Seattle Times
The 2009 Sasquatch! Music Festival is the best music festival in America for three very important reasons: Location, location, and location. The Gorge is America’s most scenic major outdoor venue. Kicking back at the crest of its massive, sloping lawn just to watch the world — cloud convoys hauling across luminous blue skies; the gaping, twisting chasm that is the Columbia River Gorge; hours-long watercolor sunsets — would be worth a few bucks. Complimenting the main stage’s epic scale are a concert-hall-sized second stage and an intimate shedlike stage, both set on lush, grassy lawns. Thanks to clever layout, all three run concurrently, the hillside deflecting any sound bleed. Larger festivals demand a death march between distantly spaced stages, but Sasquatch! is compact and manageable. Even with a sold-out crowd of 22,000, it’s hard to figure out where all the people are (unless you’re in line for the Honey Bucket).