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September 1, 2010

A Festival, A Community – Doe Bay Fest 2010

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Doe Bay Love for Drew Grow ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Where do I even begin talking about what may have been the greatest weekend of my life?

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The Doe Bay Resort is situated on the far end of nowhere, about as far from the ferry dock on Orcas Island as one can hope to get. It is on the way to nowhere, and that is kind of the point. Among the yurts, cabins, campsites and forest, there’s no 3G to sap your attention. Only an idyllic setting to focus on relaxation and nature and the people you are with. A place to soak in the mineral spring and bathe in the expansive starlight, things normally obscured by the lights and pace of the big city.

Doe Bay faces southeast toward Cypress Island, and then the Cascades further on. An organic cafe overlooks the bay and getting up to watch the sun rise above the Cascades while cradling a hot cup of coffee is a favorite activity. We certainly spent our share of time waking up under a rising sun while sitting out on the Cafe patio, sipping coffee and attacking a truly delicious selection of breakfasts made with ingredients grown in an organic on-site garden.

Courtesy of resort den-mother and wonder woman Jami, our specially set reserved campsite ended up being a geodesic dome hidden among the trees on the opposite side of the inlet from the Cafe, a space age feeling structure with a bed. More importantly, it came with a pair of picnic tables spectacularly overlooking the resort. Prime property. These picnic tables would play host to series of mostly unplanned magical moments over the four days we spent at Doe Bay: A Hey Marseilles Doe Bay Session. Meeting new friends. A magnificent effort to fix our brand new generator that would ultimately be unsuccessful but a bonding experience just the same. A late night rap battle that went on and on. Getting a listen to a new Maldives song that is just exceptional. Having the privilege of hearing Kelli Schaefer and friends singing “Over the Rainbow,” with all of the festival bigwigs in attendance. And sharing countless Doe Bay hugs. It all added up the one of the most memorable and life affirming weekends of my life.

The Mainstage ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth


I think we might need to come up with a new word for what Doe Bay Fest is. Sure, it has a few stages, great bands are present, and it is nominally about seeing music. But calling it simply ‘a music festival’ doesn’t communicate the quality of interaction that a gathering in this setting encourages and makes possible. For four solid days I had no want to leave. In actively forgetting our worries and forgetting about clocks, Doe Bay became a real-life Utopia for those present, if only for an instant. And that’s not something that happens at just a ‘music festival.’

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August 31, 2010

The Doe Bay Sessions: Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives

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Drew Grow & The Pastor’s Wives Doe Bay Resort Doe Bay Fest The Doe Bay Sessions

 

Drew Grow and The Pastors Wives on the trail ::: photo by Josh Lovseth

By asking bands to come and play some songs in the forest, we were asking them to strip their songs down to their most fundamental elements, to distill them into their most concentrated existence. For some bands that means a single person. For others, the emotion portrayed is more complicated than a single person can fully express.

Drew Grow and the Pastor’s Wives had to compromise nothing, in that it’s the human power of their songs that are the real strength. Amidst the boughs of 150 foot tall trees, in the middle of the trail, Drew, Seth, Jeremiah, and Kris proved they’re not simply a great rock band on stage, they’re intensely present and able musicians in any setting. The mossy surroundings would amplify the voices across the resort and deliver this Doe Bay Session to everyone as it happened, foreshadowing the incredible showing the band would deliver the following day and the larger impact their presence at the festival would amount to. It was glorious.

The Doe Bay Sessions – Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives from Sound on the Sound on Vimeo.

 

Drew Grow and the Pastors’ Wives play Columbia City Theater September 11th with Pablo Trucker and Yuni in Taxco. You can purchase tickets here and we recommend you do so early.

Watch the first Doe Bay Session with The Maldives.

