The founder of the Sasquatch Music Festival is closing down the iconic event and is not planning for any more concerts.
The Willamette Week reports that Sasquatch founder Adam Zacks announced the end of the music festival in an email Thursday, June 28. Zacks is shutting the event down immediately and there will be no concert in 2019.
Zacks began his farewell email with a quote from Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss): “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” He said little as to the reasoning why the festival will not continue.
“I will no longer be producing the festival, nor will it take place in 2019,” Zacks writes. “The festival began 17 years ago on a hunch, greenlit on nothing more than a name and instinct there was space for something with a uniquely Northwest flavor, on Memorial Day weekend, at one of the most beautiful location on Earth …. May the spirit that made Sasquatch so special live on. Onward to the next adventure, Adam Zacks”
Music fans have traveled to the Northwest for 17 years, eager to see Sasquatch over the rolling Central Washington landscape. Zacks was working as a concert promoter when he started the festival in 2002. The first Sasquatch Music Festival was at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Wash. and has been held there ever since on Memorial Day weekend. The first festival featured Dave Matthews Band, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, and Blackalicious. Over the years, Sasquatch boasted lineups with Coldplay, The Flaming Lips, The Pixies, Built to Spill, Nine Inch Nails, Beck, R.E.M., The Cure, Modest Mouse, Foo Fighters, Kendrick Lamar, and more.
In 2014, the festival attempted to expand to a second event on July 4, but it was cancelled. The Willamette Week reports that festival attendance had been waning in recent years.
According to KEXP, Sasquatch featured 1,313 bands and sold 1,026,095 tickets in its 17 years.
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