A 14 Year Old Reviews Pickathon

This year was the 20th anniversary of the Pickathon music festival. The festival is older than my kids. Maybe Pickathon was always family-friendly, but they definitely think like parents now. But why take my word for it? My 14-year-old daughter attended the festival on my press pass. So like me, she must sing write for her supper tickets by sharing her experiences online.

The following is a teenager’s review of Pickathon. It is edited for punctuation, spelling and formatting. Enjoy!

Not Just Music

Pickathon was really fun and enjoyable. Pickathon was held at Pendarvis farm, outside of Portland. There was a large variety of music, delicious food, and fun workshops. Some of the stuff that you could do other than listen to music, was make your own poi, create a cigar box guitar, and make paper hats.

I made a cigar box guitar, which took 4 hours total and spanned both Saturday and Sunday. The guitar is also able to be plugged into an amp. This workshop to create a fully functioning guitar was completely free, as were all the other workshops too.

Surrounding the main stage in a half circle, there are food trucks and stands. Pickathon also provides plates and utensils, but you save a good amount of money if you bring your own. The food was amazing, it ranged from dumplings, to pizza, to acai bowls. There were five stages total, but the main one that had the food trucks was the Mt. Hood stage.

Logistics

Not counting the early entry Thursday, there was always a field full of chairs and blankets set out in front of the main stage. This was very annoying because some people never showed up, and just took up room, while others would put their blanket down in the morning for a 10 pm show. This left little room for other people who chose not to wake up super early to stake out a good spot. Two of the stages were set in barns, one of which you had to walk through a horse stable to get to, and in the process got to pat some horses.

All around the whole farm area you could find warning signs, warning about the wasp nests, and there was tape around certain campsites to keep people from camping on a wasp nest. There was a lot of dirt too, and the showers were pretty pricey.

Best Sets

My favorite artist by far was Sierra Hull. She played in the Lucky barn, with a guitarist, and a cello [ed note: stand up bass] player. She switched between multiple instruments, but they all tied back to her mandolin. She had a theme in her songs of women’s empowerment, and her songs were very instrumental. She grew up on bluegrass, and even though she explores new types of music now, she still does bluegrass. She also recently came out with a new album called Weighted Mind.

Another band that I got to see was Dakhabrakha. They were a mostly female band, and had traveled all the way from Ukraine to play. They also sang in Ukrainian and wore traditional fur hats. Their music, while still being fun and enjoyable, was very strange to listen to, and made one think about what they were saying.

Early to Bed, Early to Camp

The main problem I had with the whole festival was that many of the bands played later then I could actually see them and so I couldn’t see about half of the bands that I wanted to see. There were also a lot of conflicting bands and so we had to pick which ones took priority beforehand.

The early entry day was extremely beneficial because we got to pick a closer campsite to more stages, and even though we had the early access pass, we still had a hard time finding a suitable campsite for a 4 man tent.

All in all the 2018 Pickathon music festival was really enjoyable and I would gladly go again.