More than 250 Northwest bands to play Upstream Music Fest

You may have noticed we have a new music festival here in the Pacific Northwest. It is a big one. Over 320 bands big.

In 2016 Paul Allen announced his plans to launch the Upstream Music Fest + Summit in mid-May in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood.

The festival started Thursday and continues through Saturday. In addition to musical performances, the Summit features speakers such as Macklemore, Quincy Jones, Portia Sabin and others, including Stanwood-based composer, arranger and conductor Ron Jones — perhaps best known for his work on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Jones is scheduled to talk about the business of music at 10 a.m. May 12 at WaMu Theater.

The festival is drawing a lot of comparisons to South-by-Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. Though it may be not be so much a matter of how as it is a question of when.

In a recent radio interview, Upstream director Jeff Vetting said Upstream is going to be more like SXSW was when the Texas festival first started.

As with any first-year event, people don’t know exactly what to expect from Upstream, but one thing is sure: It’s massive. Stages have popped all over the Pioneer Square area.

While the lineup boasts artists from all over, such as AlunaGeorge from London, Flying Lotus from Los Angeles and Dinosaur Jr. from Massachusetts, more than 250 of these bands are from the Pacific Northwest.

And some of those bands are from Snohomish County.

Fauna Shade just keeps adding to its resume with more and more festival appearances.

In 2014 the trio played the Timber! Outdoor Music Festival. These guys performed at The Gorge for Sasquatch! in 2016, and, of course, they frequent the Fisherman’s Village Music Festival in their hometown. This past March they made the trip to Texas for SXSW and now they are playing Upstream.

“I like how Upstream has had different groups curate the stages, I think it will tastefully emphasize some of the best music in the region,” said Fauna Shade drummer Richie Owen. The group performs at 7:15 p.m. May 11 at the House of Sparkling Ice.

Tellers got to announce their invitation to the inaugural Upstream Fest fresh off of the band’s successful album fundraiser show in Everett in March. The band won’t be releasing the debut full-length until later this year, but Upstream is going to be a good opportunity to hear some of that material before it’s officially available.

Not only is Tellers frontwoman Sarah Feinberg excited to play Upstream, but she is also trying to figure out how to budget her time at the fest.

“I’m excited to play a festival where we feel valued as artists,” Feinberg said. “The list of bands I want to see is long. It will be tough to decide where to spend time.”

You can see Tellers at 5:45 p.m. May 13 at the J&M Cafe.

I Will Keep Your Ghost has been in the studio recently working on the follow-up to the group’s “It’s Natural” EP.

Earlier this year the band had said they weren’t going to be playing shows for awhile after their performance at Fisherman’s Village in order to wrap up work on new material. So Upstream might be the last chance to see these guys until the new EP is released.

“We’re really excited to play Upstream. I think it aims to be a different experience than your average music festival,” IWKYG singer Bryan Bradley said. “Instead of having a few select ‘big name headliners,’ they’ve opted to showcase an insane amount of local talent.”

You can see I Will Keep Your Ghost at 8:30 p.m. May 12 at Delicatus.

Leava also is making an appearance at Upstream. This is not a surprise. Simon Nicol has been putting his producer skills to work with a lot of local bands lately, and it really shows in the quality of his own music. Just listen to “The Lovely Grind” EP from earlier this year.

“I’m really interested in the prospect of Upstream’s vision. It would be cool to see this thing begin to burst the Seattle cloud and to help the artists here begin to have a more national platform” Nicol said.

You can see Leava at 5 p.m. May 12 at Zocalo.

If you go

Upstream Music Festival + Summit, through Saturday, Pioneer Square, Seattle.

All the information you need — tickets, map, schedules — is on the festival website at upstreammusicfest.com.