Justin Ringle of Horse Feathers (PHOTO: Rustee Pace)

The first installment of this series finds us meeting eight bands just before—or just after—their set at Bumbershoot Music Festival, September 2010. We had the pleasure of speaking with Fences (Chris Mansfield), Feral Children, Health, Hey Marseilles, Horse Feathers (Justin Ringle), The Moondoggies, Slender Means, and Surfer Blood. Our exchanges with these bands will span three parts, so stay tuned for more of the conversation.







FENCES: I’ve played Sasquatch, Music Fest Northwest and the Capitol Hill Block Party.

FERAL CHILDREN: This is our second time at Bumbershoot. We’ve done CMJ and SXSW. And we did Capitol Hill Block Party twice. And then Reverb Festival coming up in October. So basically yes!

HEALTH: Mostly in Europe… As far as US festivals we just played Lollapalooza. And Pitchfork.

HEY MARSEILLES: We’ve done a couple, yeah, a handful. This is our second Bumbershoot, we’ve done Capitol Hill Block Party, we’ve played a couple of festivals on the East Coast, we played one in Canada, which is kind of funny. We played Music Fest NW — that’s super fun. We’ve done SxSW twice. So we’ve done a little bit of that, they’re all kind of different, you know, but super cool. I like the mass of people. It’s neat.

HORSE FEATHERS: We just started to this last year. We’ve done a lot of folk festivals. Actually in the last six weeks we’ve been doing a lot of summer festivals, but this is our first time at Bumbershoot. It’s cool. I used to come as a teenager in high school. But I haven’t been here for like ten years.

SLENDER MEANS: We’ve played Sasquatch, Capitol Hill Block Party. We’ve played SXSW twice. Georgetown Music Festival like three years ago.

SURFER BLOOD: We spent the last month playing a lot of festivals internationally. It’s our first time going around and playing to audiences in different countries.



Feral Children






FENCES: I think most of the time it’s all ages. I think that’s really cool. The only all ages venue in Seattle that I’ve ever played is Vera Project. But it’s cool to have a lot of space for a lot of kids to be in that’s not like a bar with a set capacity. I don’t really know exactly what my demographic is. I feel like we’ve thought about it a couple times, but I try not to think about it. I sort of just play the music as best I can and keep writing it. I don’t really dwell on the other end of it; it just will drive you insane.

FERAL CHILDREN: I just love how smoothly they run… Everyone communicates really well about parking, and getting relatives in. (Are you being sarcastic?) Yes!

HEALTH: The shows are always bigger. If you’re a band that draws this many people (hand gesture) it will be multiplied like times four in any festival setting. I don’t know how that works, it just happens that way. Also, we like hanging out at festivals. We’ll stay for the festival, that’s when you can have a really good time and see a lot of bands. Often, usually festivals is where you actually meet your friends—friends in other bands. Everyone’s booked for the same festivals, playing the same circuit, that’s when you actually get to hang out. And, when the fuck are we gonna get to see Bob Dylan? It doesn’t matter, Bob Dylan could be playing two blocks down the street, I’m not gonna be like, “Oh, I’m gonna go buy a $200 ticket to see him.” However, I’m already here. Voice of a generation right here in these ears! He’s like 67-years old… he’s gonna be like ‘aaargh! Raawr!’

HORSE FEATHERS: I think the thing about a festival is that we can play for a slightly different crowd than who would be aware of us and would choose to come to a club show. A festival has a little bit wider selection of people that just kind of filter in and out of all the events and often times I feel like it’s an opportunity to play for people that have no idea about who we are.

THE MOONDOGGIES: I like people grabbing our stuff for us. Especially with the roadies. It’s nice, sometimes it doesn’t always end up well. That happened to us recently at Bonaroo. We were camping on the opposite side of where all the stages were, so we really thought we were going to be carrying all of our gear so we were ready for the worst hour of our lives. But then they show up right at our campsite like right at our campsite like, “Let’s get the gear!” and we were like, “This is sweet!”

(Favorite festival food?) Alligator Tail. Everything sort of smells the same at festivals. Everything’s fried and delicious. But then you find that one stand that’s like, “We’re just cookin’ meat! You get this and this, and that’s all.” And our last night at Bonaroo we got some alligator tail that was really good. It was cooked with potatoes. It was delicious. It may not have even been alligator meat.

SLENDER MEANS: There are usually more people, and people that wouldn’t normally come to see us are exposed to our music. New faces. New ears. New ears would definitely be most important.

SURFER BLOOD: Festivals are awesome. Except for sometimes the sound is, you know. They’re outside, and in odd locations, so it’s kind of hit or miss a lot of the time. But the environment is probably one of the coolest places in the world. You get to hang out backstage with bands you really love and admire and you get to play for people who are really into your music.


