QUILCENE — The second Tarboo music festival is a wrap.
The festival is the Quilcene Lantern and De Koch family’s biggest push of the year. Seventeen bands played across the three days of programming last weekend.
“Tarboo year two went without a hitch,” Bergen de Koch said. “Our turnout grew significantly while maintaining that homegrown, intimate vibe of the first year. Everyone seemed to have a great time.”
On July 4, Desolation Horse’s set was dynamic, moving fluently from sweet and spare to heavy and distorted. Their set could be heard clearly from the hammocks in the alder grove several hundred feet away from the barn.
Austin Davis, the Lantern’s in-house sound man, Brad Rouda and Nevada Sowle, Blind Pilot’s front-of-house mixer, were responsible for the festival’s sound, Willem de Koch said.
“That was great. The sound was awesome. The stage sound is awesome,” said Cooper Trail, Desolation Horse’s singer and guitarist.
Trail has written the band’s songs and historically played most of the parts on the band’s first three records.
He said the more dynamic elements of the band’s sets, the wider range in terms of volume and tone, come from developing as a band.
Before traveling to Tarboo, Trail was mixing the band’s fourth record with Sowle. The band — bassist Corey Ogelsby, guitarist Joe Hein and drummer Bill Tracy — has shaped the record, more so than previous recordings, Trail said.
Dance producer Chong the Nomad served up a bouncing and manically giddy set to end the mainstage programming on the Fourth of July.
The grounds were sleepy the following morning. Groups of people were milling in and out of the milkshed to pick up their espresso drinks and breakfast sandwiches at the bar. Others were behind the milkshed doing yoga.
Devin Champlin of Bellingham played a solo set midday Saturday, fitting perfectly into the old barn venue with his oaky baritone voice and warm, sentimental songs.
Also Saturday afternoon, The Sky Is A Suitcase, a jazz quartet, cleansed festival-goers’ collective palette. Ray Larsen, the trumpet player, and Levi Gillis, the saxophonist, played call and response variations of simple melodies back and forth over skittering drum parts. Mike Gebhart, the drummer, moved in and out of holding consistent grooves. He was somehow chaotic and controlled at the same time. The standup bassist, Carmen Rothwell, mostly held the whole thing together, notes pulsing strongly down the center of the songs.
The De Koch family and their extended staff all sported dark blue Dickies jumpsuits, as one might see on a mechanic. Each with their name and the name of the festival hand painted on in orange lettering by Steve de Koch. Many of the letters were backwards. Tarboo and some colors and shapes associated with the festival’s graphic design also were custom painted on the crew, on various panels of the jumpsuits.
Through much of the afternoon, music fans spotted the hillside north of the barn with blankets, water bottles and sunglasses. There, the bands could be heard and the sun could be felt at the same time.
Alan Marrero of Seattle said he heard about the festival from a friend who follows music more closely.
Marrero was cooking macaroni and cheese from a box with a whole bunch of extras, stir-fried mixed veggies, for his family and friends, on a camp stove outside of his Volkswagen van.
“It’s been very relaxing,” Marrero said. “It’s been very nice to have something to do that wasn’t fireworks and too patriotic.”
The Hackles played a vocal harmony-heavy set outside, following Chong the Nomad. Marrero said the starry set was special.
“They sounded great, and it was just a real chill vibe, a nice way to end the night,” Marrero said.
Aside from the music, Marrero said a guided nature walk with Erik Kingfisher, Jefferson Land Trust’s director of stewardship and resilience, was a highlight of the weekend.
“That was great,” Marrero said. “That was like the best nature walk I’ve been on. We saw a chorus frog, and it was the cutest frog I’d ever seen.”
Kingfisher also spun some vinyl records at the festival for the second straight year, he said.
The Quilcene Lantern property has a conservation easement on it, protecting Tarboo Creek, which runs through the property and for which the festival is named.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
