Volts podcast: a music festival that treads lightly on the earth

In this episode, Zale Schoenborn shares about emphasizing
sustainability at Pickathon, the Northwest music festival he
founded.


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transcript)


(Active
transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


Listeners, today at Volts we've got something a little different,
a little off our beaten path. It’s an episode about one of my
favorite music festivals. It might not seem obvious to you why
you should care about a small music festival in the far northwest
of the country, but I think if you are patient and listen for a
little bit, you'll get a sense of why I’m spending time on it
(beyond self-indulgence).


By the time 2011 rolled around, I was more or less done with
music festivals. I love live music and have been to many great
concerts, but most festival experiences were so hectic,
stressful, crowded, dirty, and exploitative that it just no
longer seemed worth the effort. (That has only gotten more true
in intervening years.) So I was a little skeptical when a friend
told me about the Pickathon festival, held every year about 20
miles outside of Portland, Oregon.


For one thing … “Pickathon”? Sounds like one of those twangy
festivals with crunchy hippies playing mandolins and banjos. That
is not my bag. But he assured me that the lineup is diverse, from
all genres, focused on acts that are about to break bigger.


He talked me into going. And listener, it blew my mind.


For one thing, the land itself is gorgeous — it is held at
Pendarvis Farm, a sprawling area of pastureland and wooded hills
that is used only once a year for gatherings, only for Pickathon.


Every attendee camps (the festival lasts three days), but not in
some crowded parking lot. Rather, there is a whole network of
trails running through the woods, with established camping spots
that have been used and reused since 1999 when the festival
started.


Then there’s the crowd. It wasn't jam-packed. You could always
get food or drink with very little line. You could always see the
band, no matter which band you wanted to see. There were tons and
tons of families and children and almost no backward-baseball-cap
bros. It felt oddly wholesome.


But perhaps the strongest impression I took away that first
weekend was how weirdly, anomalously clean the festival was. One
staple of festival life is giant, overflowing trash cans, with
food wrappings and disposable cups strewn everywhere. At
Pickathon there was none of that. There was virtually no visible
trash. Water was free, available at spigots across the grounds.


It all struck me as so intensely human, so humane, that I fell in
love and attended almost every year thereafter. (Here’s a 2013
story I did for Grist and a 2017 story I did for Vox, in which I
interviewed 20 artists in three days.)


Pickathon is back this year after a two-year hiatus, so I
couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk with festival founder
Zale Schoenborn about how the festival has evolved since 1999,
what's next on the sustainability front, and what's new at the
festival this year. Even if you don't happen to live in the
Pacific Northwest and can't attend, I think you'll enjoy hearing
from someone who has put so much thought into into bringing
humans together to commune and celebrate in a socially and
environmentally sustainable way.


Alright. Zale Schoenborn of Pickathon, thank you for coming to
Volts.


Zale Schoenborn


Thanks for having me.


David Roberts


I'm sure this must be an insanely busy week for you, so thanks
for taking the time.


Zale Schoenborn


No problem. It is definitely exciting.


David Roberts


Yeah. So there's a ton to talk about with your music festival,
but first, I guess I'd like to just go back and hear a story that
I'm sure you have told hundreds of times by now. But Pickathon is
remarkably long-running, in the context of the music festival
world. It started in 1999, which is just wild. So stretch your
mind back, if you can, that far, and tell our listeners the story
of just why did you start a music festival? And initially, when
you started it, what was kind of the vision? And to what extent
is that vision changed or sort of held steady in the, doing math,
24 years? 3? 23 years since?


Zale Schoenborn


24? I don't know. It's all ... you got to count one extra year in
there, I think. Great question. Well, going all the way back,
something that lasts 24 years, if anyone has the honor of kind of
a hobby that grows out of control, that can turn into something,
that's the only way you get to what Pickathon is. It's years of
making horrible mistakes, and fixing them, and surviving them.
So, like, all of the above. But if you rewind all the way back to
1999, it really was pretty humble beginnings. We just thought of,
why don't we have kind of a better music party with our friends?
And we always had this idea of "genre-based music festivals are
really annoying." Like, how come we have to be so isolated in a
Bluegrass festival or a Rock festival?


David Roberts


Yes, thank you for saying that. I don't know why that's not a
more widespread opinion. "We're having an ice cream festival.
Come and eat all ice cream for three days." I mean, I like ice
cream.


Zale Schoenborn


Exactly. You really get sick of music you love, if that's all you
hear. So it was interesting because the response from the
pre-program crowds was very negative to that. They did not
endorse it. There's like a hardcore following in these kind of
genre circuits, and if you were there, they're going to come see
the genre that they kind of support. But if you mixed it up, you
are off in Never Never Land. And it wasn't until the really big
festivals like Bonnaroo and other folks started mixing it up
some, that that became a thing. So now it's pretty common, but we
stretch it a little farther. And that's kind of like the early
days. We were just kind of having a party. Let's potluck party.
And we said, "jeez, what can we do with all this energy? Well,
let's support our community radio station." So we were just like
raising money for KBOO, a local radio station here. And that kind
of happened for like six, seven years in that mode.


David Roberts


This was in Portland, though.


Zale Schoenborn


It did start ... we were out in Portland. We've been in three
different sites. So the first site we were out at is Horning's
Hideout. So in this KBOO phase, we were out in a place a little
bit out in the west side of Portland, and beautiful little kind
of reserved acreage in the coastal mountains. We didn't survive
there because there was just a lot of neighbor turmoil, and we
were the little festival. We were having awesome acts. I think we
had one of the last Holy Modal Rounders, true performances by
them. Kelly Joe Phelps.


It was awesome, but it was just not ... it takes a while.
Pickathon is one of those things that we could tell everyone it
was going to be awesome. And we, basically, had to have people
come and grow by like 10% a year because that's the only way
folks would get it. We just didn't do a lot of what we do now
because this site we were at, the Horning's Hideout, had a venue,
it had power, it had water. It wasn't like an open farm, it was
like a pre-set site. But when we got kicked out of there about
six years into that, we kind of found a temporary home for a year
down in Pudding River, and then eventually found the Pendarvis
Farm. And it's in those years where we really grew up.


David Roberts


And what year was that? What was the first Pendarvis Farm year?


Zale Schoenborn


I think it was 2006.


