Oregon’s annual music festival in Happy Valley has returned and the lineup features some of Americana’s big names and up-and-comers. The 2022 Pickathon Music Festival, which runs Aug. 4-7, will be held for the first time since the start of the pandemic. 

Valerie June is the leading artist on the festival’s lineup. June’s most recent album, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers leans heavy on R&B but has elements of folk-pop. The album was produced by Jack Splash, whose resume includes works by Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys and John Legend. This isn’t the first time she’s played at Pickathon; she performed in 2014.  

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Also performing Is Hurray for the Riff Raff, who released an album in February this year, titled LIFE ON EARTH. It’s a raw album with edges of punk, or as Hurray for the Riff Raff describes it in online liner notes, “nature punk.” But songs on the album have catchy chord progressions that you’d find with Arcade Fire or the Thermals. 

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Nate Smith brings his virtuosic approach to drums to Pickathon. As a drummer and bandleader, Smith explores boundaries of jazz without getting lost in the weeds, and the band grabs from other genres, such as the distorted guitar tones that you may hear in metal and saxophone phrases from early bebop. The three-time Grammy nominee’s recent album Kinfolk: See The Birds, is the second of a trilogy. It’s an album that features collaborations with some big names of music, including Brittany Howard, singer of Alabama Shakes and Vernon Reid of Living Colour.

Built to Spill returns to Pickathon this year. When the Boise-based band played Eugene in 2012, EW arts writer Rick Levin referred to their song “Carry the Zero” as “one of the great rock songs of the past 30 years.”

Of course, this is just a scratch of the stacked lineup of the 2022 Pickathon. For the full lineup, see below. 

For more information about the Pickathon and to buy tickets, visit Pickathon.com. 

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