Sky River Rock Festival makes changes

The Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair revival is still set for this month but with a few edits to the schedule.

The venue has moved, the car show and pinup pageant are cancelled, and former Heart band members Mike and Roger Fischer have pulled out. Despite the changes, all parties still believe the 50th anniversary event and this summer’s fundraiser will be successes in their own right.

The revival’s location switch to Sultan River Park in downtown Sultan caused two local groups to pull out. 

“The decision was a difficult one, made only after careful consideration of recent events, including a last-minute venue change and changes in the organizational structure of the committee,” according to a Rat Bastards Car Club news release. “We strongly feel that it is in the best interest of Rat Bastard Car Club members, car show participants and Electric Pinup Magazine pinups to dedicate their resources and efforts to the 2018 Sky River Rock Festival Lighter than Air Fair 50th Anniversary show.”

The original idea was to plant the revival on the Lauritzen Family Farm, due south of Sultan. The property sits only five miles from where the first festival took place in 1968.

For two days 20,000 people reportedly packed a former raspberry farm to hear up-and-coming bands like Santana, Country Joe and the Fish, the Grateful Dead and Muddy Waters; the raucous venture took place one year before Woodstock.

It has taken months of toil, but event manager Jill Hatcher said plans are finally set for Aug. 25-26. There are 20 bands lined up to play on two stages and a chain saw carving presentation.

“We have the approval of the mayor and the city of Sultan,” she said. “They gave their blessing, and they have been helping us out. They realize there is value in this, and it has been very nice to have their support.”

Hatcher said preparations at the Lauritzen farm were nearly complete, but the alternate location was preferred. It is already set up to host shows, vendors and the droves expected to turn out for what is billed as the build up for the anniversary festival set to take place next summer. The Lauritzen fields still needed to be graded and prepped for the expected attendees, she said.

Mike Fischer said he and his brother withdrew themselves from this year’s activities a few months ago.

“There wasn’t enough time to pull off an event with the vision that Roger and I had in the spirit in the original one and on the scale and level of quality that we wanted to do,” he said. “We have a lot of momentum and strong support for an event next year, including local support.”

Fischer said he hopes participating groups can pull off the same emphasis on a counterculture experience by bringing back some of the original bands and complement them with other more modern acts. Major corporations, such as Nike, have expressed interest in sponsorship. He said he has also received support from Native American interest groups.

Other offshoots, revivals and anniversaries of Sky River Rock have been held, celebrated and covered by media outlets in the region since the pioneering performances. Follow-up performances took place in Tenino and Washougal in 1969 and 1970, respectively.

Hatcher said many people have continued to come forward with memories from the experience. Most involve a baseline of raunchiness.

“Every single story has the same thing,” she said. “Electric Kool-Aid was being sold and mushrooms. Some people said it was scary. Some said it was an earth-changing moment in their life.”

Greg Garton has taken it upon himself to compile those recollections, Hatcher said. He has become the festival’s historian, and has plans to create a book or documentary that covers the two-year process leading up to the anniversary revival. That will include testimony from those who were in attendance at the original festival. He also has a few stories of his own, she said.

The Missoula resident is a former member of the “counterculture” scene, a term Garton said is actually an “epithet laid on us by the straight press,” and that “has become a common moniker.” Those who truly traveled in those circles called themselves “Heads,” he said.

Garton was in a rock band called “The New Generation” in the late 1960s, when he heard through the grapevine a massive series of concerts were being planned at the elusive location out in Sultan. He and a few buddies were some of the lucky ones able to decipher a handheld map and actually make it out to the grounds that first year.

Garton said through his research, which has involved interviewing festival attendees and members of bands that played there, as well sifting through old photographs, he has found a few of the prevailing myths might not hold up. He personally hasn’t found any proof that Muddy Waters actually played, and that attendance was likely closer to 4,000, not 10,000-plus.

There was no set schedule to go by, Garton said. Bands showed up and would offer to go up on stage for the next set or when their turn came. He said he was one of the few people who can say they had the experience of skinny dipping in a pond on the 40-acre property.

Garton recalls the primitive sound system that was pumping music “into a totally soggy meadow surrounded by trees.” While the acoustics left something to be desired, being in front of those bands was completely worth it.

Despite the changes to this year’s program, everything is still about the music, Hatcher said. Represented genres will span the gamut. Seattle-based Jimmy Hendrix tribute band Randy Hansen is at the top of the list, followed by Norway-based alternative country rock band Helldorado and Seattle-based rock band Palooka.

Leo Moreno, owner of Loggers Tavern and a 2017 festival committee member, held a daylong concert series last year at the bar, also in the spirit of Sky River Rock. Hundreds turned out for the event, proving to current festival committee members an interest already existed for the next round.

There will also be food vendors, potentially free camping in Osprey Park near the festival grounds and a beer garden, Hatcher said. People who bought tickets early and had wanted refunds have been contacted, she said, and the issue resolved.