer to the band (vocals, keys, and percussion) Rebecca Cole’s microphone a couple of times when he was too far away from his mic to hit his part. At one point, he was talking about a pickpocket on stage at the Pavement concert as if he was telling all of us in the audience some public service announcement. Guitarist Scott Kannberg provided textured and nuanced abstract and feedback-oriented guitar for large parts of the concert and, at one point, talked about spending time in the Seattle neighborhood Ballard on his birthday, which happened to be the day before the show.
My personal highlights included a long and dark ominous sounding In the “Mouth a Desert,” the bright sunny sounding “Shady Lane,” the B-side turned single “Harness Your Hopes” which I have to admit I’m only familiar with because my son, professional artist Oz Null animated a sequence to and “Gold Soundz” a song that without getting too deep into the weeds holds deep historical significance to me. Overall, Pavement put on an incredible show; it was a great way to end night one. It had by far the most elaborate and out-there lights of the entire weekend, lots of b-sides, and after getting a photo of the stage setlist, I discovered that they had to cut some songs from the already very Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain heavy set.
Silence Kid- Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Starlings in the Slipstream – Brighten the Corners
Summer Babe – Slanted and Enchanted
Kennel District – Wowee Zowee
Heckler Spray- Perfect Sound Forever EP
In the Mouth a Desert- Slanted and Enchanted
Zurich is Stained – Slanted and Enchanted
Grounded – Wowee Zowee
Trigger Cut – Slanted and Enchanted
The Hexx – Terror Twilight
Shady Lane – Brighten the Corners
Harness Your Hopes – Spit on a Stranger EP
Unfair – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Type Slowly – Brighten the Corners
Range Life – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Gold Soundz – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Here – Slanted and Enchanted
DAY TWO:
When I returned to Seattle Center Campus for day two, I headed back to the fashion district and into The Vera Project to see Acid Tongue. They were in the process of setting up when I arrived, and shortly after, they put on a high-energy set that was, at times, a little punky, a little garage rock with a neo-soul edge. Poppy around the edges, reminding me of The Cars in the best possible way, and then a second later, they could be leaning towards an early Van Halen sound. They are a local act that tours often, and I hope to see them many times in the coming months. Amazing vocals, guitars, bass, and some of my favorite drums of the weekend. This is a rock-solid band, and they’re killing it.
At the Fisher Pavilion stage, All Them Witches took the stage, and I had been looking forward to them. I had listened to a couple of their albums a few months back, and I was given an alt-rock impression by the little bit I heard. I knew I wanted to hear more so I stopped listening and saved my listening for their set. I was delighted to have my first impression proven immeasurably wrong. I arrived just in time for soundcheck as the Nashville, TN, rock band finished the line check. Opening with “3-5-7” from their 2017 release Sleeping Through the War, instantly I was reminded of Sabbath, early Mastodon, Soundgarden, and 90s Corrosion of Conformity. As lead singer and bass player Charles Michael Parks Jr. was churning out his driving, heavy 6/8 bass line, he sang “I am focused” over and over, as if a mantra for the band to hold onto while they did their best to produce the highest quality set they could. Part battle cry and part manifesto.
I want to call All Them Witches stoner rock, but they’re so much clearer and more precise than your average stoner rock band. To me, the average stoner band has this bad tendency of becoming a muddy wash of sound, and ATW keeps things separated sonically as a four-piece in a way that most modern stoner three-piece outfits can’t even pull off. This was all very, very clear. Their guitar player, Ben McLeod, is awesome; his phrasing and note separation are articulate. He makes it a point of articulating his notes in a very crisp, clean, and clear way, which he manages to do with a strong band behind him. There was no sign of that stoner rock fatigue that groups like Tool and Sleep often fall victim to. Strong songs steeped in mythology you can’t quite put your finger on, jumping time signatures, strong blues, and fusion-infused metal leads with powerful vocals make this band a force to be reconned with. Allan Van Cleave’s keys add the perfect texture to the mix, often harmonizing with McLeod. At times I did wish that the keys were a bit louder but I may have been missing the rigged complexity of his harmonic reach. While researching the band, I discovered that their drummer, Christian Powers, has only been with them for the last several months, and you would never guess that they had lost one of their founding members. He’s powerful and dynamic and adds to the overall sound in the way that a Bohnam or a Moon are integral parts of their respective band’s sounds.