David Roberts


So tell listeners, because this is one of the, I think everyone
who's been to Pickathon would agree is one of the most striking
features of the festival, is the grounds, itself, Pendarvis Farm
itself. So tell us a little bit about how you found that because
my understanding is that that area, that farm, is not used for
other festivals or gatherings. It's a once a year for Pickathon
kind of thing. So how did that come about?


Zale Schoenborn


Through friends. So we had somebody that had gotten married
there, and they said, "well, you should check this place out."
And it was a friend that's married. They weren't doing like
weddings at that time. They just had kind of a friend's wedding.
And I did. I went to, actually went to one of the ceremonies
there and checked it out, the little party they had. And I didn't
really know the scale of the property because they hadn't really
maintained the back, even right behind their farmhouse. So maybe
the first two acres, three acres of it, five acres, I could see,
but I didn't know went back a half mile


And right when we figured out the scale of this and met Scott and
Sherry Pendarvis, who are definitely special people in the
universe, we hit it off, and the energy Scott and Sherry throw
out into the universe is kind of both inviting kind of
creativity, but also they want their property to have this place
for wildlife and fauna. And so not doing something all the time
was, kind of like, part of where they were coming from because
they weren't looking at it from, "let's just turn this thing in
and turn it around every week." They were like, "let's do
something special, and then we don't want it to do because we're
going to wreck the wilderness."


David Roberts


One event a year, and sort of the rest of the year is like
restoration and growing. So I've always wondered, how is there
not like a line of people at their door saying, "I love this, I
love this area, I love this venue, let us do this too. At least
have two festivals a year, or three." It's amazing to me that
they've resisted that for all these years.


Zale Schoenborn


It's not a business equation for them. They want to live and be
sustainable, but it's different than if you were running a
business and trying to maximize it. It's just not where they're
coming from. And there's a lot of logistics that you have to run
through. You have to get permits with the city. So it's a bit of
just like the amount of tension you want to try to fight with,
like, "how much, what kind of permit do you want to actually run
your events?" There's a lot of overhead in that, and I think just
us being so large, so impactful, really kind of felt like the
right balance for them. And yeah, it's been great.


David Roberts


So what do you do? You find this, I mean, basically, huge
wildland. It's like pasture and woodland, and you're looking at
it, and you're like, "how do I impose a festival on this?" Like,
you have to create every path, every stage, every sort of venue.
Like, every little bit of the festival has to be imported onto
that site because there's nothing pre-existing there. So when you
first looked at it, how did your mind not just short circuit? How
do you go from nothing to festival accommodations?


Zale Schoenborn


Well, desperation definitely helps. That is the kind of starter
pack for willing to take anything because we didn't have a spot,
so we didn't know really what we could do there, how big it could
be. And you're 100% right. When you went beyond kind of the main
field they had their horses in, it was ten feet rolling,
four-inch thick blackberries, choking everything. I mean, it was
the craziest amount of blackberries, and they just haven't been
tended to for a long time. So it was more than just wild. It was
just choked.


And there were a couple of roads. There was like an old, there is
a second grove forest that was logged, a couple of times, but
they logged in the so that road existed. And Scott and Sherry had
a couple of other trails that they had already, kind of,
throughout the land. But, yeah, about 80% of those trails, Sherry
and Scott kind of rolled up their sleeves, and we made, like, a
trail system, and we slowly, surely cleared out the forest over,
I would say six ... You've been coming for a long time. So were
you there when the "Wood Stage"?


David Roberts


I was trying to figure this out the other day. 2011 was my first
year.


Zale Schoenborn


Okay. So we might have been kind of fully baked, close to it on
the trail side, but we were still probably adding trails when you
came. It's been a slow process. There's only so much you can do
every year.


David Roberts


Yeah. And this is one of the things, I think, that's really
striking about the festival when people get there and see it, is
that there's now this network of trails through the woods. And
not only a network of trails but these campsites have been used
now once a year, every year for whatever, decades now. So it's
like a little city. It's like a little city in the woods, of
little roads and campsites. There's nothing quite like it
anywhere else.


Zale Schoenborn


That is the truth. When it's all assembled together, we like to
call it Big Rock Candy Mountain, where you don't see rough edges,
and it just kind of feels like magic. But underneath it, yeah,
there's power, there's water, there's security, there's fire,
there's dishwashing, there's a site maintenance. There's so much.
Everything you would need in the city, you're right on task,
right on point. And that took a while to kind of build too, a
long while. We had epic mistakes that were so hard to deal with
in the festival year, we hit them, and then next year, we would
try to address them. So the system looks kind of well-oiled, but
it's really a series of just major gas, that are probably really
custom to the site. You probably wouldn't make sense everywhere
else.


David Roberts


Right. What were some of the biggest mistakes?


Zale Schoenborn


There are so many. I mean, so many. For a while, we just let
folks go into the woods and find campsites. And I don't know,
actually, if this existed any other festival, but we have this
idea now. And the consequences of that was fine when we were
small, but as we started to get a little bit more people not
familiar with the grounds. There was a situation where people
would just go in 100 feet. They wouldn't even try to find a spot
that was open, and they'd camp on the side of a hill. And then
they tied their tent or something to a tree, and, boy, were they
mad. I mean, we just got so many people just having these
horrible experiences, or they took them forever to find a spot,
and we just felt so bad.


David Roberts


It was a little stressful too. There's an anarchy element to it,
when everybody's just sort of heads for the woods. You're like,
"oh, my God."


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah. What can you do? What can you do? We came up with this
idea, and it's really developed pretty significantly into what we
call the "front desk for camping, the camp-host." And now they
are a crack crew of firefighters now, pretty much, that are
amazing. And their job is to kind of like show you on a dry-erase
map, they're talking to the crew out in the field, and they're
kind of telling you where there's availability and where you
should go look. And if you have too much stuff, or you have some
trouble carrying your gear, we have like a gear drop service
where we kind of put it in a bin, one through five, and it will
show up, and you can exchange a tag and get it out in the woods,
right? It's actually delivered to you. And that whole experience
of getting everyone in comfortably meant to be like a little
thing, but it's a humongously important thing.


David Roberts


I've lived through it a couple of times, and yeah, it's so, so
crucial, and it's so amazing how well it works. The very first
time I did it, as we were wandering back into the woods looking
for a camp spot, the number one thing I thought was, "my God,
there are so many ways this could go wrong."


