Size Matters

Akimbo performs at Total Fest IV

The trend in music festivals is shrinkage

Four years ago, I was walking to an after-hours party at the Omni Hotel in downtown Austin with a few friends. It was Saturday night of South By Southwest weekend and we were exhausted from a marathon of schmooze-fueled day parties, free booze and industry pimps vying for our attention. As we rounded the corner, a man behind a cart with a bullhorn barked. 

“Step right up and get yer MySpace hot dogs!”

I snapped. Right there, I decided that would be the last time I’d attend SXSW. As much as I adored Austin and the trappings of the annual spring break for the music industry, I’d reached my capacity for enjoying art surrounded by large crowds and avalanches of corporate sponsorship. It just wasn’t fun anymore.

These days, I let myself attend one out-of-town festival a year. But now I seek out festivals that are smaller in scale and more specialized in content. I’ve made musical pilgrimages to Chicago for the Touch & Go label anniversary party (where I watched a briefly reunited Big Black blow up firecrackers along with the collective psyche of their audience), Orcas Island (for Doe Bay Fest, where the Head and the Heart drew attendees away from their breakfasts to the beach with three-part harmonies) and even back to Austin this year for the Black Angels-sponsored Psychfest (an off-season journey that cost a fraction of previous SXSW trips). This month, I’ll add Missoula, Montana’s Total Fest to the scrapbook.

August 18–20 marks the tenth anniversary of Total Fest, the all-ages, volunteer-run, nonprofit festival started by Wantage Records owner Josh Vanek and his wife, Nicole. For the last decade, the couple and a handful of their friends have programmed a fest committed to artists working in the margins, especially Northwest bands that make a big racket. Past performers include punk and metal-minded artists like the Last of the Juanitas, Black Elk, the Lights, Federation X and Akimbo. Seattle metal band Lesbian made its first Total Fest appearance last year, a month after playing the much larger Capitol Hill Block Party.

“Block Party was strange,” says Lesbian drummer Benjamin Thomas-Kennedy. “We had a good time, but I felt isolated from the festivalgoers. At Total Fest, the performers and the crowd are mixed up together in the same mess with no backstage or special clearance badges. Plus, they gave us food. I like food.”

The fellowship of shared meals and audience-performer interaction is a big part of what creates the Total Fest vibe. “We host a record swap, barbecues and river swimming,” Vanek says. “The community and hanging-out parts are important to us, and we try to make Total Fest as inclusive as we can.” The same could be said for other Northwest destination microfestivals like Doe Bay, Anacortes’ What the Heck Fest and last month’s Slack Fest in Stanwood.

Vanek makes the Total Fest application process as egalitarian as possible. “We have an open submission policy, because we believe that everyone who sticks their necks out to make original music deserves a shot, regardless of our personal taste,” he says. “We listen to everything that gets sent to us. We make democratic decisions about that, and balance it with bigger bands we’ve actively gone after.” Hence a no-headliners policy. All bands receive the same fee, with the exception of those traveling from out of town, which earn slightly more to cover the cost of gas.

Intimacy, curatorial intent, no lines for the bathroom: There are major benefits to minor gatherings like Total Fest, which draws about 500 people each year. The tradeoff is the lineup. I love Hammerhead, Pygmy Shrews, Kowloon Walled City and the Blind Shake, but only serious aficionados—around 500 each year—have heard of these bands. The scale of larger festivals builds fiscal muscle that allows programmers like Block Party talent buyer Jason Lajuenesse to pull off coups like last year’s Jesus Lizard reunion and land marquee names like this year’s headliners TV on the Radio. 

“I’ve been pushing the Block Party owners to expand to the point it’s at now,” Lajuenesse says. “I’m very happy with where we’ve landed.” Block Party hits a sweet spot that allows major indie headliners to coexist with lesser-known acts like Federation X and Pink Mountaintops. At 8,000 people per day, it’s big, but it’s no Coachella—or Bumbershoot for that matter, which caps at around 60,000 per day.

Vanek has a word for overgrown festivals: “Gigantism,” he says. “That’s not going to happen at Total Fest.” 

Small is the new big, a trend happening in the festival industry around the world. Michael Eavis, who founded Glastonbury, the original music megafest now in its fifth decade, recently suggested to the Metro UK that the end is nigh for big-time music festivals. “There is a feeling that people have seen it all before,” he said. “I don’t see the market will be there in the future.”

Fine by me. I hear the drive to Montana is beautiful. 

Hannah Levin is the host of KEXP’s local show, Audioasis, which airs Saturday nights from 6 to 9 p.m.

Photography by Chris Fuller