What The Festival 2015 – A Ridiculous Amount of Fun

 

A grandma slips and stumbles through the pool, dragging her walker along with her, though it does little to actually help her walk. “Grandma needs a colonoscopy,” she screams, as a stander-by shoots her repeatedly with a water gun where the sun don’t shine. Nearby, a man in a dress with the head of a poodle chats it up with another man, though this one is sans dress and poodle head (as most men tend to be). A group of male nuns perform baptisms, and a woman riding a crocodile floats past them, oar in hand. Orcas and saxophones fly through the air as a Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man jumps around with joy. Or was it just a red laundry hamper with a face? Either way, the mermaid laying in the pool is just about the most “normal” thing in sight. All the while, glitch-hop, future bass, and tech-house DJs take the decks, and all of these wild characters dance in unison. No, this isn’t the craziest fucking dream you’ve ever had. This is What The Festival.

I don’t say this lightly, but What The Festival may very well be my favorite festival that I’ve ever been to. One thing is certain: it was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had at a festival. Just a ridiculous amount of fun from start to finish. I felt nothing but positive energy from so many different factors, and this resulted in the most enjoyable overall festival experience I’ve ever had. A perfect, intimate amount of people populated a stunningly beautiful venue, a pristine private ranch 2 hours east of Portland, nestled in the forest with incredible vistas of Mount Hood and Mount Adams. In its fourth year, and third year at this particular venue, which was purchased by the festival founders for the sole purpose of throwing this amazing event, the relatively new What The Festival brought out the big guns. The entire event was remarkably well-organized, and everything just fell into place so nicely. I felt like nothing could go wrong. I’ve heard the term “adult summer camp” thrown around, and that is just such an accurate way to describe this festival– a combination of camping under the trees out in some beautiful nature, playing in the water all day, hanging out with friends old and new, and dancing and partying all night to the awesome music and programming that your camp counselors– er… event organizers– have laid out for you. What The Festival’s influences are clear. Burning Man and new-age transformational festivals have certainly paved the way for What The Festival’s creators, and members of those cultures are in no short supply here. But What The Festival has taken those influences and used them to create something wholly unique, quirky, and absurdly fun. There’s really nothing quite like it.

Let’s start with What The Festival’s most iconic and unique feature, the Splash Pool Stage. Let’s be real, whoever thought of the Splash Pool Stage is some sort of sick genius. All day, from about noon until 7pm, the Splash Pool is the only main stage of music going, meaning the entire festival gathers here and creates the world’s most epic pool party in the middle of a private, forested ranch, three days in a row. Three awesome freaking days. This builds a very intimate community vibe within the festival. We all tore up the Splash Pool dance floor together. Everyone was there. Nobody at the festival didn’t get to experience that, and this community vibe persists throughout the weekend. The first two days of Splash Pool tunes were pretty future bass heavy, with some killer sets by Gladkill, Jpod, Wave Racer, and more. Sunday was definitely more of a house day, headlined by Thomas Jack’s Tropical Pool Party, which ended the weekend’s daytime festivities with a bang featuring sets by Thomas Jack himself alongside Anna Lunoe and Justin Jay. The most memorable feature of the Splash Pool, however, is the absolutely ridiculous and hilarious costumes that people wear and the characters that they in turn become. Costumes and characters at a festival is nothing new (and it never gets old, frankly), but throwing them into a swimming pool in the middle of the forest certainly mixes up the formula, and the ludicrosity increases exponentially as a result. Nuns, squirrells, squids, poodles, nutcrackers, and bros (oh wait, those guys weren’t in costume, were they?) stand alongside others in standard swimwear and festival garb. Throw them all in some dirty knee-high water, and the ensuing shenanigans are fantastic.  Inflatable donuts, sharks, orcas, tootsie rolls, giraffes, penguins, palm trees, beach balls, and more soar through the air all day. Getting decked in the head for the 100th time with a giant sea turtle is not annoying– rather it’s another opportunity to dance with a fun floatie in the pool.

In any case, to participate in this pool party leaves festival-goers in a constant state of awe. It’s so ridiculous and fun that you feel like you’re borderline defying the laws of physics just by being there. I constantly had to ask myself, HOW can this be possible? How are we all here? How is this even allowed? Are we really dancing to Jpod and Lane 8 and Pumpkin and Thomas Jack in this wading pool for the third day in a row? Are those Funktion Ones? Is that seriously Mount Hood over there? Is this real life? You couldn’t pay someone $1 million to wipe the smile off of their face at the Splash Pool. It’s just too much fun. That fun and that smile last the entire weekend too. Seriously, I don’t remember seeing a single face at any point throughout the weekend that didn’t have a smile on it! I’m not exaggerating! I heard multiple people admit that their jaw was in pain by Sunday night because they had just been laughing and smiling non-stop for three days straight.

One of  my favorite moments of the entire weekend was also one of the final moments. As the sun was rising on Monday morning, my campmates and I sat around in our camping chairs (all but one of which were totally broken) and reminisced about the magical happenings of the Splash Pool. Specifically, we just couldn’t stop laughing our asses off as we discussed people’s outrageous costumes, but more importantly, we began to plan our costumes and characters for next year’s What The Festival. Rest assured, there may or may not be a group of babies in the Splash Pool in 2016. If you thought the Rugrats were up to no good, just wait until you see us.

