The 47th Annual Bumbershoot Festival Ft. Flume, Lorde, Odesza, Weezer & More

Bumbershoot
September 1-3, 2017
Seattle, WA

No umbrellas were needed for this year’s Bumbershoot Music Festival. The Seattle festival that’s been around for 47 years had weather that was as good as the lineup! Despite the great weather and lineup, the festival still had it’s ups and downs.

The Lineup/ Schedule

Pros: The best part about music festivals is how diverse the lineups are, it’s awesome getting to check out so many types of music in just a short period of time. This year’s headliners were Flume, Lorde, and Odesza who all put on amazing sets that ended with beautiful fireworks. This year’s lineup also consisted of artists like Gucci Mane, Flo Rida, Lil Yachty, Vince Staples, X Ambassadors, Kaleo, Highly Suspect, Watsky, Kevin Abstract & Brockhampton, Lany, Lophiile, PVRIS, and Broods. It’s also awesome seeing how many Pacific Northwest artists performed at this year’s festival. Unfortunately we were only able to catch a few of them- Odesza, Lophiile, and Harrison Brome due to scheduling but some of the artists we wished we wanted to see were Dude York, Taco Cat, Aminé, and Joseph.

Cons: One of the worst parts of music festivals are the the schedule conflicts and cancellations. It’s always bound to happen when there’s so many great artists performing but it still bums us all out. On the first day Flume, Die Antwoord, and Flo Rida all played at the same time. The second day had Lorde, The Roots, and Dillon Francis on the same time. The last day wasn’t too bad since Haim had to cancel due to an illness but Odesza and Gucci Mane were still both performing at the same time. The fact that both Flo Rida and Gucci Mane were 20-30 minutes late to their sets was also obnoxious.

Favorites:

Our favorite performances from this year’s festival were PVRIS, X Ambassadors, Highly Suspect, Lil Yachty, Lorde, and Odesza. Each of the artists put on performances that were spectacular to say the least.

PVRIS: It’s been amazing watching how fast this band is growing. Just a few years ago I saw them open for Mayday Parade and now they are opening for artists like Fall Out Boy, Muse, and Paramore and playing big festivals like Lollapalooza, Life Is Beautiful, Reading & Leeds, and of course Bumbershoot. The band put on amazing set with new songs off their latest release All We Know of Heaven, All We Need of Hell despite vocalist Lynn Gunn’s “vocal kinks” as she describes them.

X Ambassadors: I always love watching this band perform, the band always puts on electrifying set. Brothers Sam (vocalist) and Casey Harris (keyboardist) are always full of energy on stage, while Sam is jumping all over the stage his brother is rocking out on the keyboards so hard that most people don’t even realize he’s blind.

Highly Suspect: I went to their set not knowing what to expect at all and left a new fan. I’ve actually been listening to them a bunch recently. They even played a few songs that I knew that I didn’t realize were by then such as My Name is Human and Little One which isn’t surprising since both of those songs have millions of plays on YouTube and Spotify. This is a band that loves to just jam out on stage doing what they love and I really recommend checking them out if you don’t already know who they are!

Lil Yachty: We had a blast covering his enthusiastic performance even though we didn’t know much of his music. It’s awesome seeing artists interact with fans. There wasn’t a time during his set where he wasn’t interacting with fans whether he was talking to them, throwing water on them, or running in between the barricades and giving fans high fives. At one point during the set he even put on a fan’s elephant mask for a couple of songs despite how hot it was. It’s was amazing to see fans taking care of each other as well. Fans who were in the VIP section were actually throwing water bottles over to the general admission side of the crowd because of how squished and miserable they looked in the heat.

Lorde: Lorde headlined the second night of the festival and had one of the most genuine and uplifting performances of the entire weekend. On multiple occasions she would interact with the fans for example, she asked the crowd “What even is a Bumbershoot” and when she couldn’t understand the fans she decided to come down to the crowd and hand a fan the microphone to figure out the answer. Bumbershoot means umbrella if you didn’t know! This wasn’t the only time she came down to the crowd either during her song Team she was all over and even gave a fan her shoes for no reason?! When she wasn’t performing a song and dancing along with her dancers she was explaining the songs and talking about her memories of home. It was funny when she talked about how she rode the Ferris wheel and had Sushi which she says probably wasn’t the smartest idea since she’s on tour. Fans sang loudly during crowd favorites like Green Light off her new album Melodrama and of course her hit song Royals.

