Tall Tree Music Festival: Port Renfrew, BC, June 26-28, 2015

By Blake Morneau

A mountain is a strange and beautiful place to have a music festival. The logistics of putting on an event the size of Tall Tree on the top of a mountain must be overwhelming. There were a few hiccups here and there, but even in relentless heat the good folks of Tall Tree managed to pull off a fantastic, memorable weekend of top shelf West Coast music.

Nestled up on top of Brown’s Mountain in Port Renfrew, British Columbia, Tall Tree boasted four stages (two of which sported spectacular views of the bay surrounding the area), with music running for nearly 20 hours per day. The organizers did a wonderful job with a live stage and a DJ booth at each of the two day-time stages, trading off after each other so as to not have any downtime without music.

I need to take a moment here to pat myself on the back and point out my absolute rightness. Before the festival I made a list of acts not to miss and it was pretty much spot on, with performance after performance raising energy levels and hitting their marks time and time again. Shred Kelly, making their triumphant Tall Tree return, was the joyous celebration I expected, with the band smiling more than the audience through the whole thing. Pigeon Hole unleashed a relentless assault that had the crowd jumping and thrashing about like crazy. Their utterly ridiculous reworking of “Backstreet’s Back” was one of the highlights of the whole festival and had everyone in my camp randomly singing out, “Everybody, rock your body!” throughout the remaining days at the festival. Slynk bounced just as hard as Pigeon Hole, but with a heavier emphasis on happy, rather than aggressive, beats. He was as on-point as I’ve ever seen him.

As good as my foresight was, the most memorable sets were the ones I didn’t expect, each day giving me something I won’t soon forget. The mighty Bryx showed up for a surprise mini-set on Friday night that didn’t disappoint. He exhausted me earlier than expected. My Saturday was owned by Vancouver’s Hot Panda and their high-energy indie-punk. It’s not a type of music that usually hits my radar, but their set was electric and a welcome change of pace. I was bummed to miss Neon Steve’s late night Friday set (3 am is ungodly), but luckily he played an unscheduled show Sunday morning at the intimate Stump and Stone comedy stage and it was one for the books. By the end of his almost two-hour set nearly everyone there had gone from sitting and laying to energetic, furious dancing. An amazing feat for an 11 am set on the final day of a festival.

The final evening was backloaded with headliners like Five Alarm Funk, the Gaff, and the Funk Hunters with Chali 2na, but it was The Harpoonist and the Axe Murder that won the evening. The gritty Vancouver blues rock duo, flanked by two female singers, was mesmerizing and unexpectedly groovy. Their set, delivered during the only rain of the weekend, had bodies moving as much as any DJ of the weekend. It was the last surprise in a weekend jammed up with up with them.