Image via Julian Bajsel
Pranav Trewn finds peace in his vinyl record collection.
We have long been living on the precipice of a golden age, at least according to tech reporters. Advancements in computing ushered in the era of algorithms, which was then rebranded machine learning, and is now artificial intelligence. No matter the name, the underlying promise we have heard time and time again is that the power of data-crunching will soon transform society for the better. Yet rather than Web3, we have the freefalling “enshittification” of the internet. Instead of greater privacy and decentralization, we have meme coin ponzi schemes. We were told we would be living through the fourth industrial revolution, but this latest stage of capitalism appears to more closely resemble a dark age.
All this data being harvested is supposed to present an unprecedented opportunity for mankind to understand itself better. Yet reducing people down to categorical ones and zeroes has, unsurprisingly, flattened the human experience. Instagram’s “moderation” policies actively suppress political discourse, and Spotify thinks we all only want to hear “Espresso.” Some might say our feeds are “curated”, when really they no longer allow for a point of view.
This is affecting not only our online lives, but has reflected back to the material world that increasingly relies on tech companies’ invisible infrastructure and black box programming. Digital degradation has already largely swallowed much of the modern music industry – consolidating publications, concert venues, and promoters until now all that’s really left are a smattering of Substacks and a Live Nation monopoly.
It’s not much of an ecosystem, and this festival season has reflected it. With most lineups, you can almost smell the behind the scenes business considerations that led to each booking. There’s the agency picks and the package deals, the viral streaming sensation sitting alongside the reliable workhorse that can move tickets even if they no longer move the cultural needle. What it adds up to is a curiosity-free, meaningless grabbag that sums up to less than its parts, devoid of a raison d’etre beyond a fleeting attempt to retain a shallow semblance of as many marketable zeitgeists as possible.
All of this is to say, it’s a miracle that Pitchfork Music Festival – an artifact of the days when an online media publication could pull together the capital to run a three day, multi-genre event of its footprint – is still kicking.
My first time attending the festival was in 2016, and I was so charmed by the experience I went back each year until Covid disrupted my annual rhythms. Over those four consecutive visits, I was privileged to moments possible at very few other festivals. I saw FKA Twigs entrusted to hold court for a headlining show off of one album, Stereolab summon the sun after a brief emergency evacuation, and Jeff Rosenstock ignite a mud-soaked mosh pit by revealing his booking fee onstage. Most festivals leave you to chart your own path against a disorganized maze of buffet tables; Pitchfork instead feels like a thoughtfully coursed prix fixe, where you’re most excited for the dishes that are unfamiliar to you.
There is something pure about writers who are deeply invested in their scenes and spheres being entrusted with the purse strings to book talent, rather than leaving it to whatever would-be suit (if the music industry actually wore suits) is in charge of putting on a C3 event. Whether you have loved or hated Pitchfork over the years, in the dying days of music criticism (if not independent thought itself), we should appreciate that there is a marquee brand still committed to the arts. They continue to preserve the album review, expand their coverage to hyper-regional scenes and underground cultures, and give many early career artists their first big stage bookings.
I bought Pitchfork tickets on presale before the lineup was announced year over year because I trusted the brand to effectively tell their story of contemporary music, showcasing for me old and to-be favorites. Before my idealism for the industry was faded by economic realities, I hoped to one day see all of my favorite editorial voices conjure up similar festival magic (a POW Fest would go off, but maybe Pitchfork’s New Head of Editorial and POW alum Mano Sundaresan can help bring some of our perspective to future iterations of the festival).
This year marks my first time back since the pandemic, and hopefully the revival of one of my favorite live music traditions. And from all accounts from those who have gone since 2020, the pandemic has not led to any issues in quality control. I spoke with Seth Dodson and Liz Pesnel, Pitchfork’s respective Executive Director of Festivals and Events and Senior Director of BizOps, Finance, and Events, about preserving the magic. Both attended for years before working for Pitchfork – Seth started going in 2011, before working as a Production Director in 2016, Liz in 2008 before starting full time on the team over a decade later – and imagined they would still be going today even if they never had any affiliation with the festival. Our conversation touched on Pitchfork’s unique approach to booking, growing global footprint, and practices to be a good neighbor for the Chicago music scene.
So both of you have seen many, many iterations of the festival. How has the event changed between back then and the present day?
Liz Pesnel: A lot of the spirit of the festival has stayed the same – in terms of really wanting to amplify the editorial voice, and that we’re often programming artists before other festivals start programming them.
