If you can see Mt. Baker, you are part of The Experience
Mount Baker Experience caught up with Western Washington University business student and music industry promoter Forrest Templin to discuss Bellingham Exit, a “multi-day, multi-stage, multi-sensory” music festival running October 10-13 all across downtown Bellingham. Venues include Mount Baker Theatre, Wild Buffalo, The Shakedown, The Blue Room, and nearly a
dozen more.
This year’s lineup features music, comedy, drag, visual artists and more, including the inimitable PNW-native Reggie Watts, Australian psych-rockers Babe Rainbow, and drag/musical duo Boulet Brothers. Full festival passes and individual show tickets are on sale now at bellinghamexit.com.
Q: What brought you to Bellingham?
A: The industry of outdoor sports and physical community spaces. Working at the Transition outpost right when they started and Backcountry Essentials and just being able to meet people and find opportunities to serve new friends in Bellingham was a blast.
A year after I moved here I enrolled at Western [Washington University], that was another eye-opening experience that let me know I should be here.
What did you do at Transition?
At Transition I was working on bikes and selling really nice mountain bikes, which isn’t the dream, but making it an approachable space was important to me because it was so freshly built, and almost too nice for a mountain bike company. We made videos and highlighted the staff and basically just did grassroots promotion and events at the outpost. That established it as a community space for beers and bikes, and then there was some music, which was probably my first space doing live music.
How did you get involved with Northwest Tune-Up and the local music scene?
It was fun [at Transition], it was cool to bring people together over bikes and shared connections and passions. But after coming back to school and leaving Transition, I got an opportunity to run the Instagram for Northwest Tune-Up the second year of that signature event. They pretty much gave me the keys to the castle, let me run wild, and it was a very creative challenge.
The bike industry in Bellingham wasn’t really sure who was behind it, but I was running around town putting up posters, making silly videos and riding my bike around town – trying to find ways to create the experience ahead of time and really set the tone for how the whole festival was going to go.
With that bike, music, beer festival and connecting all those different communities and seeing it happen, it really opened my perspective of how we can do entertainment here in Bellingham.
Right after that, we started Noisey Waters Mural Festival, launched the first lineup for Bellingham Exit, then started the promotion for that, which was very rogue and grassroots and scrappy. Our goal was 6,500 people and we reached almost 8,000 and broke even our first year.
Why are physical spaces, and bringing people together in those spaces, so important to you?
I think we all came from that initial childhood of playing with our friends, outside, without phones, right? Then as we age, we get addicted to social media. It was really frustrating to see that take over our lives at such a young age. I like Instagram, the purpose of it is to build relationships that are real. So, I think having an opportunity to promote festivals was like a large-scale relationship building experience that works.
Festivals are also a place-making opportunity. At Trackside [Brewing] we had the ability to claim that space for the community. Having people there listening to music and enjoying themselves.
But for Bellingham Exit, its’ multiple spaces, right?
Exit doesn’t really have a central structure. I’m a fan of the decentralized … cultural experience.
It’s like a themed weekend where we’re inspiring businesses to eventually host their own shows. The most exciting point about this year is that these are established physical community spaces already, and we’re just pushing the limit of what they think they typically do.
“Exit the Ordinary” is really just that opportunity.
Did you have to convince any businesses that this is a good idea for them?
Not really, there wasn’t any convincing, which is great because I’m not the best persuader. I’m just excited.
I was watching a show at Wild Buffalo and I walked outside and saw, at Mod Tattoo, a handmade Bellingham Exit, French Riviera-style, sign with our brand colors and everything. We didn’t have a show there, so I ran down there and it’s a beautiful jazz band from Europe that just happened to be in town.
I asked who made the sign, because it wasn’t me, and they said a friend made it that day, just for them to put outside the venue. They asked, “Isn’t that cool?” and I thought to myself, this is more than cool, this is the goal.
Being sandwiched between two major cities, is there anything uniquely challenging about booking artists to play in Bellingham?
I try to stay out of the booking as much as I can, because if I had it my way, everybody would be booked, and that can’t happen.
I think that it’s most definitely a hustle and it’s difficult to balance booking local artists, focusing and prioritizing local artist needs, and bringing an expanded scope and scale of headline bills for Exit. But the cool blend between that with all ages venues and non-traditional venues - let’s say Mallards Ice Cream - that’s an opportunity for our local artists to get really creative in the spaces that they play. Exit is really unique and an opportunity for a different type of exposure and I think that’s really meaningful.
In Seattle they had the Busker Festival, That’s something I draw a lot of inspiration from. It’s a beautiful idea for a do-it-yourself, rogue festival like that, allowing the audience to find back doors and side entries. Not necessarily skirting any type of system, but making it your own and producing your own event in the way that you want.
Speaking of the production aspect, you mentioned in previous years you’ve been running around town making signs and doing guerilla and traditional marketing, how has it been going so far this year?
We’ve expanded and dialed in the way that we communicate and the roles that we get to play. We’re at about 15 staff this year, and that’s music industry and stage veterans. Mark and his art installation and stage production team is what I’m most excited to see. Mark and our team have a warehouse in Ferndale where they work for about a month, full-time, leading up to the event, handcrafting all the stages.
Everything we do here is handcrafted. Handcrafted signs, DIY graffiti art, guerilla marketing, and of course we have traditional advertising and stages, but I think that’s more the foundation.
It can be challenging to unify a decentralized festival like Exit, but at the same time, opening the door for so many different artists and bands to make a space their own is really fun to see.
Our booking team, led by Hunter Motto who works with the Crocodile in Seattle, they’ve been really keyed in with finding something for everybody, and they’re doubling down on what we have from last year in terms of diversity of genres, comedy, drag, rock and hip hop.
This year we have significantly more volunteers - I’d say upwards of 250 to 300 - to help our street team of 20.
Doing a festival that way sounds, frankly, hard. Is it worth doing it so differently?
It’s definitely worth it.
Most of my work is all before the event, and the journey to get to opening night - and the harder that I work and push leading up to it - makes the event that much more meaningful.
For a festival like Northwest Tune-Up, the target demographic is clearly the mountain biker, the beer aficionado, the music lover. Is there a target demo for Bellingham Exit?
No, this is more open, more interpretive. The target demo is music fanatics that are interested in a week’s worth of shows.
For individual shows, it’s either fans of that artist or fans of that venue specifically. And, it’s people looking for a new experience. To try something untraditional that also draws elements from established venues and established artists, but combining things in a new way.
Which artists are you most excited for?
Reggie Watts, and Boulet Brothers. That will be huge.
I’m super excited for the Babe Rainbow show, personally. I just think they’re such a unique band that suits The Shakedown venue - and Bellingham - perfectly.
Last year we had Yumi Zouma from New Zealand, and I gave them some commuter bikes so they could go ride bikes down at the waterfront. That’s awesome because they got to go downtown and ride the pump track for a little while. They were like, “We want to move here.” I told them they should because we would love to hear them play more.
I’m excited for Laura Orso, she’s a really unique digital creator and punchline comic on Instagram who’s now transitioned onto the big stage. I think that’s a really unique opportunity for her specifically.
What else should people know before going to Bellingham Exit?
Just get ready to “Exit the Ordinary.” X