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah.


David Roberts


There are so many ways you can f**k this up.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah. And people get mad when that's happened. That crew is like
well-oiled machines. The first year you do any crew, it's kind of
clunky, and it kind of works. And then those people stick around,
and didn't hate it and liked it, they kind of create their own
community, and all of a sudden, before you know, it's like it's
always been there. And it works like a charm. And that's where
we're at now with that. Some of the big sustainability stories
for us, like having so much plastic, it was just crushing to us.
We're like, "this is awful. What are we doing?"


David Roberts


Oh, this is great. Well, this was my next question anyway, so
this is a perfect segue. So let's jump into this because from the
first time I went, the cleanliness, relative to other music
festivals I've been to — I think people who go to music festivals
at this point are just used to giant, trash cans overflowing with
crap everywhere, and like, paper plates, and Styrofoam cups, and
just junk everywhere — And this is remarkably absent at
Pickathon. But I assume that you didn't start out that way. So
I'm sort of wondering, in terms of sustainability, how central
was that from the beginning? Or is that something you brought in
more over the years?


Zale Schoenborn


We always cared, and so we were always thinking about it, but it
was as we started to really grow, you start to lose control of
telling your friends, "just bring potluck dishes." At some point,
to service that many people, you have to start bringing in
pallets of water bottles. And everyone likes to charge for water
in our world, which was just abhorrent to us, which is I'm like,
"how can you charge basic necessities?" Like charging for the
bathroom or something?


We just kind of grew into it from wanting to do the right thing,
but it was just really kind of broke for us in 2009. We're just
like, "this is crazy, there's got to be a better way." And there
were some festivals in Canada that were trying to do some stuff,
like reusable. But we kind of had some very hardcore friends in
the recycling world, and we just came up with just a really grand
prognosis, "well, what if we do no plastic? Let's do none." And
then we're like, "yeah, let's do that."


David Roberts


Is that why water is free or was water always free?


Zale Schoenborn


Water is always free, but you had a lot of it we couldn't
service. We found some tanks around that time too. We had water
tanks, but we still had to have water bottles a lot, everywhere.
Or people brought cans. But it was mainly just the spirit, like
just having the sense of, "we're going to have like a quarter
million cups that we're going to throw away."


I think actually in that preceding years, we had this dream of
compost, right? So we're compostable cups. We were in there, but
Portland being such a sustainable, kind-of-minded, hardcore town,
people were calling us out. They're like, "yeah, you guys are not
going to compost cups. Nobody wants cups. Yeah, they say they're
compostable, but you're going to have to go find a special spot
to do that." And we're like, "really?"


All of that led to that design. Thinking of, "well, let's just
get rid of it." And we had some very good friends that were
working for Klean Kanteen at the time, and they were kind of into
this idea, and we kind of made up this idea of, "well, what if we
have a stainless steel cup, and everybody has to hold on to their
cup? And what if we make a silicone ring that you could put
around the cup, and a carabiner, and you could clip that cup to
your belt so it's not such a pain in the booty to walk around all
weekend with it."


And we really thought through it, and we ended up kind of really
checking with the health department. And we decided, "yeah, let's
do this." And all the advice was "make it optional". And we're
like, "oh my God. Well, then what's the point? And nobody's going
to like this." And sure enough, we kind of threw it out to our
crowd, and they loved it. They're like, "should we get rid of
plastic?" And it kind of went early days of going viral, but it
went viral.


David Roberts


So it was the cups first.


Zale Schoenborn


Oh, yeah, that was the big first step. But it worked so well. And
it just seemed like, "duh". We were just like kind of like, "of
course you should do this. It kind of pays for itself."


David Roberts


I know. Well, this is the thing. You go to the festival, and you
walk around for three days with your cup attached to your belt,
filling up free water from all these faucets around you. And you
just cannot ever go back to a normal festival, where every time
you get thirsty, you have to find somewhere to pay $8 for a small
bottle of water. You're just like, "I could never go back to
that." It's absolutely primitive. It's one of the many things
that seems so obvious once you do it.


Zale Schoenborn


Yes. In Portland, we ruined the ability to charge for water. It
was such a blowback for years. I remember MusicFest Northwest was
charging for water in those years, right after we started giving
it away. And there were people just couldn't, were just up in
arms. They're like, "what are you doing?" We're like, "we're
sorry. I guess we ruined it. We didn't mean to, but we're going
to give it away again. Can't help it."


David Roberts


And so then comes the food. And of course, everybody who goes to
Pickathon is very struck by the food system and ends up talking
and talking about it. I remember my first year that I experienced
it. I went through, what I'm sure everybody goes through the
first time they encounter it, which is sort of initially
presented with this idea of like, you have a token, you exchange
it for a bowl. When you're done with the bowl, you exchange it
back for your token. Sounds a little bit complicated. You do it
once or twice, and once again you're like, "holy s**t, how does
the whole world not work like this? This makes so much sense."


So explain kind of the bowl-token system, and who thought of
that? And when was the first year that you attempted that?


Zale Schoenborn


So 2010 was when we did cups, and that cut our waste stream down
by a third. Just that one thing. And we were like, "yeah", but
what we kind of noticed is we still had a ton of single-use
dishes, and forks, and all kinds of things that were related to
just throwing it away. And you couldn't really compost a lot of
that. You could say you're going to compost, but a lot of it
ended up going to the trash because these compostable things at
the time just are not truly, like, just trash compatible.


And we just said, "well, God darn it, what can we do? Can we
actually go further and have this goal of getting rid of
single-use?" And it's still kind of like a North Star because
it's almost impossible. But I do believe, from the festival side,
we were pretty successful. We said, "you're going to have one
bowl, so what is that going to be? And you're going to have one
utensil." So we came up with the perfect food bowl being a
nine-inch pasta bowl.


David Roberts


Oh, man, I love your freaking bowls. I am not kidding. Me and
everyone I know who's been to this festival has at least like a
dozen of these bowls, that I've used for years and years. I mean,
the bowls that I got the first year I was there are still in my
house holding up somehow.


