North West Know Where
Chinook Fest followed a familiar pattern of an opening night using a smaller stage, a full day of alternating from smaller to larger stage and a closing day leveraging just the smaller stage. The music started at 4 on Friday and ended after 1:PM Sunday with the final bands at night completing their sets well after midnight. There was yoga both mornings at 9, similar to 4Peaks, but the event was 21+ for Friday and Saturday. This meant there was virtually no alcohol monitoring in the camping areas, but it also meant there were very few attendees in their early 20's as well, so it wasn't as needed. Frankly, we didn't see anyone over-indulged at Chinook Fest, so our 4-year run of successfully finding Waldo (our label for drunken idiot) at every festival is now over. An unfortunate side-effect of the 21+ rule was the lack of those with kids for whom finding a weekend-long sitter is simply impossible. This created an age gap in the attendees: those without kids and those with grown kids.
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| festival entrance |
The central venue is under a canopy of trees with a tree-lined river bed serving as the rear edge to the festival grounds. The park is set up for events, with permanent structures for vending surrounding a grassy lawn near the entrance. The concert area is served with water-supplied bathrooms, and further supported with port-a-potties and hand-washing stations. The water, while potable, isn't terribly good, but I'm spoiled on the Bull Run watershed. In front of the two stages, the park has packed gravel underfoot. This works well for boots and chairs, but not so well for bare feet and blankets.
Outside the concert-controlled area, the parking / camping is split into 4 sections. Closest to the Elk Ridge campground is a dirt field where overflow parking and free car-camping was allowed. Adjacent to that is a grass and tree area where RV (read: paid extra) camping was set up. Closest to the fire station was day-use parking and additional parking for tent-campers. Last, the tents were located in the grassy areas closest to the entrance, among the play structures and trees. Since we had been given a break on RV parking, we were in the grass, shaded by trees.
We arrived 30 minutes after the gates opened at 8:AM, so we missed the initial rush, though many others had already started setting up. We were directed into the RV corral and after trying a couple of spots, we resolved on a place nearest the fire-lane exit between the RV section and the dirt overflow. By 10:30, we were mostly set up and had waved over the only other VW bus at the festival to park with us. They brought their minivan-driving friends, and the party was on.The Festers
The other VW was a 1970 green and white high top driven by Zeb and Casey from Wenatchee, WA. They, with their longtime friends Oly and Katelyn, helped set the tone for our weekend, swapping stories, fruit and beverages all weekend. The 1970 high top had a 1.8L conversion done to it by the prior owner, so we had an immediate connection about overheating and managing air bubbles in cooling systems. They had a 1960's era "circus tent" (it attaches to the side of the bus but the bright red stripes have it labelled as the circus tent) so when combined with Hapy's Riviera top and the rest of our semi-custom stuff (camping table, lot couch), we had a way of attracting car people. Oly and Katelyn had 2 10x10's set up like a lounge with a bar and a comfy-couch for visitors (picture below). They were across the "street" from us, so our little corner was pretty popular.
Early on, we met Tom and Liz from Tri-Cities. They, like many other we met, have been coming to Chinook Fest since it's first year. It seemed like every time they passed, Tom had a different tie-dye. We hung out quite a bit, and gave tours of our respective camping rigs. I hadn't crawled around a pickup-bed camper before, and we were quite surprised how much room there was. Very cool.
Daniel and Dean were from Renton, and were big VW guys. We talked quite a bit about Gene Berg transmissions, his performance work and air-cooled VeeDubs. I couldn't tell how they felt about the TDI power plant I had in Hapy, but the love for Volksies was unmistakable.Inside the music area, we met Steve and Sandy, proud parents of the lead singer of the Wicks. Lovely people. There's something about running into musicians or those directly associated to the musicians out among the "regular people". For example, the keyboardist for the Crooks helped us solve for water that first day. Where does that happen? So often, bands slip in through their designated access gate, hang out in their special section until their turn on stage and then disappear afterwards. That wasn't entirely true at 4Peaks, and it definitely wasn't the case at Chinook Fest.
We had managed to forget both coffee and our french press, so we befriended the proprietors of the coffee place. They run Highway Espresso in Naches, and were pretty amazing, handling the coffee needs of most of the attendees. Well, at least it seemed like most attendees. David, husband of the owner, is another VW guy, and he brought their '65 Beetle up to the festival after we talked about Hapy. Tina is shopping for a VW camperbus of her own so she can start ticking locations off her bucket-list. Driving the 101 is on my list too.
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| Oly / Katelyn camp |
Stretching the Definition of Country
As great as the people were, most folks go to music festivals for the music. Overall, there were more bands with a country feel than our typical music festival tastes would run. As a festival, it felt like the theme would have been "stretching the definition of country". We learned that the way the bands are selected is through a deep investigative process by the 3 friends. They look for artists who they believe are a couple of years away from discovery by the masses. So, if you don't recognize any of the names of the bands this year, we should look back on this list in 2020 to see if any of them made it into the mainstream. Before we left Oregon, the only band we had heard of (and heard before) was the closing act on Sunday: the William G. Hardings. There were so many good acts, it doesn't seem fair to call out too many above the others. Still, I will. haha.
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| our setup |
On Saturday, there were a few that stood out. Cobrahawk sounded like a blend of Heart and Kim Carnes, but Josh Hoyer and Soul Colossal took the day. They ended their tour with us, leaving for their home in Lincoln, NE after smokin' Chinook Fest. The energy of the band was contagious, pulling us out of our very comfy camp (picture right) to dance behind the stage. Once on our feet, we drifted into the concert zone for The Silent Comedy and watched them rock their set. Their "Dead Flowers" may have been our festival highlight.
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| festival farm truck |
As we slowly broke camp, neighbors shared farewells and pulled out. We left when Zeb and Casey did, hours after Oly and Katelyn had gone. The end of festival is a mixture of sadness and fatigue... and the knowing that there are hours of driving before bed. But that's another post. I'll get to that. Thanks, as always, for following along.
#ChinookFest
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