August 24, 2010

The Doe Bay Sessions: The Maldives

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The Maldives Doe Bay Resort Doe Bay Fest The Doe Bay Sessions
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The Maldives Doe Bay Session ::: Photo by Dylan Priest

There was only one way to properly begin The Doe Bay Sessions, with a band who helped Doe Bay Festival get its start: The Maldives. Seattle’s own wrangler headbangers are the only band to have played all three Doe Bay Festivals and they hold the only life-long invitation to play.

The Maldives are more than Doe Bay veterans, they also embody the spirit of community and fun that permeate the festival. Many of the most memorable moments of Doe Bay, be it the Donald Duck rap battles, slip’n'sides, or drinking tequila out of sippy cups, were organized or led by a Maldive. Thanks to their sunny afternoon session, perched atop a mossy knoll off the trail, the Maldives were certainly responsible for some of our favorite Doe Bay memories. And we are so happy we get to share them with you today.

Be sure to check back every Tuesday from now through October to see whose Doe Bay Session we share next.

 

 

The Doe Bay Sessions – The Maldives “I’m Gonna Try” from Sound on the Sound on Vimeo.

 

Doe Bay Sessions – The Maldives “Go Back to Virginia” from Sound on the Sound on Vimeo.

August 20, 2010

Doe Bay Festival: A First Time Perspective

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Doe Bay Fest ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Before I go any further, I just want to ask for your forgiveness. Gentle reader, everything (and I do mean everything) I am about to describe or attempt to recall about Doe Bay Festival, will not have proper justice done to it.  Over the next couple hundred words I promise you I’ll rely heavily on an online thesaurus, but will still fail (read: “run aground”) in my attempts. Don’t hold it against me. I’m only human and the retinas in my eyes are incapable of recording all that they’ve seen. I would offer this human experience to you if I could. Instead all I can do is write about it…

I feel like Doe Bay is all that’s right with humanity. I would make a more grandiose statement than that, but I say these words as someone whose time spent there was all too brief.  I was at Doe Bay from Thursday night until early Saturday afternoon. I left Orcas Island not because I wanted to, because I had to. There was an engagement that I had to attend that was scheduled months prior. My absence was not an option, nor did I necessarily want it to be. Other than playing music, the only way you could have removed me from Doe Bay was in a body bag of some sort. Even in the midst of that macabre scenario, my spiritless body would be disappointed that it was leaving a place that may or may not resemble the general concept of heaven.

How do I even begin to tell you how great those 40 hours were? As someone who is relatively new to the Pacific Northwest, I had never been to the San Juan Islands before. Needless to say, I took plenty of pictures during my stay. When I removed the sleep from my eyes on Friday morning, it was like I was waking up at the end of the world. I’m not a city slicker or sheltered soul by any extent of the imagination, I have seen some things in my time. Orcas Island and Doe Bay can match-up toe-to-toe with some of the most picturesque scenes that I’ve had the good fortune of seeing.

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Doe Bay ::: Photo by Abbey Simmons

Oh, and did I mention people were playing music? I don’t even want to talk about all the good performances that I missed, that in itself is a tragedy. Let’s focus on all the magical things I saw that were not wildlife related. Luckily for you some of what I’m talking about will be available on Sound of the Sound in video format shortly…

Curtains for You have been featured on Sound on the Sound a couple of times in recent months. Besides what was written about them, I knew next to nothing about the band. My first exposure to Curtains for You was quite the memorable one if I do say so myself. They played a handful of songs for Sound on the Sound in the middle of the woods next to the yurt where Josh, Abbey, Chris Proff and I were staying. I watched Curtains for You members Matt and Mike, perform adventurous, well-written pop songs from an elevated mossy landing. You can’t really get more intimate than that. What a fantastic way to be introduced to a band. From now on, every time I hear a band for the first time, I want it to be in an outdoorsy-VIP setting. Don’t scoff at my outrageous greenhouse diva demands. You’d make the same requests if you were me.

Curtains For You Doe Bay Session ::: Photo by Josh Lovseth

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, they did.

Read the rest of this entry after the jump … (more…)