Zale Schoenborn


And the cups. And they're so easy. Going back to your point,
these also just pay for themselves. Like, you buy a token, which
costs you basically the amount of the bowl. You give that token
every time you want to eat to a vendor. They give you food in the
bowl. You finish it, you give it to the dishwasher. We wash those
dishes all weekend. And then when you're leaving for the weekend,
well, you get your token back from the dishwasher. And so you're
not carrying your bowl.


It's not like the cup was. Like we said, "you can carry the cup.
It would be a lot more awkward to carry your own bowl and wash
your own food." At the same time, we kind of created a
do-your-own washing station, in case people didn't want to use
ours. But we weren't going to give you any plates, so you have to
bring your own or use ours. And almost everybody uses our token
system. And then you're carrying around a token. It's really
easy. But the cincher, and the way it kind of really works for
everyone, is at the end of the weekend, you'd give that token to
the dishwash station, and they give you a clean dish to take
home, right? That's it, closes the loop.


David Roberts


It also serves as a souvenir, and it's incredibly useful. It is
like the Platonic ideal of a dish. It works for everything.


Zale Schoenborn


Soup? Salad? Really nothing doesn't work in a nine-inch pasta
bowl. It's kind of the spork of dishes.


David Roberts


Exactly. So then you eliminated single-use cups in 2010. So maybe
2011, the first year I came, was the first year of the bowl
tokens?


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah, you experienced the very first year. And I mean, we had a
lot of hiccups in that dishwash system. We engineered a very
low-flow special dishwasher, that can run off of water that we
had from the farm. And there was a ton of engineering, by a local
dishwashing company, to figure out how you could do this and do
it on a farm at enough volume to keep up. And it was rough, but I
think to the most people, it was a great experience. And it was
another just, "Aha", we got another third of our waste stream
down in just one year. It was incredible. There's just so much
being thrown away.


David Roberts


Was there any blowback at all? Was there any complaints at all
from the attendees?


Zale Schoenborn


Maybe one or two over like ten years, but it really isn't. It's
incredible. And that's what's so astonishing to me is, like,
we've been trying to, like, give this away to festivals. Like,
"look, it doesn't cost you any money. This actually pays for
itself. You should just do it. It's so great."


David Roberts


But to your knowledge, like, you've been doing this system now,
which has eliminated, or almost eliminated, single-use bowls, and
plates, and stuff for over a decade now. Has anyone else picked
it up? Has anyone else?


Zale Schoenborn


I think there's some people trying the cups. There are some
spin-off, but I don't think anybody's doing it. There's a lot of
optional stuff, a lot of, like, "oh, if you want to do it." And
that doesn't work, and you can't predict on how many to buy. And
it basically feels like a disaster to the festival organizer
because they spend money, and nobody did it, and then nobody
really actually, you didn't get any benefit. But the only way
this works, and we've told it to everyone, is like: you know how
many people are coming, you buy that many plates and dishes, it's
not optional.


David Roberts


What's left in the physical waste stream bucket that you're going
after?


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah, there is trying to get all of your vendors to bring kegs of
things, right, not to bring packaged goods. So we've pushed
wineries to put stuff into kegs, and that's now a very common
thing people are doing, and it's cheaper for them. So we've been
pushing a lot of the people that want to bring us cases of glass
and cases of packaged things, that we want to get these things in
bulk from you in reusable containers.


That took a while to really say "no" to people if they wouldn't
do it. They're like, "really, you don't want this free stuff?"
We're like, "no, we can get it from somebody else. And we really
want to. I think it's good for you too. Like, you can start
delivering to bars in this way." And sure enough, Portland, you
do see a lot of reusable stuff and things in kegs. And for us,
going back to why other festivals aren't doing it, I don't really
know. And I think there's a really kind of American sense that
you don't want to force people to do something. It would be so
inconvenient to have a reusable dish or carry a cup. It's just
terrible experience.


David Roberts


But it's crazy, like, the audience loves it. It feels like you're
doing something. It feels like you're helping, right? It feels
like you're involved in something with other people, where you're
out of the ordinary.


Zale Schoenborn


It doesn't feel bad. That doesn't feel weird, does it?


David Roberts


No, it doesn't feel like an imposition. It feels like a fun thing
you're doing together. How much physical waste is left?


Zale Schoenborn


There's compost from food mostly. So what we still have is people
don't eat all their food, and our vendors have some compost waste
in our kitchen. So then I think that most of our waste, though,
comes from our campers, as much as we ask them to try to. Like, I
would say 80% of our waste is people in the campground, and it's
hard to police that. So we talk about it, we get folks to kind of
be into it. But we are very generous on people being able to come
because a lot of families come. A lot of people need to bring a
lot of stuff. And what a pain in the butt if we were just
policing every little thing.


But we've made it so that the festival side, when everybody gets
up with a blanket at the end of the night, right, the only thing
that's on the ground is blankets that people leave.


David Roberts


Yes, I remember. I mean, I don't know. I keep going on about
this. My first year there, it took me a couple of days to even
pinpoint it. What is different here? Why does this feel ... and
it wasn't until the second or third day, I was like, "oh, there's
just no trash. There's just no trash everywhere. I'm so used to
trash everywhere."


Zale Schoenborn


Yes.


David Roberts


It's really mind-blowing.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah.


David Roberts


So let's talk about some other sustainability aspects then.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah.


David Roberts


And as you say, one of the other striking things about the
festival experience, when you go. is just that it's not mobbed,
it's not crowded. Like, you can get food, you can get water, you
can see the band. There's never been a band at Pickathon that
I've wanted to see that I've not been able to go and get a pretty
good view of, just because there's not that many people there. So
tell me about sort of, like, the capacity of the space versus the
sort of number of people you let in, and kind of what is that
calculation, that balance? And how has that evolved over the
years?


Zale Schoenborn


Well, it goes back to as we were starting to grow, and it wasn't
just me supporting it off of my day job. And we really started to
need to kind of, like, couldn't be just volunteer. The hardest
part of a really dreamy idea, a concept, is probably the first
couple of years, right? You're doing it off of just vapors. Your
family is involved. Everyone's just willing to work for free. No
one's like, "it's a dream." The third or fourth year, it's like,
"I can't do that. I can't take off two weeks to work. I'm sorry,
I can't do it."


Things get in the way in life. And so you start to fall back more
and more on having to kind of pay for things. And that's usually
the place where most of these kind of community events die. Is
that kind of hard transition?


David Roberts


Right? Some professionalization is inevitable.