Once the pool party ends at 7pm, most people return to camp to recharge and get ready for the night. And what a night it will be. Two main stages hosted most of the evening’s music, featuring acts such as Odesza, Big Gigantic, Slow Magic, Justin Martin, Machinedrum, EPROM, and more. These were huge, epic sets for an intimate crowd, and it’s just hard to beat that. Especially when Mount Hood, Oregon’s highest peak, is just hanging out in the background at the main stage while the moon shines through the twilight as the infinite sky fades from pink to black. There’s just nowhere else on Earth that you can experience that specific moment, and share it with 5,000 other people. Amazing. Once the main stages wrap up around midnight, the real fun begins– certainly for a night owl like myself. I’m going to make another bold statement: What The Festival 2015 had the best late-night / afterhours parties of any festival I’ve been to. More on that in a bit.

The main stages and the Splash Pool were great– incredible really, but the Illuminated Forest stole the show hands-down. In short, all of the festival’s art installations were lined up back-to-back-to-back-to-back in a winding walk through the forest. Again, I must make another bold statement: What The Festival 2015 had the best art I’ve ever seen at a festival. These aren’t the biggest, most epic, mind-blowing installations, but more so a seemingly unlimited supply of subtle, beautiful, intricate art pieces, each with incredible levels of interactivity (anything from projection mapping manipulation to creating music with your arms to just laying down and listening to disco at the amazing cuddle puddle in The Glam Clam). They weren’t just art installations to look at, but art installations to experience, be a part of, and play with. Not the type of festival art that has huge budgets and jaw-dropping scale, but instead the type of festival art where each artist scrapped together every penny and resource they could find and poured as much heart and labor as they could into it to try to get this thing functioning and ready in time. Put all of these art pieces together in one area, and you end up getting that epic, large-scale vibe as you wander aimlessly through this huge decorated forest, getting distracted left and right because there is so much to see and do.

It wasn’t all just art installations in the forest, either. The Illuminated Forest also housed numerous lounge areas and stages, and this is where most of the late-night action would go down. Tucked away at the far end of the forest was The Dragon Stage, the most popular late-night music stage, featuring sets by Sister City (EPROM and friends), Rob Garza (Thievery Corporation), and more on a grandiose pagoda stage decked out with a dragon. Rumor has it that the Dragon Stage was designed to shoot fire, but it never happened. The LOL Stage offered a wide variety of live and electronic acts, including the Lovebomb Go-Go Marching Band and arguably my favorite set of the entire weekend from Portlander and self-proclaimed “live electronic badass,” Solovox. Other musical highlights from the forest included the Starlight Grove, which featured a projection mapped stage and environment and played awesome psychedelic tunes until sunrise. One of my favorite parties in the forest, however, was this brilliant renegade on wheels that was carted into a corner of the forest late each night and threw down an excellent, intimate disco dance party on a unique, customized sound system made of boom boxes. I don’t know who these guys were, but holy shit they killed it.

Perhaps my favorite spot at the whole festival was Shinto A Go Go, a lounge featuring a Spaghetti Western / East Asian fusion of visual aesthetic. There was a very particular and comforting vibe at Shinto A Go Go, as evidenced by the welcome sign with ground rules that asked guests to respect the performers, turn off all of their bright lights, and preserve the aesthetic and vibe of the place. Performances ranged from Portland Afro Latin Funk band Los Estupidos, luchador costumes and all, to the hauntingly beautiful Bondage Erotique performance, or West Coast Bass Dj OCTABÄN. Shinto A Go Go undoubtedly featured the widest variety of performances. Each set was a totally different type of music or performance art, and acts went until sunrise each night. Tea lounges were located in the corners of the space, and there was even free miso soup being served throughout the weekend. A+, Shinto A Go Go. A+. There were other late-night options outside of the Illuminated Forest as well, including the Silent Disco (no festival is complete without one) and the Equinox Stage, featuring plenty of late-night bass music and a nice view of Mount Adams.

When we put all of this incredible, ultra-stimulating, endlessly entertaining stuff into one jam-packed festival weekend, and throw it across a magnificent, beautiful stretch of Oregon landscape, the end result, for me personally, is the most kickass festival of all time. Of all of the festivals I’ve been to this year and other years, this is the One. This is the one that I absolutely cannot and absolutely will not miss next year. Aside from spending a weekend in nature surrounded by stunning scenery, What The Festival is not the type of festival you go to to achieve a higher state of consciousness. There is yoga, there are workshops, there are awesome places to meditate, yes, but the real identity of the festival is in the party, and there’s nothing wrong with that because it’s the best damn party of all time. What The Festival is a place to let loose. To go crazy. To leave your troubles behind and just have FUN. It’s a place to make new friends and to share an amazing experience. It’s an unforgettable place, and it’s an unreplicable place. Wolf Run Ranch, you rock.

A friend of mine joked to me, as we lounged in a couple of La-Z-Boys in the middle of the freaking forest, that if his wife (a non-existent entity) was ever going into labor in mid-June, then she was on her own, because he just could not miss What The Festival. The messed up thing is, we quickly realized that it really wasn’t a joke at all. It’s just that good. I certainly wouldn’t mind being born here. What The Festival, we’re coming back for you. All of us are. No matter what. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

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Check out full photo galleries by Matthew Michael Photography & Babak Haghighi (aka Spirit Shutter).