R.I.P. Sasquatch! Music Festival — Annual Fest Will Not Take Place in 2019
The annual Sasquatch! Music Festival — long a lynchpin in the Pacific Northwest festival circuit — has announced today its plans to cease operations on the festival going forward, a mere month after the festival’s 2018 outing.
“I will no longer be producing the Festival,” Sasquatch! founder Adam Zacks writes in an email statement. “nor will it take place in 2019.”
The prolific concert promoter and festival organizer also reflected on the 17 storied years of Sasquatch! and its brisk rise to one of the Northwest’s premier festivals.
You can read the full statement below.
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” – Theodor Geisel
Today we take a bow and bid a fond farewell to Sasquatch! I will no longer be producing the Festival, nor will it take place in 2019. The Festival began 17 years ago on a hunch, greenlit on nothing more than a name and instinct there was space for something with a uniquely Northwest flavor, on Memorial Day weekend, at one of the most beautiful locations on Earth – The Gorge.
17 years is a long time to do anything. The Beatles lasted a mere 8 years, a fact so astonishing it is difficult to believe. While we didn’t accomplish anything as indelible as “Hey Jude”, the Festival left a lasting mark and proudly represented an independent spirit.
Sasquatch! will forever remain a tapestry of the people who worked with us, the artists who inspired us, and the varied experiences of the fans who attended it … of friendships made, engagements, hilltop weddings, permanent tattoos, once in a lifetime collaborations, weather events both treacherous and magnificent, at least one very public conception, and, of course, hundreds of awe inspiring performances. My humblest gratitude to all of you. May the spirit that made Sasquatch! so special live on.
Onward to the next adventure, Adam Zacks”
The announcement follows a relatively positively-received 2018 showing, whose lineup longtime attendees commended for its ostensible intentions to get the train back on the rails after disappointing myriad core fans with headliners like Twenty One Pilots, as well as canceling fellow main headliner Frank Ocean not a full month before the festival was to take place. 2018’s festival notably featured the likes of The National, Modest Mouse, and David Byrne as main performers.