Zale Schoenborn


And we were hitting it hard. We were hitting it hard. We were
like, "what are we going to do?" And we knew from other festivals
that our path was going to take us to kind of grow in the
capacity. And we just kind of like, deep down, we're like, "god,
we don't want to go to that festival." But we didn't have any
choice. So we really just threw it out to our audience, and asked
them, "we're like, okay, here's what we can do. Do you want us to
just keep our ticket prices low and just grow this thing and get
it to be like a normal festival you've always been to, or?"


David Roberts


Let's just pause and make a note here. You could, the space,
acreage is huge and could accommodate lots more.


Zale Schoenborn


About 5X, yeah.


David Roberts


Five times. So what is the ticket sales capped at now?


Zale Schoenborn


They're capped at $5,000. Just one of our main fields could
probably hold 50,000, right? That's how big our main field is. So
it's kind of ridiculous, but it's really awesome.


David Roberts


They couldn't all camp, right, though?


Zale Schoenborn


They couldn't all camp. But you could run like a day festival.
Lots of things about Pickathon wouldn't — the more people would
have really ruined camping, too, in terms of being a universal
thing you just get for free. People forget that. Most times you
pay for camping. But yeah, that was a conscious choice.


David Roberts


So you asked the audience, you said, "our expenses are growing.
We can either let in a bunch more people or raise ticket prices."
When was the first time you sort of presented that to the
audience?


Zale Schoenborn


I think about 2007, somewhere around that Avett Brothers kind of
time frame. It was somewhere in that range because we just knew
we had to kind of make a choice. We were kind of outgrowing our
own infrastructure at the time. The whole farm wasn't there, but
we just really needed to know how we were going to do this.


And we kind of also had the idea of, way too early it turns out,
David, that we should scale by being a filmmaker in digital
content. That was part of our sustainability plan. We're like,
"okay, we're going to stay small, charge a little bit more, but
we're going to create this beautiful film. And we're going to
export and infect the world, we're going to bend the arc of pop
culture in some weird way." And those are all kind of, like, they
were all interconnected at the time, those same ideas.


David Roberts


So you first presented that question to the audience in 2007. The
audience responds, "please keep it small. We will pay more."


Zale Schoenborn


100%. 100%. Yes.


David Roberts


Have you returned to them with that same question, again, since?


Zale Schoenborn


It's kind of new. I mean, we have ... people know that about us.
We have to often explain it more to people because at this point
we are actually moderately priced. There was a point where we
were pretty high priced compared to where festivals were. Now,
festivals are pretty expensive, so we have a lot less of those
questions. And we didn't grow our ticket prices in the same way,
that our major ... we play Coachella on TV, right? We are like
1/200th of the size, but we're in the top ten festivals. But it's
only by playing that on TV. We're really like 1/100th of the
size, or something goofy, right?


David Roberts


I wonder the equation there, the sort of balance there. At a
certain point, making the tickets more expensive will kind of
start to make it feel exclusive, right? It will kind of start to
price out some families and stuff. I know this is not a science,
but is there a point at which you would consider letting in more
people, or sort of how do you think about that balance ongoing?


Zale Schoenborn


Well, we definitely think about it on multiple levels. One, is we
don't charge for kids under 13, so they're free.


David Roberts


And there are a bunch, I should say. There are lots of kids.


Zale Schoenborn


Oh yeah, there's like 1,500 kids under twelve and like 1,500
teenagers under 18. It's a lot, and we kind of made that, "Okay,
these guys don't count." And it's hard for families to come. So
like if you, yes, the tickets are more expensive, and if you want
to come as a family, and you're paying that much for your kid to
come, it becomes really proactive. So that was some of the
equation. We're like, "okay, we're going to charge for the
adults. People can bring families. It feels a little more
economical." And I don't know where the balance there is. It's
still a tough one for us. We keep our prices as aggressively low
as we can, but we think about it every year. We're like, "is this
too much? Where are we at in this equation?"


David Roberts


Is the video stuff? I mean, I assume part of the motivation of
getting into video and streaming, and all this kind of stuff was
to open up a new revenue stream. Has it brought in much money?


Zale Schoenborn


Well, not really. The most money we ever made is ... we did a
concert a day with the Recording Academy right after COVID hit,
and we raised several hundred thousand dollars for Music Cares.
We were right there with the Grateful Dead, raising money. Pretty
hilarious. And that was like a great time. But as you might know,
being in the business, things like YouTube and stuff just don't
pay that much. And monetization has been off and on. In the
balance, it's been a positive because that ability for us to
scale and kind of reach the world through our content has worked.
100%. People know us. Some early video of Mac DeMarco peaked
before he was ever known.


David Roberts


Really great video too, I should say. Like, really incredibly,
good-looking video.


Zale Schoenborn


We care a lot. Yeah. That crew is like 700 people at Pickathon,
believe it or not. It's like a movie set, right? The whole thing.
And we still believe in it. I mean, I definitely look at it from
a sustainability point of view. I am happy keeping it at this
scale. We really do want to figure that out. I think the timing
is getting more, right, at some point in the future, there is
some way that this is going to be scalable. And we spun off a
company named FRQNCY to try to make it better. And we've had some
success. That stuff is slow, so slow. But we think of it as a
sustainable plank, if this is a good way to kind of scale, versus
just trying to ruin the land and do other things.


David Roberts


Right. So, final sustainability thing I want to ask you about,
and this, I guess, is probably the other big piece of impact for
any festival, is just people coming and going to it, driving to
and from it. So what were your first, I mean, I assume you wanted
to tackle that from early on. So sort of what's the history of
your efforts to reduce that? Just the sort of gas, and traffic,
and everything else impact of people driving to and from.


Zale Schoenborn


Well, a lot of parts of that. So you incentivize it. For us, we
knew that people driving to Pickathon was just, "how can we get
less cars?" And we've been thinking of this and pushing on it.
And for us, where we are kind of now, in 2022, we're like, "okay,
it's all about kind of like carbon taxing, right?" Bikes are
free. We're committed to that. You don't have to pay a cent ride
a bike. It's only 12 miles from Portland. Anybody could ride a
bike to Pickathon, like, just do it.


David Roberts


I should say you organize these sort of bike trains, these bike
groups, so people can ride.


