Show Spotlight: Outside Lands

Every time August rolls around, I get sentimental. The steady stream of X’s on my calendar grows faster and faster, closing in on the event that I wait for every year like a restless kid waits for Christmas morning: Outside Lands. My brother and I have been going since the festival’s debut in 2008, when Tom Petty, Radiohead, and Jack Johnson took to the stage. It’s maiden voyage took San Francisco by surprise, with 64 bands and 6 stages unabashedly blasting out art to over 120,000 people for 3 days. And after the chaos, when the monday morning dew had settled on the silent and foot-stamped grass of Golden Gate Park, it was obvious that Outside Lands had found a home. Since then, the festival has put forth a huge production every year, and this time around, the lineup is absurd.

With artists like (cue never-ending-list) Kanye, Disclosure, Chromeo, Grouplove, Arctic Monkeys, Death Cab, Atmosphere, The Kooks, The Killers, Tiësto, Flume, Chvrches, Spoon, Duck Sauce, John Butler, Tycho, Macklemore, Capital Cities and Tom Petty (marking an anniversary of his main stage performance at the festival’s debut 6 years ago) to name a few, it seems that this is the year for Outside Lands to firmly secure its spot among big leaguers like Coachella and Lollapalooza. Get the schedule here.

What’s more, this year my brother’s birthday falls on the second day of the festival, so we’re bound to make it memorable. I’ve come to realize, though, that our annual exodus to Golden Gate Park is much more than just good music and good times. Following a festival from its birth is a very special thing, because you get to bear witness to a beautiful process. You watch artists develop, hear their music transform each new time they come to town. You see the crowd swell, a body of music lovers continually growing greater and more diverse. Year to year the event itself matures, art and food tents multiplying, lineups growing taller, bigger and better stages stretching out like steel limbs across the park. The festival comes into a personality and identity all its own. But, more importantly, you watch yourself grow along with it. Outside Lands has become a kind of anchor for me–no matter what chutes and ladders my life may have taken over the past year, good or bad or in between, I always come home to this place where I can take inventory and reflect on where I’ve come since the last time I lost myself in those three days of noise and art.