Scott Swanson
Sweet Home’s other music festival, Psychostock, will be held Saturday, Aug. 15, in Sankey Park.
Coming two weeks after the massive Oregon Jamboree country music extravaganza, Psychostock in many ways represents the other end of the music spectrum.
The free-flowing, grassroots-style festival will feature musical genres as varied as industrial, punk, metal, world beat/tribal and indie rock.
“Most of them are genre-benders,” said organizer Andrea Culy, who puts the show on with her husband Patrick Culy and Jon Pelcher, all of Sweet Home.
Well, “organizer might not be the right word.
“We facilitate the event,” Culy said. “We don’t organize. We just let it flow.
“It’s small, just families and friends getting together.”
The festival will run from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., with “family-friendly” fare till 7 p.m., she said.
The festival has grown since the Culys and others organized the first one in 2010, to provide exposure for local musicians.
“It’s gotten bigger,” Culy said. “It’s first-come, first-serve now. We don’t contact bands any more. They contact us.”
This year’s line-up includes Regulo Junior, a “crazy, one-man show” from Portland who is back from last year, and The Berated, also returning, representing industrial music, she said.
Other acts will be: punk bands Downtown Devils and Nuclear Nation, both of Salem; metal bands Dead Kingmaker of Albany and Bury the Goat of Lebanon; indie rock groups Axis Salvation of Eugene, Truth and Trepidation, a duo of Sweet Home musicians Joe Hefty and Jackkie Ohmer, and We are Brothers of Portland. The other band, Loki’s Labyrinth of Sweet Home, which performs “world beat and tribal” fare, is Culy’s own group.
But even that is a bit of a simplification because, at Psychostock, there’s a lot of free-flowing movement.
“There’s a lot of sharing of musicians,” Culy said. “That’s kind of the point – networking. People meet here, they meet each other’s families, and they start playing together.”
A new attraction this year will be puppet head performers, which were part of a recent Northwest tour by Green Jelly, the band that has specialized in puppet-oriented performances including a video version of the “Three Little Pigs” that has attracted 1.7 million views on Youube. Culy said the puppets will accompany The Berated and will likely “be performing throughout the day.”
She said organizers are hoping for a crowd of around 300 to 500 people. Vendors, who usually number between about a dozen and 20, will be on-site, including at least one food vendor, Taqueri a Ruiz, which was located on the Sweet Home Chamber of Commerce grounds during the Oregon Jamboree.
She said she would like to see local artists take advantage of the opportunity and bring displays, for viewing or sale, of “hand-made, local art.”
“It’s free,” she said. “The bands don’t get paid. The patrons get in free. Vending is free.
“The people who come from Portland think it’s amazing. They can’t believe it’s free.”