Zale Schoenborn


We throw your stuff in a moving van, and we go out together,
right? And the average biker is pretty sophisticated in Portland.
They have their own system, and they can carry a lot of stuff.
And there's over, I don't know, I bet you there's 1,500 bikes at
Pickathon. I think that's a huge number. And that's level one.
And then take a shuttle, take transportation. The max is 5 miles
away. So we kind of price that the next level of cost. Like, it's
cheap. You can just jump on back and forth, and you're able to
come and go anytime you want.


And above that ends up being cars. So you want to bring your car
for the day or the weekend, you should carpool. We set up
carpools. And you just kind of go up the food chain there. Then
people want to camp, and there's some car camping, and there's a
little bit of RVs. But we just have just a little, and those are
kind of like the level of taxing people. We really have been
pretty successful at getting folks on bikes.


David Roberts


On a big-picture level, do you feel like your efforts in this
area have been as successful as your efforts in, like, the solid
waste area? I mean, it's really, talk to any urban planner,
anybody, anywhere, like, this is the hardest nut to crack of them
all. Are you satisfied with how well you've ... ?


Zale Schoenborn


Honestly, I want to push more. We were toying with no cars, but
the American psyche, right? Maybe we'd be just fine. We didn't
find it so funny, just like you got kind of like the cups and the
plates, but people are traveling from far away, and we just know
that it is a tough nut. I think you just nailed it. It's not
really something that we can just do and make it an easy
experience for everyone. Like plates and cups.


David Roberts


Yeah.


Zale Schoenborn


But there is one really big thing we're doing this year, that I
don't know if you know about, that is kind of like going to
probably have the same level of impact, sustainability-wise, as
all the things we've done. We've been talking about. We
redesigned the festival in a way that I'm we're really excited
about. I don't know if you know much about that.


David Roberts


Only what's come out on the emails, and I haven't looked that
closely. Just to help listeners, sort of the way it was, and has
been for the last decade, is there's sort of these two big fields
with big stages, and then there's like a barn and a little shack
here. And then there's a stage off in the woods, the "Wood
Stage". Just legendary, amazing place. Little sort of stages
scattered here and there that have people playing in sort of
staggered timing. But before we get to this year, let's just
briefly talk about the last few years, which have been difficult
for literally everyone in the world, but for you as well.


So the worst thing was in 2019, Pickathon was very well known for
a long time for having these big sails, kind of big pieces of
fabric hovering up in the sky, kind of blowing in the wind,
sheltering you from the sun. Very visually striking. In 2019,
there was an accident. Two people died trying to take those down.
And that was traumatic and involved some fines, and some
scrutiny. And then the next year got canceled, I think. And then
the year after that got canceled because of the pandemic. So it's
been a real turbulent last few years.


Talk a little bit about how you got through that because I,
around this sort of 2020 years, was hearing rumors that it might
be over that Pickathon might be over, that Pendarvis' farm might
not be open to having it anymore. So just, I'm sure you could
talk for hours about this.


Zale Schoenborn


You forgot that thousands of houses have moved into our parking
lot too, right?


David Roberts


Yes. And development is sort of encroaching on the farm. So give
us a sort of capsule summary of the last few years, kind of the
turbulence, how you've gotten through it, and how you're feeling
about this year being kind of a renewal.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah, it was a lot of grief and trauma. So our accident was kind
of, like, it happened in a way that was just really tragic. Total
accident. Just one of those things that experienced people with
very little, ten minutes left in the last day, and an accident
happened, and it was just awful. And basically, we were in a
place where we were just rallying around our community, trying to
understand how to do grief and trauma. And that was like a very
kind of, in a weird way, brought a lot of people together, in a
good way, even though we were really just kind of having this
moment.


And it made us think. We didn't know exactly what, we were trying
to, kind of thought, "okay, we're going to again eliminate a lot
of this risk. We're just not going to build the kind of things
that are here." We've been doing this for twelve years, and we
kind of felt really good about our systems, and we just decided
... and that was like a pretty major thing for us. But we didn't
quite get to the point of being able to execute on it because of
COVID. COVID hit. And that just really felt like a gut punch not
just to us, but to the entire creative world. And we were just
... "how in the world are we going to survive?"


And that's when we pivoted to the kind of concert today, helping
Music Cares. Because we're like, "okay, we got these people," and
then some of the PvP. And then we started doing a lot of advocacy
work with NIVA, National Independent Venue Association, and
became kind of a really force to be reckoned with. And generally,
that lobbying effort to support kind of independent venues was
one of the best things that happened out of, in terms of
organizing in the pandemic. It saved the entire industry,
including us.


David Roberts


Were the rumors I was hearing just rumors or was there a time
when you seriously had doubt about whether the whole thing would
move forward?


Zale Schoenborn


They never really know ... the combination ... We're not in a
solid ground because of — not because of the farm. I mean, the
farm is great. It's parking, and there's a lot of challenges. The
farm is more valuable to become into houses. If it was a normal
set of landowners, they would flip this thing, and the whole farm
would be mowed down for houses, like every tree. That's what 95%
of the universe would do in their situation. Because it totally
is ready to go. Shovel ready to be giant, giant development.


David Roberts


So it's just the Pendarvis' themselves, really, their personage.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah, it's them and us willing to kind of try to adapt. We could
also kind of throw in the towel, like, "no way, we are not up for
another 'figure it out year'." Because it's like doing it over
every time, and you're like, "wow, it's a lot of energy, it's a
lot of work." And we knew that in these kind of last several
years. If we came back after 2020, it's going to be a lot of
work. Okay, "well, let's come back in 2021. It's going to be a
lot of work. Okay, I can't do that."


"Let's go back in 2022." And so here we are. And it's even more
work because some of the plans that we built for the parking
lots, now they have houses in them, and we have a different lot
for parking. And we're surveying it, and mapping it, and doing
all kinds of things that are kind of ridiculous for a weekend
event. But we're restoring and removing blackberries. Eventually,
this whole thing is going to be mowed down and turned into
houses. It's the last remnants of a golf course that we're using
this year.


David Roberts


Is this a long-term worry? I mean, are you going to get closed
out of parking entirely? Eventually?


