Sled Island Staff Picks: Shawn
Between now and the start of the festival, members of the Sled Island team will be sharing their personal Sled Island schedules, highlighting their top picks for music, comedy, film, art and more. Check out their selections for a taste of what you can discover at this year's festival!
Today we have Shawn Petsche, our Festival Manager.
"I'll be lucky if I can tear myself away from my desk and phone long enough to see more than a couple of bands this year, but here's hoping someone takes on this exact schedule to heart so that I can live vicariously through them. I tried to make it an honest-to-goodness achievable schedule (so long as you're on a bike) with little to no conflicts, but occasionally that just wasn't possible. Too many good bands. In most of these cases it's a matter of deciding if you want your mind melted by relentless and infinitely humable garage punk or ear-crushing heaviness...
My real advice is this: circle the bands you couldn't live without seeing at the fest. Go to those shows nice and early. Otherwise? Be open to changing your plans because there's no doubt in my mind that your favourite show this year will come from a band you've never heard of before.
A special shout out to Saturday at Sled Island where we've scheduled it so that one can see: Radioactivity into Guided By Voices into Peaches into New Bomb Turks into potentially the end of Deafheaven.
And...last but not least, so long as there are no disastrous floods, I will be able to take in a full day of music on Sunday. The Wrap-Up Pig Roast at the Palomino is my favourite show of the year (Radioactivity! Speedy Ortiz! Hurry Up! Circuit des Yeux! Pinner! The Shiverettes! Tisper! TEETH!). When that wraps up, join us for Broken City's legendary wrap-up karaoke...we'll try to convince every band still in town to join us as well. It goes late. It's debaucherous. There'll be lots of hugs."
You can try it out for yourself using the "My Schedule" function on our website. Log in with your email address or Facebook, then hover over any artist and click the heart next to their name to add them to your schedule. When you're done, click "Shareable link to your schedule" and you'll have a personalized link to send to your friends!
Check out a few of Shawn's picks now!