Top Performances of Pickathon 2026
Pickathon, the annual music festival held just southeast of Portland on a farm in Happy Valley, isn’t perfect. The heavy reliance on volunteers can lead to mishaps. Teenage boys mosh harder than they should. I find the audience shushing at the late-night talent show, an unamplified event held in the wee hours of Sunday morning at the Woods Stage, occasionally excessive.
But I can’t pretend I don’t adore the festival. To me, it feels like a trip to summer camp, a few days in a place where play is the priority. There’s a sense of safety and trust: People string up hammocks and lay out blankets that others may use. Children roam on their own, unaccompanied by grown-ups. Lost belongings usually turn up. Plus, for the last three years, the fest has coincided with my birthday—and gosh do I love a party I don’t have to throw.
And the music! Pickathon’s bookers have their ears open the globe over, and they build consistently impressive lineups. Each year, I’m struck by how many musicians speak onstage about the pleasure they find playing Pickathon. They say the same thing backstage, too. And as an audience member, you feel it—there’s powerful reciprocity between performer and spectator.
I saw lots of great acts this year. Here are four, in no particular order, that I’d love to see back at the festival in the future. (Honorable mentions: El Khat, Sgt. Papers, Meridian Brothers, Friendship.)
Orquestra Pacifico Tropical
Orquestra Pacifico Tropical is a big band: I counted 10 members onstage during the local cumbia group's Thursday-night set. As a kickoff to the festival, it was warm and joyful, both cohesive and surprising. “This is music that wants to give the world a hug,” drummer Papi Fimbres told the audience. Later, vocalist-percussionist Shana Lindbeck floated the possibility of Whitney Houston covers at the Den on August 29, when the band celebrates the release of its third studio album, El Poder. I hope she meant it.
The Womack Sisters
There’s always a band at Pickathon that demands I weave closer to the stage. This year, it was the Womack Sisters, a soul trio who happen to be granddaughters of soul legend Sam Cooke. Their Sunday-night set at the Woods Stage was one of those performances that leaves the audience in collective gape-eyed awe. I turned to the strangers around me afterward, all of us speechless. Their voices, the instrumentation, the depth of feeling—I lack the words still. Their self-titled debut album is out Friday, August 14, and they’re playing tonight, Tuesday, August 11, at McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove. Go!
Hogslop String Band
Sometimes, the pickin’ bands at Pickathon blur together for me. But Hogslop String Band cannot be confused with any other. While the band’s sound is rooted in old-time music, it’s shot through with psychedelic energy and a punk-rock ethos, which translates onstage to a wild time. Hogslop played an after-hours acoustic set on Sunday night at the Grove Stage that began in fairly subdued fashion, with fiddler Kevin Martin telling stories in between songs. But eventually the band stormed onto the woodchips, where they formed a tight circle and the audience wrapped around them, everyone stomping their feet. After they retook the stage, Martin led us in a chaotic, ecstatic square dance.
Big Tractor
Since 2022, Shady Pines Radio has hosted a late-night talent show at Pickathon, an often raucous and sometimes moving assortment of acts. The showstopper this year: Big Tractor, a folk-punk outfit from San Francisco with a song titled “Balls in the River.” The bandleader (whose first name is Liv, and who can be witnessed here) spent the song moving deeper and deeper into a lunge, all while strumming the banjo and making alliterative jokes about genitalia. I caught Big Tractor again the next weekend, at a pay-what-you-can Cajun restaurant in Roseway called Makin’ Groceries, where the group performed a few songs that smashed serious issues with juvenile humor in a way that really worked for me. Sample lyric, roughly remembered: “I’m sad about deforestation / they call that mourning wood.”