Zale Schoenborn


We have some plans, hopefully, for the next three to five years,
I think is our hope. That's good news, but I can't promise. I
think all we know is we're on this year, and the intention is
there. Pickathon, I think is strong enough. It should be able to
last. We don't know if our future will be there, but I think
there's a path for at least three to five more years. And we're
looking to try to come up with something even longer. But it
would really be nice, David, if it was just, like, set, and we
could just operationally get better.


David Roberts


Yes, it would be nice if the fundamentals weren't constantly
shifting.


Zale Schoenborn


Yes, I had little joke with people. I was like, "man, wouldn't it
be great if we just had our businesses just running and not
reinventing itself every time?" Maybe it wouldn't be as much fun,
but sometimes you just think about that.


David Roberts


Well, all that said, then you're coming back here in 2022, August
5th-7th, approaching this year, you sort of had a little bit of a
blank slate because you had a couple of years off. So what's the
new thinking this year in terms of kind of the grounds itself,
and rearranging, you're rearranging the physical space itself
into what you're calling neighborhoods. So a) what does that
mean? And b) what does it mean for sustainability? In what way is
it more sustainable?


Zale Schoenborn


The big takeaway for us was, "Okay, this 2020 hindsight, here,"
when we were just sitting around talking with kids, in the music,
and thinking about it, you start wandering. You're like, "well,
if you were going to redo it, how would you do it?" And so one of
the big things you mentioned, you said you really love the "Wood
Stage". And that "Wood Stage" was kind of a big part of how we
came to an "aha". There's this stage that David mentioned. "Wood
Stage" is essentially a permaculture artist town Mark Lakeman
built. We harvest sticks from the forest, and we make a
sculptural stage.


David Roberts


It's like a natural amphitheater that it's sitting in. And it
looks, to all appearances, like a stage grew out of the woods
there.


Zale Schoenborn


Yes, and we're rebuilding this year in a really very awesome,
sculptural way. But yeah, that stage wasn't a big lift for us. We
built that every couple of years. We had to clean it up and
repair it. But in essence, the other stages we built, which were
impressive. I mean, the Mount Hood stage you mentioned, which was
one of the larger temporary tension fabric structures in the
world. And the "Tree Line Stage", which is a very kind of
elaborate project where we try to reuse materials, and they have
to go somewhere else. Diversion architecture, we call it. It's a
whole nother sustainability part of Pickathon.


And they're wonderful. But no matter how much placemaking, I call
it placemaking, people love the "Wood Stage", no matter how
grand, no matter how big it was. And the "aha" was like, "nature
kicks your butt, kicks everyone's ass, you just can't beat
nature. So like, well, why try? Why don't we go the opposite way,
and rethink about this entire property, and say there's so many
beautiful places on this farm? Why don't we just think about
those beautiful places as settings, and then kind of come in, and
vibe, and add things to those places? And what if we go a little
bit further? What if we think about times of day and places? What
if you, in the daytime, when it's 100 degrees in Oregon, in the
summer, what if we're in the woods, and there's not as many
people in the morning?"


So we can be a little more intimate and kind of keep the energy
up, and we can migrate back and forth between spaces that are
shaded in the woods. And then as the day goes on and the sun
starts to set, we can kind of move out into bigger fields. And as
it sets a little further, we can move out into the, finally, the
biggest fields. And that's what we did. We're like, "oh my God.
Aha! This is how you should build a festival." And if you think
about it, it's like a bunch of wood stages. That's kind of the
vibe we're trying to create this year.


David Roberts


There so there are several brand-new stages, areas, places this
year


Zale Schoenborn


This year neighborhoods we're calling them. And they are kind of
zones that are natural zones, like they're a bowl or a hill.
There's some geographical thing on the farm, and we, basically,
are kind of connecting those all together. And the carbon
footprint result of that is, we haven't done the math, but it's
many, many factors lower because you're now not needing all this
incredible heavy equipment. You're not trucking tons and tons of
materials across the universe to give them to you. You're not
spending all of this energy and gas to kind of build things that
have to be quickly torn down. You're just dramatically reducing
what it takes to put on something, even at the scale of
Pickathon.


David Roberts


So some of these new stages are going to be like the wood stage,
in that they just stay there?


Zale Schoenborn


No, mostly in the shade side. So, like, when we built the "Tree
Line Stage" or the "Main Stage", the "Main Stage", we built a lot
of that sales for shade. We don't need shade because we're using
nature. We don't need to use giant settings. The way we oriented
the "Tree Line Stage", which was a stage that's built by grad
students at the Portland state every year, they built it out of
pallets, out of concrete tubes, out of 2x4s. And after they were
done.


David Roberts


Very visually striking.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah, after the festival, it went back to become 2x4s.


One year, it was built out of a kit of parts that became a
homeless village for veterans in Clackamas County. So pretty cool
ideas there, too. But the scale of those kind of settings, we
built because behind them, there really wasn't anything to look
at. So you're building these kind of places. We're flipping that,
and now you're looking at trees like you said, or the farm
setting. And I think it's just better. Like nature kicks butt.
Like it kicks ass. Like, why, you try to, why fight it? Just lean
into it.


David Roberts


You got, what, like a week and a half, a week and a half to go?
Are neighborhoods in place? Have you had a chance to sort of walk
around and experience these yet? Because this will be brand new
to the audience.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah, I mean, there's another whole factor we're doing that's new
as part of that because we knew we couldn't pull all this off, so
we kind of divided all of these neighborhoods and went out to the
community and kind of presented like, "okay, each of these
neighborhoods is a design-build challenge." And we went out and
tried to recruit kind of a combination of architects, designers,
project managers, builders.


David Roberts


Oh, interesting.


Zale Schoenborn


For each one of these teams, and then kind of treat it like their
own little Burning Man. Not just because people build these
elaborate things in Burning Man, I'm kind of using that. But it's
like the PSU idea, where we found a community that could, every
year, design and build. And those grad students, it works because
it's a class and because those grad students actually get amazing
jobs after they do this project because everyone — they've won
National Architecture Awards. We're like, "well, we can figure
out other sustainable models for communities on why they'd want
to do a design-build." And it turns out there are many. So we
have like 15 of these incredible collections of design-build
teams, and they are all spinning things up that are to die for.


David Roberts


So each neighborhood has a team in charge of it? A team that owns
it?


Zale Schoenborn


Yes. It's going to be incredible.


David Roberts


Oh man, I can't wait to see that.


