At the end of the day on Thursday, one of the Pacific Northwest’s largest music festivals, Sasquatch Music Festival, announced it would not be returning in 2019. After 17 years at the iconic Washington venue, The Gorge, festival founder and producer Adam Zacks stated that he would no longer produce the event.
In a statement, Zacks elaborated:
Today we take a bow and bid a fond farewell to Sasquatch! I will no longer be producing the Festival, nor will it take place in 2019.
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 locations on Earth – The Gorge.
17 years is a long time to do anything. The Beatles lasted a mere 8 years, a fact so astonishing it is difficult to believe. While we didn’t accomplish anything as indelible as “Hey Jude”, the Festival left a lasting mark and proudly represented an independent spirit.
Sasquatch! will forever remain a tapestry of the people who worked with us, the artists who inspired us, and the varied experiences of the fans who attended it … of friendships made, engagements, hilltop weddings, permanent tattoos, once in a lifetime collaborations, weather events both treacherous and magnificent, at least one very public conception, and, of course, hundreds of awe inspiring performances. My humblest gratitude to all of you.
May the spirit that made Sasquatch! so special live on.
Per a report from KEXP, while Sasquatch is definitely canceled in 2019, the future of the festival and whether it will return with a new producer remains unclear. Zacks grew the festival from a single-day event in 2002 with headliners String Cheese Incident, Jack Johnson, and Ben Harper to a massive multi-day event—it expanded to three days in 2006 and four days from 2011 to 2013. In the festival’s 17 years of existence, Zacks noted that Sasquatch had sold 1,026,095 tickets, booked a staggering 1,313 bands, and donated $723,436 to nonprofits.
In 2018, Sasquatch hosted Bon Iver, The National, Modest Mouse, David Byrne, Tyler The Creator, Ray LaMontagne, Anderson .Paak, Spoon, Grizzly Bear, and other nationally renowned touring acts.