Chris Mansefied of Fences (PHOTO: Alicia Rose)






FENCES: It really depends. It depends on the show. I’ve had festival experiences where it was just really stressful. But I’ve also played smaller shows that were just really terrible. And I’ve played in a house for like 20 people and it was just amazing. So it really differs from show to show.

FERAL CHILDREN: Smaller shows. It’s a comfort zone. It’s just a little different, too, because people are actually coming to see you and not the festival. The cool thing about Bumbershoot, though, is that people are gonna give us a chance who may not have given us a chance before. They’re like, “Hey! I’ve got nothing to do. It’s 5:00, I’m gonna go check out Feral Children!” Or for people who live out of town, it’s really hard to figure out shows if you live outside of Seattle. That’s what Bumbershoot was for me as a kid, was a chance to see all these bands that I wouldn’t have a chance to go see and then make my decision now of should I commit to liking this band or not. You can walk out of a show and be like, oh that wasn’t so good, and then oh, hey I can watch this one. No pressure.

HEALTH: It depends. This is not a typical festival, really. This has got a lot of other types of things. It’s sort of a fair atmosphere. I think our ideal festival is music only, like Melt… Sort of like music snobby festivals. We just played Lollapalooza where there’s a lot of dip shits there who are like, “Yeah! Limp Bizkit! That’s not ideal.”

HEY MARSEILLES: Probably smaller shows. The festivals are really neat because, like, Bumbershoot is well known. It’s one of the top then festivals in the U.S. That’s kind of crazy and daunting. So we feel really honored, and everything on the internet is about how popular you are on Google. So when Bumbershoot puts out their lineup every blog in the world copies and pastes the lineup. So that’s kind of neat that we can play for people and it’s kind of a neat marketing tool. But smaller shows are a little easier to connect with your audience. Because you don’t have other shows competing, you don’t really have the weather aspect. An outdoor show is so different from a tight small club.

HORSE FEATHERS: I typically prefer smaller shows, just because the downfall of festivals is oftentimes there’s definitely a lack of intimacy going on with the performances. But that’s kind of the nature of the beast.

THE MOONDOGGIES: I don’t prefer festivals. The chaos of it and the people, I get anxiety. I only like to go to a festival if I’m participating. I can’t spend $9 on a beer. I like the randomness of people who might just wander upon you. Rather than at a venue with people who come particularly to see you. They both have their goods and bads.

SLENDER MEANS: I prefer bigger shows as long as there are a lot of people. As long as the room is filled I don’t care how big the venue is. That’s my philosophy.

SURFER BLOOD: You have to do both. You can’t play festival shows all the time, because where you’re really going to develop a fan base is where you play the venue shows, because people are coming out just to see your band. People at festivals sometimes just hang out and say things like, “Oh, there’s no one else playing right now so I guess I’ll go watch this band.” But you want to develop a strong loyal fan base, and playing small venue shows is how you do that. But at the same time you have to play festivals too, because that’s how you get your music out to new people. So, like everything else in life you have to have a balance, I guess.



Surfer Blood






FENCES: I do want to see Courtney Love, for sure. I am just so busy, I don’t even know who’s playing. I have no idea. It’s so much preparation, and it’s so exhausting to prepare for something like this. You really don’t have time to be like, “Oh man, before we play and after we play let’s go see this and this.” You’re just swamped, you know?

FERAL CHILDREN: We’re playing a party later so we’ve gotta jet. I’m gonna try to come back to see Hole tomorrow if they’ll let me in. We’re gonna see See Me River, they’re friends of ours.

HEY MARSEILLES: I am gonna try to catch Zoe Muth if I can. She started 15 minutes ago. And then I want to see Edward Sharpe, I think. I’ve only heard one track I think. *starts singing “chocolate pie and do du doo…” They have a funny sound. Who else is playing? Neko Case, if I can brave the main stage. I usually skip it. It’s so cavernous in there.

HORSE FEATHERS: Honestly, I don’t know. We’ve been so busy, we got done with the tour last week. And then I had to do a lot of recording last week, so I can’t say for sure. I’m gonna wander around when we get done and see what I can catch.

THE MOONDOGGIES: Booker T. He plays at 8:30.

SLENDER MEANS: I’ve seen Weezer, like, 20 times. I was gonna watch the Redwood Plan, but they’re playing right now. I wanted to see Fresh Espresso and David Bazan but they’re done. David Bazan is playing right now I think.

SURFER BLOOD: Japandriods are good friends of ours, we wanted to watch their set. We got to see The Clientele. They’re a really awesome band they were great live. Wanted to see the Meat Puppets but we didn’t get a chance to. And we’re going to watch The Thermals later.



Stay tuned for part two of these conversations next week!