[UPDATE Wed 3:12 pm]: MusicfestNW Executive Director Trevor Solomon offered the following statement this afternoon: “MusicFestNW is excited and pleased to have so many people already anticipating next year’s festival. However, we’re still planning the 14th annual MusicFestNW. Stay tuned, we’ll have big news for everyone in the new year.”
[ORIGINAL POST]: Early rumors indicate that big changes are in store for next year’s MusicfestNW (MFNW). Instead of a multi-day, multi-venue festival, 2014’s edition will be a two-day affair at the Portland Waterfront, with room for 10,000 festivalgoers, and two large stages—one sponsored by Nike and one by Red Bull, the Mercury‘s sources indicate. This is a marked change from Musicfests of previous years, in which more than a dozen Portland venues around town played host to more than 100 different acts over as many as six nights. This will be a condensed, far more focused affair, more akin to other Northwest music festivals such as the Gorge Amphitheater’s Sasquatch!, or Portland’s annual Waterfront Blues Festival. It also marks the end of concerts taking place in Pioneer Courthouse Square, a relatively recent development that, while initially anchoring the festival, suffered this past year from both bad weather and neighbor complaints.
When asked for confirmation on any of the potential changes, or information about 2014’s festival in general, MusicfestNW Executive Director Trevor Solomon declined to comment [SEE ABOVE]. MusicfestNW typically takes place at the beginning of September, and is run in part by Willamette Week. It’s traditionally Portland’s big live-music event of the year, and we like it a lot. We’ll provided any further updates and/or confirmation, as the information becomes available.
This is disappointing news. MFNW’s spread out multi-venue design could be maddening, and lead to musical Sophie’s Choices. But making it just another “Festy” sounds utterly terrible. Part of MFNW was seeing great bands in smaller, intimate venues without the bloated security/wristband/$9 beer awfulness of large venues and festivals.
Drats. MFNW was a highlight of the year. Now we’ve got another overcrowded impersonal festival without personality and weak outdoor stages!
After seeing a show in the square where the only beer available was fucking Heineken, I’m not surprised.
Speaking as a certified Old Person who keeps normal business hours and avoids lines like the plague, I applaud this decision.
Fuck everything about this.
The big draw of Musicfest for me was venue-hopping. Especially when a show I wanted to see was at capacity and I wandered to other shows, only to discover bands that I end up loving.
If I wanted to go to Sasquatch, I’d fucking go to Sasquatch.
This sucks. Another heat fest with crappy sound and no way to avoid douchebags.
I wish they’d significantly raise the price of passes. I’m tired of having to be around poor people.
I’m with CC. I haven’t gone IN YEARS. Because I’m too old and too god damned busy. A 2 day outdoor fest I can support.
This completely ruins MFNW for me. Way to go.
So all the complainers don’t think there will be a multitude of non-sanctioned concerts going on all over the city during the fest? Like the NW Hip Hop Fest that coat-tailed on this year’s MFNW?
There will probably be non-sanctioned concerts, but if you’re a quality touring act, it would seem kinda dumb to compete head-to-head with an expensive, two-day festival. The vast majority of people are going to go with just the festival, and there are only so many people who see shows of a given type in clubs to begin with.
Unfortunately, the festival format doesn’t play very nicely with others, compared with the weeklong multi-venue format.
I’m really surprised by all the complainers; I think this is great news. This year I was only able to see about a third of the bands I wanted to because some of them played at midnight on a Wednesday (I’m old and I have to work in the morning), many of them played overlapping times, and in one case I waited 45 minutes in line only to not get into a venue that was at capacity. If a two-day waterfront festival guarantees I’ll get to see more than half the bands I’m interested in, I fully support it. Oh, but they’ve GOT to to better than Heineken for beer… this is Portland for goodness sake.
Happy if this puts an end to drunk, cross-city venue-hopping.
Meh. I can count the bands I’ve sort-of-cared-about-seeing at the past few MFNWs on one hand. Cumulatively. This changes nothing, and the same asshole johnny-come-latelys who’ve finally caught on to that one band you saw at Rotture / East End / Dantes 2 or 3 years ago will still get their fix of mini-Coachella-style group affirmation when the same band, now signed to Sub Pop or Matador or some other pseudo-indie relic of a label from the 1980s, plays MFNW. Music festivals are for the weakest-minded, lowest common denominator and these fuckers love $9 beers. Suck it down, pricks. I’ll be watching much better music on the other side of town.
What’s up with all these old people? 😉
Do the waterfront AND the old multi-venue format, PLEASE!!! Been going the last 4 years and my favorite experiences have been in smaller venues that have not been close to capacity.
I’ve been coming to MFNW from out of state for three years now largely BECAUSE of the multi-venue format. Getting around and experiencing Portland and the various stages around town has been a large part of the attraction and the fun, and the reason I travel to MFNW instead of Sasquatch or Coachella. If they want to replace the Pioneer Courthouse Square shows with similar events at the Waterfront, that’s cool, but otherwise I hope they don’t wreck what’s worked so well in the past.
Your complaints about “old people” will be valid once someone younger than 35 starts doing the booking. The last few years of rewarmed indie-reunion-dreck looked like a generic CMJ-reading assclown’s best-of list from any month between 1998 and 2003.
MFNW: bands that were “cool” many years ago, now liked by squares such as yourself.