Odesza: The popular Seattle duo got to headline the last day of the festival, something that’s been on their bucket list since the beginning of their career. I wasn’t sure what to really expect from them, I was assuming it would be like most electronic music performances but it was far from that! It’s no surprise that the crowd was so huge that it felt like everyone who had been at the festival that day was at their set! The duo pulled out all the stops to make this show meaningful and special. Fans were given a first look at songs of their third studio album A Moment Apart and were treated to not one but three guest performances from artists featured on the album. The first to come out was Naomi Wild who performed Higher Ground then later on WYNNE came out to perform Line of Sight. The last to come out was soul artist Leon Bridges who performed Across The Room. The night ended with a beautiful array of fireworks to end the three day music festival.

STAGES

Mainstage/ Memorial Stadium :

Pros: This stage was really big and had a lot of room for everyone to be comfortable while watching the mainstage artists. There was also fireworks every night.

Cons: I’m personally not a fan of split crowds, especially when one side of the crowd is for VIP and one is for general admission (GA) . Fans on the GA side of the crowd looked so miserable and squashed that fans in VIP were actually filling water bottles up and tossing them over.

Monster Energy Fisher Green Stage :

Pros: During the day their was plenty of room at this stage to sit down in the grass and just relax while listening to the smaller calmer acts perform. It also had a really awesome view of the space needle, it was practically right underneath it!

Cons: During the day, the sun was pretty blinding. At night, it got crowded when bigger artists like Flo Rida and The Roots performed.

The crowd was also split at this stage even though the stage was really small.

Key Arena :

Pros: It was an Indoor Stage so lighting and visuals always looked really cool and fans could escape the heat and sit down since it was in an arena that seats 20,000.

Cons: I wish the venue could figure out a better way to handle fans who want to be on the floor in General Admission. If you want to be on the floor of this venue you have to show up early and not leave which means fans are missing artists on other stages to see people at Key Arena. I liked the festival a lot more when this venue wasn’t used because fans were able to check out more music.

FOOD & BEVERAGES

Like most music festivals there were tons of foods to choose from. The Armory (Food Court) offered food and drinks for reasonable prices but the lines were extremely long. You could also get food from stands throughout the festival but the price was a lot higher and the quality wasn’t that great for such high prices. If you like free food some of the festival’s sponsors like CLIF and M&M’s were handing out free Clif Bars and candy all weekend.

MEDIA/PHOTOGRAPHERS:

If you’re considering covering this festival in upcoming years, this part of the review is for you! This festival can be both one of the best and one of the worst to cover.

Pros: It seemed as is if every media outlet that applied to photograph this festival was approved which is great the more people talking about the festival the better, it’s awesome seeing big festivals like Bumbershoot give smaller publications a chance to cover some big name artists. When they sent us rules I was surprised to see that all photographers had access to the main stages, something you don’t typically see at big festivals anymore! It was also nice having a media room with some snacks and beverages to choose from as well.

Cons: We love that so many photographers were able to photograph this year’s festival but we had hopped the festival would have been a little bit more prepared to handle the large amount of photographers. It would’ve been nice to see a group system happening at the bigger stages so that all photographers would’ve been able to shoot every artist but unfortunately the only way you were getting into the photo pit if you weren’t one of the first 20 photographers was if someone the photo pit. The lack of preparation led to photographers waiting in line hours before artists came on stage which made it impossible for us to photograph the smaller local acts the festival had to offer. It got particularly bad the night Lorde headlined when photographers who had waited 3 hours before her set even started were told 10 minutes before her set began that the rules had changed. This frustrated the photographer’s because they could’ve been photographing other artists during that time such as Weezer. We hope the festival takes this into consideration next year and prepares better. At the smaller stages like Fisher Green you didn’t have to wait in line, probably because of the fact that the photo pit area was extremely small, it almost seemed as if it was a safety hazard because there definitely wasn’t enough room for photographers and security guards. It also didn’t help that the stage was so high, fans in the front row were probably breaking their necks just to see what was happening on stage.

All in all, this festival is on track to be one of the best in the Pacific Northwest region, it’s location and lineups are absolutely amazing!

Big Sean