The lineup for the 2010 Sasquatch! Music Festival will be announced Monday (Feb. 15) at the Crocodile during the Sasquatch! Launch Party, which will feature Surfer Blood, Atlas Sound and Seattle's own Fresh Espresso.
Tickets for the event are free and can be picked up at Easy Street Records beginning Friday (Feb. 12) with a limit of two per person, or you can win tickets by listening to 107.7 The End. The launch party will be hosted by Luke Burbank and it marks the first time the festival's lineup will be announced live. I would've gone to the Crocodile to see Surfer Blood simply based on the band's recent show at Chop Suey and its excellent new album Astro Coast. The Sasquatch! lineup announcement is a bonus.
Not much is known about the lineup for this year's festival, which takes place Memorial Day Weekend at the Gorge. Last week it was revealed that Wale and Miike Snow will be performing. They join Pavement, Neon Indian, Vetiver, Morning Teleportation and Why? as the only confirmed acts to date. You can probably expect to see Surfer Blood, Fresh Espresso and Atlas Sound there too, considering they are playing Monday's launch party.
Destination festivals like Sasquatch! have evolved a bit in the promotions and marketing department in the past few years. Now that bigger bands are touring the festival circuits, festivals can't depend solely on their lineups to create a buzz. To counteract the recession, Coachella has offered a layaway program. Tickets for Sasquatch! went on presale in November, at the same time the bombshell was dropped announcing the headliner: the reunited Pavement. At the time, Sasquatch! was set to be one of Pavement's few U.S. reunion shows. Now that the band will also play Coachella, their Sasquatch! set doesn't seem as special.
Also in the marketing department, last week the organizers of Bonnaroo announced they would be dropping names of festival performers throughout the day Tuesday (Feb. 9, a week before the Sasquatch! lineup announcement). The idea is to allow fans to talk about the lineup as it is revealed and to create a daylong Internet buzz in the process. This Sasquatch! launch party is another way Sassy is trying to distinguish itself from its counterparts (its location and focus on local talent being two others), and it's cool to see Sasquatch! stepping up its game a bit considering it is one of the smaller big U.S. festivals behind Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and Coachella.
If you can't wait to hear the lineup for Sasquatch!, a few weeks back I posted some speculation about who might be playing the festival on Ear Candy. You can read that post here.