Zale Schoenborn


I think it'll be awesome. A lot of people have been manufacturing
and building, and a lot of this material is going to be reused
again somewhere else. So it's very awesome. I know that this
approach to kind of doing festivals, and kind of involving
community, and kind of creating all these other tie-ins. How can
you do this in a way that all these teams, it's a sustainable
process, they'll do it year after year? There's a lot to be mine
there, and maybe we can talk about on your next podcast.


David Roberts


One thing that's striking about this, and all the other things
you talk about, is just how bespoke it is, and, thus, how much
care and investment it requires. This is not something — this is
not something a big company could buy, and scale up, and make
lots of money off, right? This is just a high touch ... and
that's just not something that makes pure business sense. It just
doesn't.


Zale Schoenborn


Yes, it doesn't. We like to call it — the whole thing is
completely irrational. Absolutely.


David Roberts


But it's commensurately beloved.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah, well, it is that kind of underlying dream sandbox. We often
say, like, "the Olympics of what everyone does," come do
something at Pickathon. It's probably like, what, "you do what
you do, but do the Olympic version of what you do," and that
works. And you kind of like, getting folks to kind of have that
break in life where they do something very much what they do,
whether carpenter or something, but they're doing something in
this context where it just has such a big impact. It's just a
really rewarding thing for everyone.


David Roberts


Yeah, and you can see people enjoying it, and using it, and
loving it. It's a very direct feedback loop there.


Zale Schoenborn


And in many cases, it furthers their professional life, too. So
that's where it all ties back together. Like sometimes they show
off, and they're recognized, and their connections are made, and
businesses grow. And so we take a small band that ... Pickathon
is known for discovery. We are known for kind of taking bands to
the next level. And we've been saying that this is great music,
and having faith, and you should just book good music, and that's
all that matters. It doesn't need to be known.


David Roberts


I will say, and this is not true of many festivals, I have
discovered lots of new bands through Pickathon. Like, it's
genuinely the "not quite, just about to break" bands, you know
what I mean?


Zale Schoenborn


If you lived here, David, we'd be hanging out playing cornhole,
and joking, and debating music. I could tell, It's a very open
source idea where you just kind of dig into communities of music,
and whatever is like the hot red, red hot, like, Elvis kind of
movement of that scene, probably isn't well known yet to a lot of
people, but the people who really care, this is it. And you
listen to those people. Typically, you don't even have to be a
fan of that style. You literally put that next to ... When you
experience it, you'll be like, "oh my God, that's amazing."


David Roberts


Yes, I've had many of those experiences over the years, and I've
kept you for too long. But the one final thing to say about the
music, too, is I think Pickathon has become somewhat legendary in
that bands love it. And you can tell, by the time they play,
they've usually been there for a day or two, and they're like,
"man". They love the bamboo bowls, and they've just been, like,
wandering around, chilling out. It's hard to put into words, but
I've been to a lot of music shows, a lot of music festivals. I've
seen a lot of live music. And you can tell when a band is, like,
relaxed and into it.


Zale Schoenborn


They're on vacation. We get a lot of bands who just know that
they're going to come and chill out or be fans of other ones.
It's really easy for us now. The music is really easy. We are
sought out by musicians and by agents.


David Roberts


I'm sure in the grind of touring life, like, going to Pickathon
for two or three days is like, feels like a vacation from work.


Zale Schoenborn


And, like, again, that sustainable thing. We hope to kind of bend
pop culture in a weird way with good music. I mean, artists that
play Pickathon, immediately, their lives change. They bump up
several places in what they can do. And that's so awesome, right?
We can take all this energy that's been focused back to kind of
making them not only have a good time but actually their life
changed, right after.


David Roberts


And so this year, the big, I guess the big two artists, insofar
as you'd called them, headliners, are Valerie June and Wet Leg,
which I feel like is a good snapshot of kind of.


Zale Schoenborn


Oh, and JGZA. Don't forget GZA.


David Roberts


Right. The the diversity involved. Alright, well, I've kept you
forever. I mean, it's probably obvious that I'm a fanboy in this.


Zale Schoenborn


Are you coming this year, David?


David Roberts


I actually am.


Zale Schoenborn


Okay, good. We will continue this conversation in person.


David Roberts


Yeah, exactly. I'd love to hang out once we get there, but sort
of the final question. Obviously, your priority in the years
going forward is just to help things survive and fight to
preserve a little bit of parking against the incoming
development. But in terms of sustainability, in particular, is
there a next big item on the list, or is it mostly at this point
just about kind of buffing and dialing in the pieces that are in
place?


Zale Schoenborn


I can't think past this year. We have to land this ginormous
spaceship on a dime. Where we leave ... the ambition we have this
year is kind of staggering, in terms of like taking all these
teams. So something will go wrong, and then that will be the kind
of ... or some things will go really right, and we'll build on
them. I don't know. I hope what we are thinking about is, "this
is amazing," and I think it is. And it's going to be the first
year a lot of teams kind of hit their mark. If you remember way
back when, when the PSU started, they had a pretty moderate
pallet stage. You remember that stage?


David Roberts


Yeah, I remember the first one.


Zale Schoenborn


And it grew and grew in ambition. I think if we get this right,
all of these teams are going to kind of have that same arc.
Whatever they do this year is just a tiny taste of what is to
come.


David Roberts


And we should say that for listeners who can't attend the
festival, which I assume is probably most of them at this point,
that the whole thing is live-streamed.


Zale Schoenborn


Yeah.


David Roberts


You can buy a live-stream ticket? How does that work?


Zale Schoenborn


You can go to FRQNCY.live. There's no vowels in that
F-R-Q-N-C-Y-.live, or go to Pickathon, and you'll see a Pickathon
livestream. You can basically get access to every show or kind of
like a curated broadcast, where we kind of pick and move around
different stages. There's a couple of ways you can do it, and
it's great that you can kind of see the 700 people working hard
in person on the Internet. We take it very seriously. As you
know, David, we're big film buffs.


David Roberts


Awesome. So people can at least, maybe, drop in and see a little
bit, see what these neighborhoods look like, even if they can't
make it out.


Zale Schoenborn


It'll be a wonderful experience.


David Roberts


Awesome, Zale. Well, thanks for taking all this time, and I will
see you in a couple of weeks. Maybe we can play some cornhole.


Zale Schoenborn


Okay, take care.


David Roberts


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