Doe Bay Fest 2011: The Full Moon Festival

How do you write about a place that you don’t think can possibly be real? That’s the question I have after attending Doe Bay Fest. There’s an undeniable magic quality about the festival (and the island) that I don’t think you can understand until you are there, and even after being there I’m not sure I fully comprehend it. For 4 days I experienced something that seems kind of like a glimpse into heaven, each day seemingly improving ten-fold on the day before (which was previously the best day ever). Beautiful scenery was inescapable, amazing musical experiences seemed to pop up out of nowhere at all hours, and, best of all, I got to share this amazing experience with 20+ amazing, talented and hilarious new friends.  I never went to summer camp as a kid, but I imagine the feelings I have right now are much the same as I would have had then. The past two days have been a blur of getting back to real life and constantly thinking about (and longing for) those days spent on an island in the Puget Sound. I feel blessed to have been a part of it all, and cannot wait to experience it again next year. It cannot happen again fast enough.

Below is a bit of a recap (or, more accurately, memory diarrhea) of what I experienced. Sorry in advance for the novel-like length of this post- this is as much a report for you as it is a way for me to get all my memories of this weekend in one place for safe keeping so that Father Time can’t steal them later. It’s probably a bit jumbled, perhaps not all that coherent, and most assuredly not concise, but again, I can’t actually believe this is a real place. This type of stuff doesn’t happen in the real world.

Thursday

– Thursday involved traveling from Seattle (had never been there before, and man was that a cool place) up to Anacortes to catch a ferry over to the resort. I don’t have any pictures from the ride, mainly because I’m pretty sure my jaw had dropped to the floor for most of it. Being from the Midwest and never having gone out West…well we don’t have stuff like that around here. That ferry ride was a pretty great opening act for the rest of the weekend.

– Seriously, the below picture was the view from where we watched music a good portion of the weekend. That is ridiculous, right?
– After we got settled in and everything there was an Open Mic night at the café, where we had heard that some of the bands would be playing a few songs. We waited a good long while (through some pretty good acts, to be fair) for some of the bigger names to show up, and it ended up being more than worth it. First to bring down the house was Pickwick (the video below shows their first song…which they played after they just, you know, strolled on into the café from outside…cause that’s normal). The café was completely quiet during the two songs they played, and it was, quite simply, one of the more magical moments of the entire festival. To close out the Open Mic experience in came Josiah from The Head and The Heart to play a song with Heather from Fuel/Friends (they played ‘Much Farther to Go’ and it was seriously great). Josiah then went ahead and played ‘Josh McBride’ as the final song of the evening. In a dead silent café. Yeah, that was pretty damn awesome.

– After Open Mic we kinda walked around a bit, and then went back to our campsite, where we would encounter something that became a nightly thing: the musicians in our 20+ person group were just sitting there, jamming away, taking requests and inserting ‘Night Moves’ into just about anything. I always thought having musician friends that could play whenever would be awesome, and for 4 nights I got to live that. And it was indeed awesome.

Friday

– Friday was the first day of scheduled music, and it really didn’t disappoint. Every single band that played impressed me, and I came away extremely impressed by two bands I hadn’t ever given a listen to, Revenna Woods and OK Sweetheart. While those two impressed me a great deal, there were two other acts that completely stole the show on Friday for me. The first was Damien Jurado, who writes some of the saddest songs on earth and, as I hadn’t yet realized, also possesses one of the best voices I’ve ever heard in person. Also, it may be the most heartbreaking voice I’ve ever heard. Great on every single solemn level. The other  one to blow me away was Bryan John Appleby, who had been someone I was most looking forward to going into the festival. His band was up first on the main stage, and they rolled through material from his seriously wonderful new album in a most impressive way, proving that songs like ‘Honey Jars’ and ‘The Words of The Revelator’ can and do translate to a live setting impeccably.

– I left halfway through the main stage set of Champagne Champagne, who were extremely entertaining for the portion I saw. Judging by the way people kept talking about them the rest of the weekend the rest of the set was just as good, which would have bummed me out to have missed, but…..

– Leaving Champagne Champagne early allowed me to see Lemolo in the Yoga Studio. Yes, a yoga studio. It was as ridiculous as it sounds, with the place packed to the brim with eager people immediately upon the doors opening and the temperature easily being at Lollapalooza levels during the entire set. It was, when all was said and done, my favorite set/experience of the entire festival and it left me completely speechless. Something incredible was happening in there, and by the end of it I came out of there thinking that these two women are going to be pretty damn well known in a very short amount of time. Much like those who saw The Head and The Heart in that studio during last year’s festival, it’s going to be very cool to be able to say I saw Lemolo in that environment when they blow up. The below video of ‘Whale Song’ is pretty indicative of the entire set: Meagan Grandall’s unbelievable voice piercing through the silence until the chorus, when EVERYONE in the studio would sing along.

