Flannel Fest to bring the ’90s to life
JOEL MARTIN | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 2 years AGO
The Flannel Fest will pay homage to the music of the 1990s this weekend at the Grant County Fairgrounds.
COURTESY PHOTO/GRANT COUNTY FAIRGROUNDS/DAN BOZYK
Beastie Boys tribute Grand Royale will be featured at Flannel Fest this weekend at the Grant County Fairgrounds.
Island in the Sun will bring the music of Weezer to Flannel Fest this weekend at the Grant County Fairgrounds.
Joel Martin has been with the Columbia Basin Herald for more than 25 years in a variety of roles and is the most-tenured employee in the building. Martin is a married father of eight and enjoys spending time with his children and his wife, Christina. He is passionate about the paper’s mission of informing the people of the Columbia Basin because he knows it is important to record the history of the communities the publication serves. | September 30, 2024 3:15 AM
MOSES LAKE — The days of dial-up internet, Doc Martens and the Macarena may be three decades behind us, but they’ll make a comeback this weekend at the Grant County Fairgrounds.
This is the third year the fairgrounds has hosted the 1990s music festival Flannel Fest, which this year is Friday and Saturday.
“We’ve got 11 bands over the two days,” said fairgrounds Director Jim McKiernan. “We’ve got tributes to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Green Day … We set up a bar in the Arts and Crafts Building, and we have a VIP bar as well.”
LocalTel sets up TVs with sporting events, McKiernan said, and there will be bean bag toss and Connect Four games available as well.
Many bands from the 1990s aren’t touring anymore, and those that are would be prohibitively expensive to bring in for a festival, but the tribute bands are a very close facsimile, said promoter Jason Fellman of J-Fell Presents, who assembled the lineup.
“The Red Not Chili Peppers … play all over the world. They’re really authentic,” said Fellman. “We’ve got a really authentic Nirvana tribute from Seattle called Nevermind, again, really authentic. Everybody looks the part. I think they actually smashed a guitar last year at Flannel Fest on the stage.”
The shows take place on the Bryan Miller Stage, the largest of the Fairgrounds’ outdoor stages. The final act, Pearl Jam tribute Washed in Black, will wrap everything up with a more intimate indoor acoustic set reminiscent of MTV’s 1990s “Unplugged” shows, Fellman said.
The idea for Flannel Fest came about shortly before COVID-19 shut down all that was fun, McKiernan said. He and his team had been researching tribute bands for the Grant County Fair and crossed paths with Fellman, who stages an annual 1980s rock band tribute festival in the Portland area. Fellman came to Moses Lake and was impressed with the venue at the fairgrounds, and once the pandemic was over in 2022, the first Flannel Fest was staged with 10 bands.
“That year we had about 1,000 people at the most over two days,” McKiernan said. “… Then last year we did it again and it grew almost 40%.”
Not everybody who attends Flannel Fest stays the whole two days, McKiernan said.
“People come and go,” he said. “They may stay for a specific band … Or a lot of people follow these bands on a regular basis. We did one called Jar of Flies, which is an Alice in Chains tribute. It’s been around forever in the Seattle area, and people will travel all over the Northwest just to see them.”
General admission tickets are $89 for two days, according to the event’s website. The bands play hour-long sets with 15-minute breaks in between, Fellman said, which makes it a good value for people who try to stretch their entertainment budget. Much of the funding for the festival comes from the city of Moses Lake and Grant County through the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee, McKiernan said.
“It’s difficult to launch a new event without those funds, and to grow it,” he said. “I’m guessing it’s going to take six, seven years to get it to the point where it’s self-sustaining.”
People become nostalgic for two eras of music, Fellman said: the music that was popular on the radio when they were in high school and the music their parents listened to when they were little.
“The ’90s is now far enough away that we have multiple generations of attendees,” Fellman said. “You have 40-something parents with 20-something kids.”
Aside from the nostalgia factor, the 1990s were a significant moment in popular music, Fellman said.
