Seattle, WA – Bumbershoot allows for magic to happen. As Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, told the crowd during his Sunday set, “Just like you guys in the front row, I was watching all my favorite bands during Bumbershoot, and it truly inspired me.” That feeling has been part of Bumbershoot from the beginning. First held at Seattle Center in 1971 as Festival ’71 was created during a difficult time for the city as a way to bring people together through art and culture. In 1973 it officially became Bumbershoot—an old slang word for umbrella, a rather fitting name for Seattle. More than 55 years later, it has grown into one of the country’s longest-running arts festivals while somehow holding onto its distinctly weird, creative Seattle spirit.
This year’s Mainstage lineup was stacked, with enough variety that something was bound to catch your ear. Chicago trio, Pixel Grip, pulled the crowd in early with their dark mix of EBM, electropop, industrial music, and raunchy lyrics. Then Joey Valence & Brae—JVB—caught Bumbershoot by storm. The crowd was jumping, hands were in the air, and people were belting out lyrics. JVB are excellent showmen: think Beastie Boys for the YouTube generation, with a hip-hop-meets-punk sound built to pump up a crowd. But Saturday belonged to Turnstile, the headlining band. The Baltimore hardcore band brought an intensity capable of inspiring even bespectacled preppy boys in Polo shirts to mosh. Once the music started, the crowd went feral. Bodies pushed in every direction, crowd surfers passed overhead, the heat made you hazy, and everyone was chanting so loudly you could barely hear the singer. Sunday’s headliner could not have been more different. Death Cab for Cutie, from the distant shores of Capitol Hill, felt like a breath of cool, fresh air after Turnstile. Instead of bodies slamming into one another, the crowd swayed and sang together as Gibbard and company closed out the weekend with something slower, lyrical and heartfelt.
And Bumbershoot is never just about the bands. Between sets, you could stumble across something completely unexpected. SOS Pro Wrestling was impossible to ignore: ridiculous characters, extreme matches and heels wandering over to taunt the audience, only for kids in the front row to flip them off and throw punches back. Elsewhere, the Fashion District gave local vendors and designers room to show off everything from vintage and goth clothing to jewelry, tie-dye and experimental fashion. The clothes even came alive on the runway, with Indigenous designers, local collections and futuristic pieces that blurred the line between technology and art. And that was only part of it. Across Seattle Center there was film, comedy, visual art, puppetry, breakdancing, skating, performance art and enough strange things happening at once that simply walking from one music set to another became part of the experience.
That may be Bumbershoot’s greatest trick: you arrive because of the lineup, but you leave remembering everything that happened between the songs. It feels less like moving from stage to stage at a music festival and more like wandering through Seattle’s collective imagination for a weekend. So whether you’re a local who somehow still hasn’t gone, or a visitor looking for an excuse to come to the Pacific Northwest, put next year’s Bumbershoot on your calendar. Come for the music. Stay for the fashion, wrestling, art, people-watching and whatever wonderfully weird thing you accidentally discover along the way.
When the final set ends and the lights come up, two days of Bumbershoot leave you wanting exactly one thing.
To borrow from Turnstile:
“Never Enough.”
See you next year.
Words: Justis Truitt / Photos: Travis Smith
Hannah Duckworth and the upper court yard stage made the cut! Hell yeah! Bumbershoot was a blast