– The Lemolo set wasn’t the end of the fun on Friday, though. After returning to the campsite and watching our new friends strum some tunes we heard what we thought was Ravenna Woods playing on the beach in the cove. We followed that sound and, well, it was indeed Ravenna Woods playing an impromptu concert on the beach for no more than a few dozen people. It was, to say the least, pretty spectacular.  Again, when else am I going to be able to say ‘I left the group of professional musicians I was hanging out with all weekend to go and watch a main stage band play a little show on a beach under a full moon.’ Never. This is the real world, and that festival is the most magnificent playland ever.

Saturday

– I wasn’t really sure how to approach Saturday when I woke up. I was more than excited for the bands, but seriously, how was it going to improve upon what happened the day/night before? UNPOSSIBLE I SAY. Sometimes I am totally, completely wrong.  Saturday at Doe Bay Fest started early and went late, providing magic all damn day. The morning started off in a most pleasant way, with Sera Cahoone and Elk and Boar introducing themselves to my eardrums. They are both wonderful and I need more of each in my life. After they wrapped up the group packed up & headed over to the main stage to catch Sallie Ford and The Sound Outside, who pretty much immediately had us all up and shaking it (and shaking it well). John Vanderslice followed, providing a break from the dancing but not from the good music. Then things got real serious….

– Kelli Schaefer took the stage after John Vanderslice and proceeded to annihilate everyone. What she can do live is amazing, commanding attention from the moment she steps on the stage until she leaves and, you know, throwing down some riduclous jams inbetween. The set ended with ‘Sister K,’ which lead to a large contingency of musicians climbing on stage to help pound out percussion and join in the chorus of ‘Ohhhhhs’ that end the song. The picture below is from that final stretch of the song, and it was indeed as intense as it showed up on my camera. The set was, in a word, spellbinding.

– Campfire OK then got up on stage and rocked the crap out of us. Having not listened to all that much of them (tsk tsk I know) I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but my buddy Matt kept telling me they were great. He wasn’t lying. Just a really energetic and fun show.

– We took a break to get some food (by the way, the food was pretty great during the whole festival), making sure to get back in time to get a good vantage point for Pickwick. Not that it mattered, because from whatever angle you viewed that Pickwick set chances are you were dancing uncontrollably and yelling along all the words you knew. Much like Lemolo, I don’t see any way in the world this band isn’t hugely famous in short order. Galen Disston is a magnetic presence on stage, possessing a voice that keeps you engaged constantly (oh, and he’s backed up by a group of insanely talented musicians). Their set ended with about 100 people joining the band on stage to help shake tambourines and yell along during the chorus of ‘Window Sill.’ Completely ridiculous (as evidenced by the video).

– After Pickwick broke the stage (no seriously, they broke it… it leans a little), The Head and The Heart got up on stage and delivered the goods like they always do. I’m not going to go on and on about them, because I do that a lot, but the truth is they deserve all the acclaim they get. They put on one of the best live shows of any band out there, and they do it night in and night out. Finally getting to see them in front of a hometown crowd showed me how much they mean to the entire scene in Seattle. Watching Bryan John Appleby and friends freak out behind the stage during the entire set showed me that the musicians in the scene also think the world of them. It was a pretty special way to end the main stage portion of the day.

– After The Head and The Heart finished up I tried hard to make my way to the café to catch the Gervais brothers and Matt Bishop, but failed pretty miserably to get there in enough time (as did a lot of people). I hung around at the cabin for awhile, eventually making my way back down towards the café around midnight in hopes of being able to sneak in and somehow catch Bishop playing ‘Rio.’ Which was exactly what happened. It was, as I expected, breathtaking. There’s something about that song that resonates so much with me, and something about the particular version Matt plays by himself that makes the song that much more perfect. It was another one of those incredible moments that doesn’t seem real, standing at the door of this café, with a dead silent crowd inside and a beautiful full moon outside, listening to him play this perfect song in a perfect way.

