Skip to main contentDue to congenital antipathies toward mandals, public bowel evacuation and unleashed children, I do not attend many outdoor music festivals. Pictures of Coachella crowds make me queasy. You say âBonnarooâ and I think skin cancer, Dave Matthews-brand giardia and mist tents spiked with patchouli-scented pesticides that temporarily transmute oneâs brain into a Ben Harper-loving sponge.
This is not to mention the way an all-day affair enlists the sun in a nefarious scheme to burn all distinguishing features from bands and fans alike, until all that is left is a sea of identical red faces swaying in time to the sonic equivalent of a ten-dollar hot dog while a hundred more identical red faces wait in line for an actual ten-dollar hot dog that tastes like Primus sounds.
Understand, then, that this admission chagrins me: I am in love with a music festival.
The blessed thing that has me so spun? Doe Bay Fest, which last weekend celebrated four years of transforming one tiny corner of Washingtonâs Orcas Island into a Subarutopia of good vibes soundtracked by a clutch of mostly Northwestern acts, with a heavy emphasis on the folky, country-ish end of the âindieâ spectrum.
I'd heard nary a whisper about Doe Bay Fest until a few months ago, just before tickets went on sale for this year's festival, which turned Doe Bay Resort's thirty acres into a temporary small town of just over 1,000 musicians, fans and volunteers, most of whom camped in tent cities plopped onto various fields and slotted into myriad copses throughout the edenic site.
Below you will find excerpts from a sketchy diary documenting 72 hours in what might be my favorite place in the world. Tickets for this year's festival sold out in three minutes, so please forget you ever read this--I want to go back next year. I need to go back next year.
One of the many tent cities:
THURSDAY
4 pm-9 pm
Music starts at noon on Friday. Today is all about travel: too many hours on I-5; making the ferry with mere minutes to spare; sneaking nips of bourbon as Anacortes recedes into a blue haze; and finally docking at Orcas and hopping a shuttle to Doe Bay, where hundreds of people are busy setting up camp and chasing various buzzes.
10 pm
One pair of eager lads cannot wait until tomorrow, so they take it upon themselves to bless the bluff overlooking the bay with cover songs. A small crowd gathers around them and turns "Back in the USSR" and "Tiny Dancer" into campfire anthems. Only minus the campfire. And, for the most part, talent. But there is just enough joy in the outpouring to make it all work, even though Beatles covers are right up there with Republican tongue on the list of heinous shit I never want anywhere near my ear. I do not come close to "grooving" on this spontaneous eruption of Beatlemania, but I don't exactly run screaming either. I sit there. I listen. I watch moonlight dance on the water. The island is already changing me.
FRIDAY
Sean Flinn and the Royal We:
12 pm
Pique at the mewling infant who kept me awake into the wee hours dissipates with the fog as Portland's Sean Flinn and the Royal We officially get the festival going with a quiet set on the Otter Cove Stage, which is not, in fact, a stage, but a rise upon which a few amps, a few bodies and a drum kit just barely fit. Before said fog finally clears, Flinn quips: "We've never played in a cloud before." He seems pleased to finally be playing in one.
1:30 pm
How you know you are attending an event overseen by exceedingly sweet and benevolent humans: a bag of potpourri in a Honey Bucket.
2 pm
Damien Jurado, who must be sweating his sadsack nutsack off up there in that heavy coat, self-deprecatingly annotates a mid-set bummer of a tune: "That's about as upbeat as it's gonna get." He ain't lying. But with the bay glittering on the periphery of Jurado's tales of woe, the sad songs adopt a guise of winsome melancholy--they have become tender, almost welcome reminders of the day-to-day we're all leaving behind this weekend.
3:05 pm
Folky music isn't really my thing, to be honest, so I'm having a hard time describing Bryan John Appleby, the first act to take the main stage. Do I see a boner for Elephant 6 peeking through his lumberjack get-up? I don't know, really. But his music is pretty and it would make me cry if I was at home with a bottle of wine. But I'm lying on a blanket, drinking beer, getting a suntan and enjoying the fact that so many pretty people have decided to wear so few clothes. Appleby's jug-shaking percussionist drops and breaks his jug during the first song, and he must use a maraca for the remainder of the set. I briefly daydream about future Appleby liner notes, wherein "additional percussion" is attributed to "Butterfingers McGee".
4 pm
I have no idea how Doe Bay Fest's organizers have pulled such a trick off, but the beer line here is never too long. And yet the hundreds of people here all seem to be drinking beer. This place is magical, I'm telling you. Seriously. The laws don't apply here.
6:30 pm
The Maldives:
The Maldives barrel through another meaty classic rock number as the sun
begins its long fall. The temperature drops as the crowd--the front end of it, anyway--finally gets to its feet. The requisite festival beach ball makes an appearance. I wish I could describe the way the trees behind the main stage look in the slanting light, but I am not one of those whatever-kind-of-ologists that knows about trees and shit.
7:40 pm
Seattle's Ravenna Woods opens its set with a hushed cover of Radiohead's "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)," an inexplicable and ill-advised move. The somber borrowed song is utterly at odds with the herky-jerky, punky folk thing Ravenna Woods is so good at. It takes a few minutes for the Radiohead cloud to burn away, but once it does, everything clicks. I take a deep breath and wonder if maybe the beauty of the darkening green around me is not short-circuiting my critical faculties. I take another deep breath and decide I don't care. I like this band.