Seth Dodson: Yeah, one of my most favorite things about the festival is the way that it has not changed. A lot of people that have worked on the festival have worked on it from the beginning. There’s a large contingent of the Chicago music scene that are the stagehands and bartenders and operations and production folks that have come back year over year. And that goes for all the staff that work on the festival, but certainly when I was a regular attendee, seeing all the friends that you maybe wouldn’t see other times during that year always felt like a family reunion or a homecoming or something.
Liz Pesnel: I was going to say summer camp.
Seth Dodson: I like that that feeling still persists to this day. It’s a smaller festival in the landscape of Lollapalooza and Riot Fest and others in the city. That allows us to be more adventurous in some of our bookings and get more eclectic. We always have a really unique lineup. It’s a cool niche that we have when looking at the broader landscape nationwide.
And yeah, we’ve added some new ticket types. We added a plus ticket tier maybe six years ago or so, to have this more elevated experience. And this year for the first time, we’re adding a VIP ticket tier that sort of matches the industry norms, as VIP experiences are really something that a lot of folks are more attracted to nowadays than when the festival was first conceived. But by and large, I feel like it delivers on that same summer camp experience year over year.
You mentioned how Pitchfork sits within the larger Chicago music and festival scene, which is very wide and diverse relative to a lot of big cities. What are the challenges of operating alongside the Riot Fests and Lollapaloozas and all the other more boutique events happening each year?
Seth Dodson: I mean, I love that Chicago has such a vibrant music scene and music festival scene. Every weekend in Chicago there’s some block party or some neighborhood fest that you could go to, and then there’s the big ones that you mentioned. But I think for us, just being a different scale of festival and the approach we have for the lineup, we are still a unique offering in that landscape. Other festivals have attendees who pick which one of the many they want to go to that summer, but a lot of folks that go to Pitchfork really just come to Pitchfork. Our attendees are pretty loyal to coming to us. I think they like the manageable size and that unique lineup. Riot has their vibe for sure, Lolla has their vibe, and we have our vibe. For the right person, I think they would want to do all three. Myself, I’m 42 years old, I could only handle one.
Liz Pesnel: When I was working as an agent I was going to a lot of these other festivals, and Pitchfork always remained my favorite. Like you can easily get around and, while there is some overlap in the schedule here and there, you could see everyone if you wanted to see everyone. I think that’s really great, that you’re not walking miles between stages to see what you want. And yeah, the audience really is so loyal, which is wonderful.
Artists also seem to really love being at our festival. A lot of the artists will stay and hang out on the days that they’re not performing, if they aren’t on a tour and have to split right away. You’ll definitely see them around, which isn’t something I’ve noticed so much elsewhere. Even with some of the local folks who have performed at the festival, a lot of them have worked at the festival too. You’ll see bartenders or operations workers that have been on stage before.
Recently we’ve heard a lot of stories about the increasing difficulty of running these types of events. This year, more than I think any in recent memory, you’ve seen festivals both big and small fold. What do you think has become harder about putting on events like this?
Liz Pesnel: I think every year things get more expensive. That’s not just limited to talent; it’s every single thing on our budget. I handle a lot of our finances and have the most insane spreadsheet tracking all of it. It’s things like grease removal – like the average attendee isn’t going to think that that’s something that we have to pay for, and while it’s not a huge line item, it’s on there. It’s every little detail that needs to be covered, and yeah the costs of things have gone way up. Talent costs get higher every year. I think too coming out of COVID, everyone was touring and trying to make up for the years that they weren’t able to be on the road. And I want them to get paid, that’s fine, but it’s still impacting our budget.
That’s normal across the board, and the challenge is that there are so many events that people could go to, so you want to keep ticket prices affordable. That’s something that we also work really hard to do – keep beer prices as low as we can, keep tickets as low as we can – while also covering our costs in the meantime.
Seth Dodson: I’m really proud of us for being able to keep ticket prices low, but that’s not really like the case in the larger industry. Last summer was the summer of Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. So as folks decide what their entertainment budget is, and you’re faced with the rising prices of concerts across the board, they have to be more selective about what they are spending their money on. I think a lot of stan culture is that you want to spend 800 bucks or 2000 bucks on your Beyonce ticket, because you love her so much. And if you’re, you know, 24 years old – or at least when I was 24 years old at the time – I would be like, okay, I’m done for the next…
Liz Pesnel: Year? Two years? [Laughs]
Seth Dodson: Like I’m done buying tickets, that’s my show. So the rising costs of concert tickets across the board – especially for these big acts that people really want to see – just makes people more careful with their budget.
What we deliver on is music discovery, where you may not recognize every name on the lineup, but that’s appealing to a lot of the folks that come. They will discover a band that they’ve never heard of. When you have like Carly Rae Jepsen and Halu Mergia – an Ethiopian accordionist – playing the same day, what is the crossover there? And I think that discovery is so exciting, and is what we offer. But discovery may not be what’s appealing for every person who wants to buy a ticket and has a limited entertainment budget, I guess.
