OREGON ECLIPSE THROUGH PAPADOSIO’S EYES
Photos & Words by: Brittany NO FOMO
Six hours down one long road from the Portland Airport, we discover ourselves in a remote, lush land where the cell phone service is lost and oneness with nature and each other is found at a perfect solar eclipse viewing area called Big Summit Prairie. All we know is that thirteen successful transformational-style festivals collaborated together to birth an incredible week of music, workshops, classes, offerings, food, art, interactive spaces, and elements that pushed the imagination to form Oregon Eclipse – a festival no one could have anticipated.
While already being welcomed in with the warm blanket of the Oregon air and feeling at home after just a day surrounded by our festival community, I was then embraced by the friendly faces of talented artists who recently arrived at the festival.
For five-piece “space rock” band hailing from Asheville with a festival touring resume that puts them in the expert category among the jam-band culture, Papadosio even felt that they drove into something truly special and equally wild. “I feel like Oregon Eclipse Festival was special in the sense that it was a happening,” Billy Brouse, on keys and vocals, shares. “There were just so many people there that it was automatically a crazy, wild place that people were drawn to, so it only made it bigger… which is insane.”
This wonderful, majestic, and inspiring insanity made a perfect foundation for the band to perform to a crowd longing for whimsical musicality to carry them into the sunset. Papadosio graced the main Eclipse Stage, first playing out the notes that make “Paradigm Shift”. The quick and slick guitar licks and peaks and valleys of the track were carried over the hill and drew in festivalgoers one by one until the field was filled with a vibey and appreciative crowd. Hours into their set, gratitude was shared from both sides, radiating off the stage and shining back from the crowd.
“It’s so refreshing to see you all without cell phones up!” Anthony Thogmartin, the band’s lead vocalist on guitar and keys, beams from the stage as the sound of keys and light symbols cascade in the backdrop.
“It might be one of the last times we see this. It’s impossibly important right now that we come together. Impossibly important.”
And we did come together… from all ends of the earth, through music and art and for the love of seeing it all play in front of our faces. We came together to experience this entire weekend and this moment at Papadosio’s set.