“It was a transitory time musically,” he said. “It’s interesting how we sort of went from the excess of the ’80s to the seriousness of the ’90s. I think there’s a little bit more artistic intensity in the ’90s. It went away from the synthesizers and stripped it down, got a bit more earthy … I mean, they still had hair but without the hairspray.”
Flannel Fest 2024 Schedule
Friday, Oct. 4
Gates open at 6 p.m.
Parabola (Tool tribute) 7 p.m.
8:15 p.m.
Jar of Flies (Alice in Chains tribute) 8:15 p.m.
9:30 p.m.
Red Not Chili Peppers (Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute) 9:30 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 5
Gates open at 12 p.m.
Island in the Sun (Weezer tribute) 2 p.m.
Head over Feet (Alanis Morissette tribute) 3:15 p.m.
Fighting Foos (Foo Fighters tribute) 4:30 p.m.
21 Guns (Green Day tribute) 5:45 p.m.
Superunknown (Soundgarden tribute) 7 p.m.
Nevermind (Nirvana tribute) 8:15 p.m.
Grand Royale (Beastie Boys tribute) 9:30 p.m.
Washed in Black (Pearl Jam tribute) 10:30 p.m.
Special unplugged after-party set
Beastie Boys tribute Grand Royale will be featured at Flannel Fest this weekend at the Grant County Fairgrounds.
Island in the Sun will bring the music of Weezer to Flannel Fest this weekend at the Grant County Fairgrounds.ARTICLES BY JOEL MARTIN
Endless battle
Noxious Weed Control Board works to keep invasive plants under control
MOSES LAKE — Some of the nastiest plants in Grant County were the topic of a class led by Jay Johnson, a consultant with the Grant County Noxious Weed Control Board, Tuesday. The Noxious Weed Control Board, as its name would suggest, is tasked with keeping weeds under control in Grant County. That’s not a small job; the board’s website lists 129 species of noxious weeds that are found around Grant County. A noxious weed is defined as an invasive, non-native plant that threatens agricultural crops, local ecosystems or fish and wildlife habitat, according to the Noxious Weed Control Board. Washington state law requires that these weeds be identified and their spread kept to a minimum, if not completely eradicated. “We’re one of those agencies a lot of people don’t really understand,” Johnson said. “We’re a county office and … our funding is tax-based assessment. When you get your tax bill and you look down at all the expenses that you pay for, there we are.”
BASIN EVENTS: Oct. 16-24
COLUMBIA BASIN — Whether you feel like shopping, crafting, learning or seeing a show, there’s something happening for you this week in the Basin. Oct. 16 ‘My Family (Mi Familia)’ screening Spanning three generations, “My Family (Mi Familia)” is a heartfelt drama that follows the Sánchez family as they build their lives in East Los Angeles. Through love, hardship, triumph, and sacrifice, the film explores the immigrant experience, the strength of family bonds, and the traditions that connect one generation to the next. Lowrider show and taco truck before the screening. Sponsored by Columbia Basin Allied Arts, EDUBS C/S and the Moses Lake Creative District. $12 per person. Doors open at 6 p.m., film begins at 7 p.m. at the Moses Lake Civic Center Auditorium, 401 S. Balsam St. Tickets and info: www.cba-arts.org.
Moses Lake author encourages women to look beyond church culture norms
MOSES LAKE — A Moses Lake author’s book, “A Christian Woman Striving to Live Her Faith in a Man-Controlled World,” takes aim at the role to which many churches relegate the female half of their congregations. “It’s to encourage women in the faith,” Linda Curran said. “A lot of churches say, ‘Teach Sunday school, do this, do that, but don’t (evangelize.)’" In her book, Curran recounts a time when she moved to a new community and joined a church there. She was surprised to learn that, as a new female member, she had been automatically assigned church cleaning duties. When she questioned it, she wrote, she was met with condescension and her objections were brushed aside. In other churches, she said, women who were capable of teaching were relegated to “women’s ministry.”