Jenny Don’t and the Spurs on the Edge stage – All photos by Zach Putnam
Pickathon isn’t a music festival so much as a fever dream filtered through Oregon pine trees and earnest idealism. The remnants of this dream leave behind vivid memories: a kid with glitter on their cheeks napping in a hammock during Glitterfox; Taj Mahal summoning ghosts beneath a canopy of biodegradable string lights; a soundcheck echoing through the woods like a lost transmission from a better version of Earth.
I brought my digital camera with me, thinking I’d shoot like crazy the whole weekend. On the first night I took a couple dozen shots, but it didn’t feel right staring at a (very dusty) LCD screen out there in the dark woods. So I put it away and instead I pulled out my Polaroid camera. I tried to limit myself to taking just one photo per artist. One frame. No re-dos. After a quick scan with my phone, I gave each Polaroid away to the artists, as little tokens, imperfect and instant. That’s the kind of thing that’s easy to do at an intimate festival like Pickathon.
Emily Nenni held hers like it was a rare bug. The guitarist from Thee Heart Tones laughed and tucked it in his shirt pocket. These weren’t just pictures. They were proof: You were here. This happened. Look how magic it looked.
Pickathon trades in that kind of ephemeral permanence. No screens, no trash, no headliners so famous they forget which town they’re in. Just moments. Trees. Music that feels like you’re remembering it as it’s happening.
I don’t know if those Polaroids will end up on someone’s fridge or in the bottom of a dusty guitar case. But I like to think that in a few years, someone will find one, smile, and remember that weekend where the world shrunk to a farm outside Portland, and nothing else mattered.
-Zach Putnam
@zachputnam
