The gates to the festival grounds wouldn’t open until 3 p.m., atypically later from Sasquatches prior, which bought a lot of free time for the campers.
Some elected to play games — cornhole, Bocce ball, croquet and Frisbee were a common sight. Others played cards on blankets outside their tents. It was day one of the music festival located outside George, Washington.
Bold fashion choices were being made: there was a strong correlation between those who wore paisley leggings and those who made mimosas at their campsites on Friday morning. The standard festival aesthetic of floppy, wide-brimmed hats were abundant; others went with cherry-red caps that read “Make America Dank Again.”
I’d be hard-pressed to name another festival that has a main stage as handsome and grand as Sasquatch’s, situated before the vast Columbia River as it snakes its way through eastern Washington.
By 4:30, Telekinesis took the Bigfoot Stage, where the high winds rocked the light fixtures suspended over the Seattle power-pop band. Singer-songwriter-drummer Michael Benjamin Lerner wore a t-shirt with the cryptic Voyager 1 diagram on it, which was intended to show extraterrestrials where we live in the universe and how to play a vinyl record. Telekinesis’ sunny, effervescent tracks — “Lean on Me” and “Coast of Carolina,” among them — were well received during the otherwise stubborn weather in the Gorge Amphitheatre.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, who took the same stage later that evening, had a fascinating set that pulled from its sophomore album II and last year’s record Multi-Love. The records’ muted, lo-fi production is really galvanized as a live act. Singer-songwriter Ruban Nielson makes time for some prolonged guitar solos. Later during performance of the new track “The World Is Crowded,” keyboardist Quincy McCrary and drummer Riley Geare respectively conducted stellar solo performances.
One audience member sporadically reversed a handmade sign from a winky emoji face (during “From the Sun”) to the heart-eyes emoji, which was a very apt sentiment for UMO’s performance of “So Good At Being In Trouble.”
During the same set, English DJ Marcus Marr had full reins on the El Chupacabra tent. Marr spun some giddy dance tracks from his excellent record Brown Sauce, which came out last year on DFA Records. Marr, who played on the stage just a few feet from a cut-out design of a docile Sasquatch wearing some rollerblades, aims to make house music elated again. And that’s commendable.
A$AP Rocky was more than half-an-hour late to his set at the main stage, where his name was plastered on a neon sign, harshly juxtaposing the gorge at dusk behind it. Rocky brought a DJ and two openers for his festival show before he stepped foot on stage, but on the opposite end of the festival grounds, Yeasayer went without the pomp and circumstance and modestly walked on stage and began to play. Singer Chris Keating barked his way through “2080” among the lit-up Yeasayer set decor of cardboard stand-ups of historical figures, surgically linked with circuit boards. During “Sunrise,” Keating looked like he was mocking the sentimental lyrics when he sang, “I wanna give you the sunrise!” and immediately turned his head and spat violently. There’s some savage in them yet.
The Yeasayer set was far too brief, as they closed spectacularly with “Ambling Alp” and “O.N.E.” The set lasted just over ten songs, but at least they were punctual about it.
Concurrently with Yeasayer, Norwegian DJ Todd Terje occupied the Chupacabra tent with his rainbow-speckled nu-disco, punctuating hard dance beats with piano chords and conducting a triumphant go at “Inspector Norse.” At that moment, with all the rug-cutting and foot-stomping going on, this was the dustiest dance club in all of Washington.