– Of course right after that got over and we got back to the campsite we were informed that Damien Jurado and John Vanderslice were playing a secret show up at the main stage. And they were. Right there, in the middle of the main stage grass area illuminated only by 3 tiki torches, with throngs of people sitting on the ground in a silent circle around them. It was as preposterous a scene as it sounds like. As they played I looked around the crowd, taking note of all the musicians sitting there in just as much disbelief of the scene going on in front of them as all us commoner fans. It was just about too much to take in.

– And, you know, that would have been a swell end to the night, seeing as how it was about 1am and I had just witnessed a few months worth of music in like 15 or 16 hours. But that’s not how things work when you’re on a music bender in a make believe place. So we went back to the campsite and met up with our friend Matt, who plays in a band named The Local Strangers and is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He and his band mate Aubrey were up for playing a bit out by the campfire near our place, so I went over and sat to listen to them. When they started it was just basically the 5 or so of us who knew them and wanted to hear some songs, but over the course of the next half hour or so I’d say a crowd of around 40 or 50 gathered due to the how absurdly great they sounded. There’s an incredible feeling you get when you see good things happen to fantastic people, and watching those two draw in this crowd with their music and then hearing everyone talking about how great they were afterward really just left me going to bed on an incredible high.

Sunday

– Waking up Sunday was a bit surreal. Did Saturday actually happen? What does one even do on the day after something like that? Well, if you’re at Doe Bay Fest, the answer is yes, that all happened, now go and listen to a lot more music. So that’s what we did, setting up shop in the area at the point and settling in for a day of unannounced, but no less fantastic, music. While normally one would feel a bit burnt out after 3 days of constant music, that wasn’t the case here, as listening to really pleasant jams being played while looking out at the Puget Sound and San Juan Islands doesn’t get old. And by ‘doesn’t get old’ I mean I would like to do that every single day for forever.

– Two bands stuck out the most for me on Sunday, The Local Strangers and Youth Rescue Mission. Obviously there’s a personal element to my love of The Local Strangers’ set, but besides that they put on a really enjoyable set. So enjoyable, in fact, that they ended up being the only band the entire day that had an encore demanded of them. The other band that really blew me away was Youth Rescue Mission. While I had listened to their album a bit I can’t claim to have been a huge fan. They worked very hard to change that with all their gorgeous harmonies and soothing indie rock. I could get used to them playing me through Sunday afternoons.

– One would think that once the sets ended we would be all set. I mean, really, that was far more than enough, right? Wrong. Remember, this is Doe Bay Fest, which doesn’t adhere to such silliness as ‘enough’ when it comes to blowing your mind. So before we ate our final dinner as a large group we trekked down to the beach in the cove to watch The Head and The Heart play three songs as part of their Sound on the Sound Doe Bay Sessions. I won’t ruin it for you by telling you what they played, but I will say that it was completely, utterly ridiculous and perfect in every single way. It was the final mind blowing experience of a weekend full of such things, and I’m sure that the enormous crowd that gathered thought the same thing.

– Or, you know, I thought it was the final crazy thing. But it wasn’t, because again, there’s always something magical happening just around the corner at Doe Bay Fest. After dinner, as we all sat there listening to our friends jam once again and just discussing how absurd the weekend had been, my new friend Mike goes ‘That sounds like Bryan John Appleby.’ And it was. He was playing just down the way at the point, illuminated only by the full moon and surrounded by a hushed crowd of those who remained at the festival. We got there just as he was starting to play his last song, which turned out to be ‘Honey Jars.’ During the first few notes that Appleby plucked Mike mumbled  ‘I don’t think I can take this right now.’ I felt the same way. I couldn’t believe I was watching this song, one of my favorites released this year, being played in such a setting. It was THE final moment of the festival music wise for me. It was magnificent and perfect and any other adjective you can think of. I still can’t believe I witnessed it.

So that’s the tale of my experience at Doe Bay Fest. I knew it would be special based on everything I read, but I wasn’t prepared for just how amazing it would be. Things like spending 4 days in a gorgeous setting listening to your favorite bands and making 20 new friends had never occurred to me as something that was possible before. As I said before (and as you can read in numerous other reviews by those who were there and are far more eloquent than I), something magical goes on during that festival, something profoundly perfect and far different from our everyday lives. I feel more than blessed to have experienced it even for a short while. We managed to stop time this weekend, cramming months and months worth experiences into a 96 hour window and building relationships with people that take years sometimes. You could say we took advantage of our situation to the fullest, but that doesn’t explain it all. I guess that’s the beauty of Doe Bay Fest: you can’t explain it, it just happens to you.