Preview: Treefort Music Fest 2015

If there is one festival that honest, well-meaning Pacific Northwest locals should set their sights on this spring season, it is the one that embodies our ethos best: Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho. With over four hundred and thirty bands lined up to perform across five days of music, I think it’s safe to say that this ambitious event is spiraling out in the happiest and most celebratory of ways. It’s the way you feel when you arrive at a potluck of friends in the woods, and every guest has brought a dish that feeds five. At the end, everyone has shared so much goodness and excess that we return to our city lives with a slight taste of regret, wishing that community of goodwill could be the rule, not the exception.

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I believe that Treefort’s character rests somewhere between its appealing diversity of bands, and the relatively few nationally revered headliners on the bill. In this middle ground exists a festival of bands whose members you may have been friends with since childhood, people you’ve seen at a house party, or artists you’ve worshipped since first realizing you’d rather listen to music than play football. The organizers have operated from a bedrock of great local musicians from the beginning, and despite the festival’s rapid expansion in the past year from three days to five days, they’ve still managed to keep it close to the heart. From Portland alone there are probably forty or fifty bands, with dozens more hailing from Seattle, various Californian cities, and literally one hundred and seventy bands from Boise itself. Would you ever have believed there were even one hundred and seventy bands IN Boise!? Surprising I know, but the point is, this is a music fest for all the amazing groups that make our corner of the world as badass as we take for granted.

Some of my personal favorites that’ll be out there representing Portland are Animal Eyes, Sama Dams, Hosannas, Yeah Great Fine, Wooden Indian Burial Ground, The Ghost Ease, Luke Wyland (from AU), Bearcubbin’!, and Mascaras. And of course for those who can’t swing a ticket unless they get to see some headliners there’s TV On The Radio, Of Montreal, Delicate Steve, and Built To Spill to make it worth your while. So throw your excuses in the compost and call in sick, or miss out on this shit while it’s still real.

– Ethan Martin

Playlist and videos courtesy of Treefort Music Fest.

Note from the editor: Are you going? Not going? Either way, download and pay what you want for the official 2015 Treefort Trail Mix (playlist) here: https://genero.us/treefort/2015-treefort-trail-mix

100% of the proceeds go to Boise Rock School Scholarship Fund!