Every year there seems to be a new crop of American music festivals elbowing for attention, bravely trying to replicate the magic promised by the stories and Instagram feeds of summers past. We have now scores of indistinguishable weekends in parking lots and dirt fields with edgy names and an overwhelming branding presence that succeed only in producing facsimiles of the truly great festival experiences (or maybe I’m just getting old and what makes something special is simply in the eye of the beholder).
One of those great festivals, from which many a cherished memory was made, is Sasquatch at the Gorge in Washington state. Merely gazing off into the horizon behind the main stage and breathing the air around you when you step on site is enough to make you feel you’ve arrived somewhere special. My first time at the Gorge was also my first (and only) roadie gig with the Flaming Lips in 2008 when the band was screening their movie “Christmas on Mars.” I had just come off my first tour with Louis XIV and wasn’t prepared for the free-wheeling DIY nature of the Lips crew. I remember staying up all night on pot after pot of Hair Bender, assembling the giant circus tent for the screening while The Cure was getting the plug pulled on them in the early hours of the morning on the main stage. Then two hours later as the sun rose, I remember how my hands ached after gamely trying to help the crew (which at the time included members of Stardeath and the White Dwarf) assemble the giant UFO lighting truss that the Lips rolled with at the time. I’d never seen or been a part of a show like that before in my life, seeing an audience homogeneously rapt with feelings of peace and love in the wake of a spectacle that was ecstatically religious.
The next time I came to Sasquatch, I was playing as a member of both Mariachi El Bronx and the Lips. It was a whole other experience rolling up to the site in an RV with El Bronx, an entirely different bunch of wild cards, and feeling the excitement of actually getting to play not once, but twice that weekend. No longer on crew duty, I remember having more time to roam around and take in a backstage area eagerly soaking up the beauty of the place, admiringly glancing around at the newly reunited Death From Above not far from Robyn sitting on the ground eating her lunch and Victoria Legrand, the singer of Beach House who up until that point, having only listened to the records, I’d embarrassingly hadn’t yet realized was a girl.
It was at that Sasquatch Festival in 2011 that I met Xander Singh for the first time. I decided to crash with my friend Teresa Murray and the band Tokyo Police Club at a nearby vacation apartment complex that was overrun by spring breakers from central and eastern Washington universities, most of whom were oblivious to the festival going on not far away. After a full afternoon of drinking and barbecuing and avoiding what I’m guessing were lacrosse players, Xander’s band, Pepper Rabbit, walked up needing a place to crash for the night after their van had inconveniently decided to stop cooperating with them. Many more hours of drinking.
Now, years removed from those weekends in Washington, I love being able to reflect on what has become one of my favorite facets of what I do for a living. There are people in this crazy circus of a life we live that you don’t plan on seeing but can always count on seeing when summertime rolls around. You can’t ever be certain where or when your paths might cross again but, like seeing that rare bird that passes through once a year, you’re overjoyed and grateful when they do.
Xander is one of those rare birds that I’d see from time to time after he went on to play with Passion Pit and bit more when I realized we were living in the same zip code. He’s currently on the verge of releasing a sublime recording called “Muffin” and I’m grateful for the remix he did for my favorite song on the EP, “Change Your Mind” where he shows off his minimal and quirky style, to say nothing of his ability as he re-calibrated an odd time signature song into a digestible snippet. There are times when i can’t believe that I’m still here, doing the thing I love. I know too, with Xander, it is a minor miracle that we have him here doing what he does, not to mention all the great new things coming down the pipe.
https://open.spotify.com/track/5KDBFHtJQ1yJGnceoy9PEf