About halfway through ATW’s set, they pulled off a full band segue from song to song, and McLeod transitioned from his custom Joe Knaggs SG-style Honga guitar to a Banker Flying V with a mirrored pick guard that was blinding in the afternoon sun. As he finished tuning and the rest of the band settled into the song’s intro, McLeod began to fingerpick a complicated, gorgeous, descending arpeggiated figure that made me wonder if he had switched guitars because it required an open-tuned set of strings. Not a lot of stoner rock bands are doing that these days. As a matter of fact is there are not a lot of bands doing that these days, period. Oftentimes, their songs broke into composition-oriented passages where time signatures switched without sounding too complicated or being just for the sake of playing something complicated.
This may have been my favorite band of the entire weekend out of all the musicians I wasn’t familiar with before attending. One of my highlights was that they played their spaciest, longest, most improvisational song of the set, “Diamond,” just as the clock struck 420 in the afternoon. I will see All Them Witches every time they come to town. Don’t sleep on this band. Join the coven.
3-5-7 – Sleeping Through the War
Enemy of My Enemy – Nothing as the Ideal
When God Comes Back – Lightning at the Door
Diamond – Self-Titled
1×1 – Live on the Internet
Fishbelly 86 Onions – Self-Titled
I saw Sonic Youth once when I was 16 years old at the fourth annual KNDD holiday concert, Deck the Hall Ball. To this day, almost 30 years later, it stands as one of the most wonderful concert experiences I’ve ever had. This was not Sonic Youth. This is Kim Gordon. The music that came from the stage is almost unquantifiable to describe. Several multi-instrumentalists graced the stage, including Kim herself, who played guitar instead of the bass that most people associate her with. Her almost monotone delivery of her stark and sardonic lyrics brought me a sense of ease as it compelled me not to want to miss a single word.
At times, the music seemed deeply hip-hop influenced with an accent on heavy groove, sampling, and scratch avant-garde guitars. There were Nine Inch Nails vibes filtered through Art of Noise sounding moments as the spoken word passages delivered in a flat, deliberate, impactful way would’ve made Lou Reed crack a smirk. Gordon is unbelievable, and I don’t know why I haven’t seen her every time she comes to town. She is iconic in her own right and an unbelievable performer. She knows exactly what she wants to express to the audience whenever she gets up on stage. When you see a genuine article stating what they want to say, it’s easy to be reminded that there are so many musicians that seem to be stuck flirting with an idea of what they want to say. Kim Gordon is the real deal, always has been, and always will be. I wish she had played for two hours.
As I get older, I have come to the conclusion that some bands I will just never crack. To me a band you don’t like, but feel like you should is like being told about a food you’ve never had and every ingredient listed makes you salivate, the more it’s described the more you want to taste it. But maybe it’s cooked the wrong way for your brain to let you taste it to be as delicious as the way other people do. I love most soft cheeses, but for my pallet, they’re The Polyphonic Brie and not the Gouda my brain desires, and my taste buds just aren’t responding. They’re like Pet Sounds, the band, and they might be your favorite band. If you haven’t given them a listen. They’re not bad, in fact they’re quite the opposite. I missed it, but I was told they covered Nirvana’s “Lithium” during their set, right under the Space Needle. I’d bet money that that made some people in attendance cry, and I would win that bet. Did you know that it would only take you 3 minutes to walk from where The Spree was playing their set to get to the location where Courtney Love reading Kurt’s suicide note was played over speakers during his Seattle memorial service? Or did you know that Polyphonic Spree’s alumni St Vincent played and sang “Lithium” with Nirvana when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, just like she did when she used to sing it when she was in The Polyphonic Spree?
I should like them. They’re a beautiful band making beautiful music. Pass the Gruyere.
I was taken aback by how unbelievably cool what he and his band could do with so little. I did not anticipate me coming out of this weekend as a James Blake fan. That’s what I’m learning about going into a festival with open ears. Leave your expectations at the gate.
