Rogue but accessible; independent but supportive — it’s a hard line to walk in the music world.
But for 13 years, Treefort Music Fest has been doing just that, bringing artists from all circles out of the woodwork to discover top-tier music, art and culture. Over 400 bands from 34 U.S. states and 18 countries attended Treefort this year, making this independently run festival the largest it’s ever been.
Nestled in the Treasure Valley region of western Idaho sits Boise, the capital and most populous city in the state. While not as posh as Seattle or Portland, Boise still hosts a vibrant nightlife and provides access to top-shelf artistry.
Laid out over downtown with artists tucked into every size building, the sprawling nature of Treefort Music Fest is what makes it unique among festivals, encouraging attendees to explore via bike or foot, whatever their heart desires. Over 50 venues host concerts with lineups spanning genres like garage rock, electronic/house, Latin jazz, sludge metal, and everything in between.
Noble Holt is the lead guitarist of local psych-rock outfit Moon Owl’s Mages. He said the festival was changing the trajectory of the town.
“Exposure is a tough thing in Boise, but it seems like that has been changing a lot. Honestly, because of Treefort,” Holt said. “There’s so much talent here and so many supportive, loving, cool people. It’s a good spot to be playing music right now.”
Supportiveness was the central theme of several conversations about the Boise scene – as Tyler Schlagenhauf from local pop-punk band Mylo Bybee put it, “the support that we have here in the community, not just from the bands, is really great and growing.”
“We like the development of our music to be an activity with not just the core members of the band, but our buddies that play music too. It’s helped us avoid that wall of feeling like our creative image is going stale,” he said.
The quartet’s most recent album Step On It! was entirely self-produced, helping to ensure their artistic vision remained fully intact. Keeping everything in-house allows the band to engage with their fans through creative mediums like music videos and comic books.
Distance between major cultural hubs is the main challenge facing emerging artists from Boise. A band from Philadelphia can book a handful of shows in different states, play to entirely different crowds, and only fill up one tank of gas. The open road between Boise and other communities often proves to be too much for smaller bands.
Bassist Liam Sliney of Moon Owl’s Mages described how the Boise community’s melting pot of artists influenced their band’s sound.
“It’s a flourishing music community, but I think it’s also super easy to oversaturate your sound here, meaning you can’t play a show every weekend because people are going to stop coming,” Schlagenhauf said.
Similarly, larger artists with the resources of going on a full tour often skip over Boise due to its close proximity to Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Pacific Northwest. Initiatives like Treefort are most beneficial for artists striving to reach broader audiences in their hometown, laying a solid ground for the rest of the year.
Treefort features multiple “forts” that offer film screenings, stand-up comedy, craft beverages, technology, storytelling, skateboarding, yoga and more. Each fort operates under the same ethos of community that permeates the festival. A blueprint replicated by many but perfected by few, there aren’t many festivals that can say they’re doing for the Boise community what Treefort has done. While the city breathes with arts and culture during these five days in March, that energy lives on year-round.
