Treefort Music Festival 2019 roared into downtown Boise on March 20 and turned Boise into one giant creative and entertainment center until the end on March 24. During this tremendous event, over 400 bands plus the Boise Phil took to stages throughout the area; many art shows captured the interest with a wide range of genres; several food vendors, food trucks and celebrity chefs gave food demos and supplied hungry ‘Treeforters’ with delicious tastes; and spoken word creativity and talks on various subjects kept others interested in what they had to say.
Covering a wide swath of downtown Boise, Treefort was still walkable and easy to get around to the various venues. The Basque Center was the heart of many Foodfort events while the Linen Building, Pengilly’s Saloon, Boise Contemporary Theatre, the Olympic and Prefunk Beer Bar were but a few of the locations featuring live music. Centered in the Owyhee parking lot was Alefort, across from that was the RadioBoise Stage and just a short walk past the food trucks was the Main Stage, where local, national and even international acts played to capacity crowds. JUMP Boise filled the bill for many with many diffrerent events inside and outside.
Also within walking distance, several talks for those interested in tech were part of Hackfort, while Kidfort gave the younger ones creative outlets and storytimes. Skatefort, Yogafort, Filmfort and Comedyfort each drew audiences for their events. Storyfort included many chances for people to show their creative writing aspirations in a vocal way. Many different breweries were represented at Alefort and they also had tasting events there. Oddities even covered evfents that couldn’t be categorized. Guests got tasting glasses so they could try many different beers, ales, meads, lagers and porters.
Food and drink of course were important at the Treefort Music Festival 2019. Celebrity chefs Hugh Acheson, Bonnie Morales and Food Network’s The Grill Dads cooked and demoed a wide variety of foods. Many food trucks provided a diverse quantity of delicious foods to enjoy, everything from BBQ to poutine and tacos. Excellent local chefs including Sarah Kelly of Petite 4, Patrick Costa from the Wylder, John Cuevas from Madre-Boutique Taqueria and Christopher Zahn from Zee’s Rooftop all provided a taste of the restaurants at the Street Eats dinner.
With so many events at Treefort Music Festival 2019, it was impossible to see more than a fraction of them. That is part of the attraction, however—there are so many different types of events and a sheer mass of music during the 5 days that once you arrive, it’s never a question of “there’s nothing good for a few hours” but more a question of “which event am I gonna see nest?”. Musically, there were classical, jazz, rock and experimental shows. Indie, folk, punk and hip-hop were represented while country made it to some spots. Klezmer, New Age and ’80s music each drew crowds while many other genres showed up at vrious locations.
Music performers came from all over for the Treefort Music Festival 2019. Local groups such as Jeff Crosby and the Refugees, Built to Spill, 208 Ensemble, Gipsy Moonrise, The Love Bunch and Cy Dune all came from Boise. Young blues rocker Zack Quintana and the Boise Rock School showed that Bois’s musical future is very bright indeed. From Boise and other areas came Treepeople (Boise and Seattle) and Matt Hopper and the Roman Candles (Boise and Alaska). Idaho in general was represented by Whiskey Sasquatch (Idaho Falls), Hurdy Gurdy Girls (Hailey) and Hallowed Oak (Moscow).
Y La Bamba came from Portland and nearby Pendleton brought James Dean Kindle and the Eastern Oregon Playboys. Tiger’s Jaw arrived from Scranton Pennsylvania while LizCooper and the Stampede came from New York. National acts such as Liz Phair came from places like Chicago while Vince Staples came to Treefort from Long Beach CA, Acid King from San Francisco and Black Mountain from Los Angeles as well as LA Edwards. Mandolin Orange came from North Carolina and both Caroline Rose and the group Waker both came from Nashville.
Canada brought a diverse range of artists, with Goodbye Honolulu bringing their garage/grunge rock and hip-hop artist Haviah Mighty both coming from Toronto. Frankiie came from Vancouver while Art D’Ecco brought some amazing Alternative/Indie music from the Gulf Islands. The furthest act to travel to the Treefort Music Festival 2019 was from Nagoya Japan, home to electronic/Indie pop/Punk sensations Chai, whose show had a packed main stage area going crazy over their music
The Boise Beat is not done with Treefort Music Festival 2019 by a long shot yet. Coming up are in-depth interviews with some of the artists, photo galleries of each day by Terry Welch and features on some of the food and other treats at Treefort. With so much to see and so much to do, by the time everyone is done talking about Treefort Music Festival 2019 it will be time to buy your tickets for Treefort Music Festival 2020!
Treefort Music Festival 2019 website
Photos by Ed Simon for The Boise Beat
