Oregon Music News

It’s a sunny, mild, early summer evening in June, and the PDX Pop Now! Booking Committee is meeting at Booking Coordinator Ed Thanhouser’s home in the tree covered, narrow streets of Northeast Portland [Editor's note--Thanhouser is a contributor to Oregon Music News].

The early arrivees are milling around a kitchen table covered in sheets of paper and Post-it notes. On the Post-its, the then unreleased names of this year’s PDX Pop Now! lineup. The committee members are careful to make sure the names aren’t leaked (though the lineup was officially announced shortly afterwards).

Almost all of the committee’s dozen members filter in over the next fifteen minutes, settling down to discuss the last remaining spot for this year’s PDX Pop Now! Later in the evening they’ll begin slotting one of Portland’s premiere independent music festivals.

Since 2004, thousands of people have relished in the annual PDX Pop Now! Festival, which has grown into three days of free, all-ages music showcasing dozens of Portland’s finest bands.

What most may never fully appreciate, though, is the hundreds of volunteers and thousands of hours of work it takes each year to make it all possible.

PDX Pop Now! is an ambitious organization, a “volunteer-driven, 501(c)3 non-profit organization committed to celebrating and promoting Portland’s vital music community.” Aside from the annual festival, they’ve put out six compilations (featuring talent like The Decemberists, The Blow, Lifesavas, Blitzen Trapper, and The Thermals), and have worked with the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, schools and local businesses to “make more safe all-ages concerts possible and allow young Oregonians to participate more fully in the local arts community.”

Their fête hasn’t even happened yet (it’s coming July 30 through August 1), but Communications Coordinator Benna Gottfried says, “We’ve already begun the initial planning for the 2010 – 2011 programming year.” The organization is led by a “hands-on Board of Directors” that works with “more than 250 people [who] donate their time and talents to the organization” over the course of the year. There are no paid staff.

Gottfried explained that “anyone can bring their own skills and talents to the benefit of PDX Pop Now! All one has to do is email volunteer@pdxpopnow.com to let our Volunteer Coordinator Hannah Rosenau know that they are interested. “Most of that work happens in three core committees.”

The Fundraising and Sponsorship Committee is a small but dedicated group of volunteers that works year-round on the corporate sponsorships, fundraising and donations that keep the festival alive.

The Compilation Listening Committee is open to anyone, and the entire voting process is done online. Though they never meet in person, Gottfried says that “this year 70 volunteers listened and voted on the nearly 700 tracks that were submitted for consideration.”

And the Booking Committee, a dozen people of “different ages and backgrounds,” selected by the Booking Coordinator through an application process that begins in January, is tasked with “booking a festival that showcases the diverse music scene that Portland has to offer, while ensuring high-quality performances and headlining acts.”

This year’s Booking Committee is made up of 12 fervent, devoted Portland scenesters. From the time they’re appointed, committee members are expected to attend shows weekly, dig deep into Portland’s music scene, and report back every other week.

There’s an air of excitement at their June meeting. After months of listening to and contacting bands, the committee is finally ready to schedule them. As far as booking goes, Thanhouser says, “We’re like 99.99 percent there! Which is awesome… and that’s why I brought doughnut holes to celebrate.” At this point they have 47 of 48 bands confirmed for this year’s festival.

What follows is a cordial excercise in democracy. The group weighs scheduling the well established (and potentially headlining) Jackie-O Motherfucker against newcomer O Bruxo, an exciting but relatively unknown group–both bands ultimately ended up scheduled for the festival.

The committee civilly listens to multiple tracks from each band, discussing the relative merits of each– the quality, the draw, whether or not they have too many acts in this particular genre. When they finally settle the matter, everyone moves into the kitchen, and large sheets of white paper with dates and times are hung on the walls. Post-it note band names are slowly added to the schedule, and PDX Pop Now!, as it will ultimately be experienced, begins to take form.

If this meeting is indicative of the organization as a whole, there is an excruciating amount of thought and concern that goes into how this festival presents itself. Tellingly, the full schedule wasn’t released until weeks after the committee initially began agonizing over slotting the festival.

The effort goes in fits and starts. Committee members enthusiastically post names, only to collectively step back and see the festival as a whole. The group is hyper-conscious of genre, of where bands will fit best. As Thanhouser says, “We don’t want the ‘folk-block.’”

Contrary to other festivals that build a crowd around a particular style of music, the “whole point” for PDX Pop Now! is to “bring the most diverse and numerous crowd of people to [one] place at a given time.” They want fans who might only show up for one artist or style to be exposed to music they never would have heard otherwise.

But Thanshouser also says, “You also don’t want to set bands up to fail… there are certain pairings that would be unfair… having an acoustic act right after a heavy metal band.”

They hash out the specifics–who will bring in a crowd on Saturday morning, who should headline each night, who will benefit from a slot with a bigger band. And every step of the way there’s an attention to detail that only comes from the sheer love and joy of dedicated volunteers who are passionate about local music.

It was that night in June–and a year of countless meetings, emails, fundraisers, and listening parties before it–that will bring Portland three days of glorious pop next week. Don’t waste it.

PDX Pop Now! is free and all ages, July 30 – August 1 at Rotture.