9 pm
It's cold, dark and damp. Champagne Champagne, Friday's main stage headliners, have the right idea: "Let's tear this motherfucking island up," barks Thomas Gray. And then he and Pearl Dragon and Mark Gajadhar do pretty much exactly that, with a set of bouncy, boastful party-rap that finally turns the festival into a rager. I go to bed immediately after Champagne Champagne's set ends. I will wait until Saturday to rage. Rather, I will wait until Saturday to quietly drink bourbon while watching people play acoustic guitars. Same difference.
SATURDAY
9:15 am
The coffee line, unlike yesterday's beer line, is long. I am standing behind Sera Cahoone, who will be playing the Otter Cove Stage in a couple hours. Yesterday I was in this line with Frank Fairfield, walking anachronism and fiddle master. He was deliberating, furrowed brow and all, over the muffin selection. Doe Bay's literature was not lying: there really is very little division between "artist" and "fan" here. Lame as it sounds, this warms the cockles of my heart. My cockles, I'm telling you--they're really getting a workout on this trip. Note to self: let cockles cool once festival is over.
Sera Cahoone
11:30 am
The Builders and the Butchers' Ryan Sollee is playing for six people plus one cameraman in a parking lot twenty yards from my tent. I snap a picture and watch the show before being told I'm "in the shot." I have half a mind to reply with: "This is rock and roll, lady, there's no such thing as a shot." However, I have no idea what this even means, so I retreat.
Sollee:
12 pm
The aforementioned Frank Fairfield is the first of nine main stage acts today. Looking like an extra from O Brother, Where Art Thou? and playing rickety standards on guitar, banjo and fiddle, Fairfield receives the first standing ovation of the weekend. I would stand, but I'm afraid my beer will spill. I clap. Heartily. Beerily.
2:10 pm
Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside, the first of two former winners of WW's Best New Band poll to play today, make for perfect picnic music. I devour a PB+J as Ford and her gang bop through a set of old-timey pop, and I am momentarily transported to an early 20th century green whereon a man might enjoy a sammie before returning to mindlessly toiling at a loom or lathe or some shit. Then I am transported back to an early 21st century green whereon a man might enjoy a sammie before returning to doing absolutely nothing.
4:30 pm
Portland's Kelli Schaefer is the first and last performer to bring madness to Doe Bay Fest this year. Her band expertly wields its feedback to fashion glorious summer squalls. Schaefer's voice rolls over the sloping field like a lightning-veined cloud. I see a handsome young man with a mohawk nearly buckle under his own excitement. I spill some beer.
6:35 pm
Ryan Sollee jumps down into the crowd halfway through the Builders and the Butchers' rousing set and accidentally dings some little tyke's head with his guitar. He apologizes before beginning the next song. He shouldn't have: that little bastard had been throwing a beach ball at my wife's head for like ten minutes. I'm not saying the kid deserved it. But I will say I'm happy Sollee is still doing the whole audience participation thing. (The kid was fine.)
8:50 pm
I came here expecting to hate the Head and the Heart, just as I'd expected to hate the crowd, the long lines, the overpriced food, the poorly managed stages, the crappy outdoor sound, the yuppies in their Five Finger shoes, the beautiful young things in their straw hats and Toms shoes, etc. etc. etc. You name it, I had pre-game worries about it. But the crowd was awesome and the long lines virtually non-existent. Everything started on time. The sound was as good as outdoor sound can be. And yes, there were some weird toe-shoes and a few too many straw hats for my taste, but you know what? Who cares. I think Doe Bay Fest helped me realize something: it's totally cool if a bunch of young and pretty people decide to wear straw hats this summer. I don't want to make fun of them for that. They're trying to enjoy life and feel nice. So am I. And Toms shoes look pretty comfy. And girls' feet look cute in them. We're all just trying to look okay and have fun, right?
8:55 pm
And you know what else? The Head and the Heart are REALLY FUCKING GOOD. I haven't seen a freshly famous band have this much fun on stage since the Arcade Fire demolished the Bossanova in 2004. The dudes and lady in this band look like they're feeling what I'm feeling, what everyone around me seems to be feeling: some form of gratitude for being alive at this moment, in this place, with these people. I want to keep feeling that. We all do.
SUNDAY
9 am-7:30 pm
Wake up with cold. Lie on blanket for hours while hydrating. Unscheduled bands play Otter Cove Stage while I cry inside. Do not want cold. Do not want to leave this wonderful place. Do not want to go back to mainland and tell cool friends I am not only in love with the Head and the Heart but with humanity as a whole.
7:30 pm
Of course, this being the perfect weekend, there is a poetic ending. My wife and I walk down to the beach to meet the water taxi that will take us back to the mainland. We find the Head and the Heart playing to a hundred people on the rocky shore. We down our last two fingers of bourbon as the Head and the Heart do a few acoustic numbers. Our boat arrives and we board it with two dozen other reluctant departees. The boat pulls away and everyone on the shore, the members of the Head and the Heart included, wave goodbye. I think to myself: you are a sappy motherfucker if you're gonna let this get to you. I tell myself: shut up and let me feel what I want to feel.
WWeek 2015