You mentioned keeping ticket prices low, and I’m always surprised each year that the price remains what it is, especially because I think there’s a certain amount of expectation of inflation right now, that things cost more than they used to. Has there been pressure on you to raise prices? And how do you push back against that?
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Seth Dodson: Yeah, one of my most favorite things about the festival is the way that it has not changed. A lot of people that have worked on the festival have worked on it from the beginning. There’s a large contingent of the Chicago music scene that are the stagehands and bartenders and operations and production folks that have come back year over year. And that goes for all the staff that work on the festival, but certainly when I was a regular attendee, seeing all the friends that you maybe wouldn’t see other times during that year always felt like a family reunion or a homecoming or something.
Liz Pesnel: I was going to say summer camp.
Seth Dodson: I like that that feeling still persists to this day. It’s a smaller festival in the landscape of Lollapalooza and Riot Fest and others in the city. That allows us to be more adventurous in some of our bookings and get more eclectic. We always have a really unique lineup. It’s a cool niche that we have when looking at the broader landscape nationwide.
And yeah, we’ve added some new ticket types. We added a plus ticket tier maybe six years ago or so, to have this more elevated experience. And this year for the first time, we’re adding a VIP ticket tier that sort of matches the industry norms, as VIP experiences are really something that a lot of folks are more attracted to nowadays than when the festival was first conceived. But by and large, I feel like it delivers on that same summer camp experience year over year.
You mentioned how Pitchfork sits within the larger Chicago music and festival scene, which is very wide and diverse relative to a lot of big cities. What are the challenges of operating alongside the Riot Fests and Lollapaloozas and all the other more boutique events happening each year?
Seth Dodson: I mean, I love that Chicago has such a vibrant music scene and music festival scene. Every weekend in Chicago there’s some block party or some neighborhood fest that you could go to, and then there’s the big ones that you mentioned. But I think for us, just being a different scale of festival and the approach we have for the lineup, we are still a unique offering in that landscape. Other festivals have attendees who pick which one of the many they want to go to that summer, but a lot of folks that go to Pitchfork really just come to Pitchfork. Our attendees are pretty loyal to coming to us. I think they like the manageable size and that unique lineup. Riot has their vibe for sure, Lolla has their vibe, and we have our vibe. For the right person, I think they would want to do all three. Myself, I’m 42 years old, I could only handle one.
Liz Pesnel: When I was working as an agent I was going to a lot of these other festivals, and Pitchfork always remained my favorite. Like you can easily get around and, while there is some overlap in the schedule here and there, you could see everyone if you wanted to see everyone. I think that’s really great, that you’re not walking miles between stages to see what you want. And yeah, the audience really is so loyal, which is wonderful.
Artists also seem to really love being at our festival. A lot of the artists will stay and hang out on the days that they’re not performing, if they aren’t on a tour and have to split right away. You’ll definitely see them around, which isn’t something I’ve noticed so much elsewhere. Even with some of the local folks who have performed at the festival, a lot of them have worked at the festival too. You’ll see bartenders or operations workers that have been on stage before.
Recently we’ve heard a lot of stories about the increasing difficulty of running these types of events. This year, more than I think any in recent memory, you’ve seen festivals both big and small fold. What do you think has become harder about putting on events like this?
Liz Pesnel: I think every year things get more expensive. That’s not just limited to talent; it’s every single thing on our budget. I handle a lot of our finances and have the most insane spreadsheet tracking all of it. It’s things like grease removal – like the average attendee isn’t going to think that that’s something that we have to pay for, and while it’s not a huge line item, it’s on there. It’s every little detail that needs to be covered, and yeah the costs of things have gone way up. Talent costs get higher every year. I think too coming out of COVID, everyone was touring and trying to make up for the years that they weren’t able to be on the road. And I want them to get paid, that’s fine, but it’s still impacting our budget.
That’s normal across the board, and the challenge is that there are so many events that people could go to, so you want to keep ticket prices affordable. That’s something that we also work really hard to do – keep beer prices as low as we can, keep tickets as low as we can – while also covering our costs in the meantime.
Seth Dodson: I’m really proud of us for being able to keep ticket prices low, but that’s not really like the case in the larger industry. Last summer was the summer of Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. So as folks decide what their entertainment budget is, and you’re faced with the rising prices of concerts across the board, they have to be more selective about what they are spending their money on. I think a lot of stan culture is that you want to spend 800 bucks or 2000 bucks on your Beyonce ticket, because you love her so much. And if you’re, you know, 24 years old – or at least when I was 24 years old at the time – I would be like, okay, I’m done for the next…
Liz Pesnel: Year? Two years? [Laughs]
Seth Dodson: Like I’m done buying tickets, that’s my show. So the rising costs of concert tickets across the board – especially for these big acts that people really want to see – just makes people more careful with their budget.