The weekend’s final act was Marc Rebillet at the Mural Amphitheater, which is a short distance from the base of the Space Needle. You couldn’t ask for a better setting to see the final act of a Seattle music festival. About 5 minutes before Marc came to the stage, roadies were set up, and a moving screen saver of Marc’s head ping-ponged across the screen that covered the majority of the large mosaic mural that gives the Amphitheater its name. Suddenly, the stage went black, and Marc ran full tilt out to the edge of the concrete slab of a stage wearing only his underwear, screaming at the top of his lungs at the lip of the stage. He ran to another corner, screaming more, and then back to his DJ equipment.
Deep breathing started on the mic. Heavy reverb and digital delay gave the sense that the entire audience was taking deep breathes and exhaling along with him, then the breathing became a loop. Marc improvises his sets, but he doesn’t know 100% what he will do when he performs. That’s unusual for a DJ and Marc Rebbilet is certainly a distinctive kind of a DJ. Adding to the breathing loop he played some tabla like Indian percussion that’s stored into his his midi sampler, more hand percussion samples joined the tabla and the loop grew in intensity getting the groove going. He twisted a knob, and the loop he’d created sped up. It was almost danceable now, then he brought in hand claps, here we go, he picked up a physical shaker and created a loop with it into into his microphone, he brought in a simple bass figure and everyone started dancing. Marc drops the entire sample and screamed longer than someone should when they’ve just got the entire audience too dance but he knew what he’s doing and when his scream ended a totally different beat came in full tilt and the audience EXPLODED!
Marc is crafting something he’s created on the spot, and it is almost completely and totally improvisational. It’s high-quality and so engaging that it’s hard to fathom that someone would come out and create a beat on the spot. Most performers outside of jazz would never take that big of a risk. The improvisers have some kind of idea of what they’re gonna be doing during the course of their evening, and I imagine that that’s the case with Rebbilet, but I don’t know to what extent.
He started to get some chanting going, creating really specific beats and laughing like a madman maniacally. Then, lyrics entered the fray. He was yelling about running and saying that something terrible was about to happen and that you needed to take off running, at which point the video screen behind him that had pretty non-intrusive images on it took on the appearance of his laptop desktop; he opened up folders marked porn to where there are several other than folders, he clicked the one that reads ‘not human porn” he clicked and opened a file, a synthesizer joins the loop and a two story tall keyboard cat video appears on the screen behind him.
Marc’s popularity was driven up during the pandemic when he found an audience of people who could be captivated by sitting down and watching a 45-minute set at a time that maybe they wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. He could have ended up being a one-note DJ trudging through the same predictable rise and fall EDM sets that most DJs perform, but that’s not Ribbilet. He’s developed a unique persona, he takes massive chances and incorporates humor and weirdness into a musical landscape that all too often celebrates self seriousness and sound alike self stealing, with not much more to say than the pioneers whom they are parroting. To call him a breath of fresh air would be an understatement. He’s more rare than that.
When I attended Bumbershoot in 2001, just days before 9/11, and the last act I saw was David Lee Roth, he ended his encore with “Jump” just a couple of weeks before Clear Channel put it on its list of songs not to play on the radio after the Twin Towers fell. I had grown increasingly cynical and angry about how corporate the festival had been before all of that happened, and that was before AEG optioned it a few years back. The amount of booths selling Domino’s Pizza and Pepsi brand drinks was so invasive that it took forever to get from one stage to another, and I never thought they would, but they fixed that.
I was delighted to experience so many bands and artists that I was completely unfamiliar with, and I felt like a kid again buying a ticket to a show because the band had a cool name, where I’d leave unable to hear a certain frequency for the rest of my life and a new favorite band. If you had asked me three months ago if I’d ever go to a Bumbershoot Fest again, I would’ve told you definitively, “No.” I can hardly believe that what I just experienced was Bumbershoot. It is the best festival experience I’ve had in too long to address.
Hopefully, the lineup next year is good, but if I don’t recognize any of the acts on the list, that won’t stop me this time.
