I’ve never been to the Oregon Country Fair. I asked my friend Elijah (a Eugene native and two-time fairgoer) what it’s like. The first thing he told me about was the un-walled naked shower area, where dusty fairgoers go to liberate their bodies and rinse off under an array of shower heads. Large bonfires crackle in the corners, while a band of naked musicians plays from the center of the room. 

From what I’ve heard, the Oregon Country Fair is a hippie-dippy hub of psychedelics, eccentric cuisine and every kind of music imaginable from hip-hop to prog-rock to folk. It’s a place to let loose, be true to your utterly strange self and dance in the dirt. For musicians, it’s a festival unlike any other. 

Multi-instrumentalist and singer Jon Sharpy has been going to Fair since he was a little kid. He moved to Eugene from Detroit with his parents, who became involved with Fair in the early 1980s. At that point, Fair had only been around for about a decade.

“I grew up out there every year in one capacity or another,” Sharpy says. 

When he was a teenager, Sharpy started playing clarinet in Fair’s in-house marching band, the Fighting Instruments of Karma. Over the next few years, he formed several bands which played music along the paths at Fair. 

Twenty years later, Sharpy finally got the chance to play on a real stage at Fair. He and his Ween cover band, Brown Stallion, performed on the Hoarse Chorale stage on Fair’s 50th anniversary in 2019.

“It was one of the coolest experiences ever,” Sharpy says. “It was very emotional for all of us involved because a lot of the people involved in Brown Stallion grew up out there. We’ve all been friends since high school, so we’ve played music our entire lives together, and then finally having that opportunity together was pretty huge.” 

Sharpy says Fair stands apart from other music festivals for a couple reasons. First, it’s simply old. Only a handful of festivals in the United States have been around for over five decades. Second, unlike those other festivals, the music Fair hosts is untethered by genre or style.

“The amount of different bands just in one day is astounding,” Sharpy says. “You’ll go anywhere from seeing poetry and singer-songwriter style acoustic guitar music to bands like The Pharcyde (see story this issue) playing the main stage, and then bluegrass, and then there’s bands that come over from Africa and there’s a marimba band.”

Sharpy says he’d be intimidated to be a booker for Fair, because of the huge diversity in the genres they select. “I don’t think there’s any other festival that I can think of that really does that,” he says. 

Just as diverse as the music are the kinds of people that come to Fair every year, according to Sharpy. “I’ve seen very conservative people out at the Fair, and I’ve seen obviously an extremely liberal group of people, so just on a political spectrum, it’s not being cut off based on any sort of spectrum.”

For a lot of people, Sharpy says, Fair is an opportunity to get away from the norms of society. “You’re really welcome to be yourself, and whatever you want to present as yourself in that moment is really welcome,” Sharpy says. “You’re not going to see a lot of judgement out there.”

For first-time performers, Sharpy says to expect fairgoers to be not only open but fully engaged with the entertainment. “People go out there for the entire weekend with the intent of seeing as much music or as much performance as they can,” he says.

New Fair performers, Sharpy says, should appreciate the scene of which they’re becoming a part.

“I’d say that to everyone from the path performer all the way up to the main stage act, because it’s all the same event,” Sharpy says. “Having been all the way across the board in one capacity or another, I can tell you that having a crowd in front of you on the path is just as cool as being in front of an entire crowd of people on the main stage.”

Want to see who is performing at the Oregon Country Fair? Check out the lineup at OregonCountryFair.org. Local artists include Soul Vibrator, Peter Wilde, Brian QTN and De Solution to name only a few. National acts, in addition to The Pharcyde, include Reggie Watts, LP Giobbi and Prezident Brown.