What we deliver on is music discovery, where you may not recognize every name on the lineup, but that’s appealing to a lot of the folks that come. They will discover a band that they’ve never heard of. When you have like Carly Rae Jepsen and Halu Mergia – an Ethiopian accordionist – playing the same day, what is the crossover there? And I think that discovery is so exciting, and is what we offer. But discovery may not be what’s appealing for every person who wants to buy a ticket and has a limited entertainment budget, I guess.
You mentioned keeping ticket prices low, and I’m always surprised each year that the price remains what it is, especially because I think there’s a certain amount of expectation of inflation right now, that things cost more than they used to. Has there been pressure on you to raise prices? And how do you push back against that?
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Seth Dodson: I like that that feeling still persists to this day. It’s a smaller festival in the landscape of Lollapalooza and Riot Fest and others in the city. That allows us to be more adventurous in some of our bookings and get more eclectic. We always have a really unique lineup. It’s a cool niche that we have when looking at the broader landscape nationwide.
And yeah, we’ve added some new ticket types. We added a plus ticket tier maybe six years ago or so, to have this more elevated experience. And this year for the first time, we’re adding a VIP ticket tier that sort of matches the industry norms, as VIP experiences are really something that a lot of folks are more attracted to nowadays than when the festival was first conceived. But by and large, I feel like it delivers on that same summer camp experience year over year.
You mentioned how Pitchfork sits within the larger Chicago music and festival scene, which is very wide and diverse relative to a lot of big cities. What are the challenges of operating alongside the Riot Fests and Lollapaloozas and all the other more boutique events happening each year?
Seth Dodson: I mean, I love that Chicago has such a vibrant music scene and music festival scene. Every weekend in Chicago there’s some block party or some neighborhood fest that you could go to, and then there’s the big ones that you mentioned. But I think for us, just being a different scale of festival and the approach we have for the lineup, we are still a unique offering in that landscape. Other festivals have attendees who pick which one of the many they want to go to that summer, but a lot of folks that go to Pitchfork really just come to Pitchfork. Our attendees are pretty loyal to coming to us. I think they like the manageable size and that unique lineup. Riot has their vibe for sure, Lolla has their vibe, and we have our vibe. For the right person, I think they would want to do all three. Myself, I’m 42 years old, I could only handle one.
Liz Pesnel: When I was working as an agent I was going to a lot of these other festivals, and Pitchfork always remained my favorite. Like you can easily get around and, while there is some overlap in the schedule here and there, you could see everyone if you wanted to see everyone. I think that’s really great, that you’re not walking miles between stages to see what you want. And yeah, the audience really is so loyal, which is wonderful.
Artists also seem to really love being at our festival. A lot of the artists will stay and hang out on the days that they’re not performing, if they aren’t on a tour and have to split right away. You’ll definitely see them around, which isn’t something I’ve noticed so much elsewhere. Even with some of the local folks who have performed at the festival, a lot of them have worked at the festival too. You’ll see bartenders or operations workers that have been on stage before.
Recently we’ve heard a lot of stories about the increasing difficulty of running these types of events. This year, more than I think any in recent memory, you’ve seen festivals both big and small fold. What do you think has become harder about putting on events like this?
Liz Pesnel: I think every year things get more expensive. That’s not just limited to talent; it’s every single thing on our budget. I handle a lot of our finances and have the most insane spreadsheet tracking all of it. It’s things like grease removal – like the average attendee isn’t going to think that that’s something that we have to pay for, and while it’s not a huge line item, it’s on there. It’s every little detail that needs to be covered, and yeah the costs of things have gone way up. Talent costs get higher every year. I think too coming out of COVID, everyone was touring and trying to make up for the years that they weren’t able to be on the road. And I want them to get paid, that’s fine, but it’s still impacting our budget.
That’s normal across the board, and the challenge is that there are so many events that people could go to, so you want to keep ticket prices affordable. That’s something that we also work really hard to do – keep beer prices as low as we can, keep tickets as low as we can – while also covering our costs in the meantime.
Seth Dodson: I’m really proud of us for being able to keep ticket prices low, but that’s not really like the case in the larger industry. Last summer was the summer of Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. So as folks decide what their entertainment budget is, and you’re faced with the rising prices of concerts across the board, they have to be more selective about what they are spending their money on. I think a lot of stan culture is that you want to spend 800 bucks or 2000 bucks on your Beyonce ticket, because you love her so much. And if you’re, you know, 24 years old – or at least when I was 24 years old at the time – I would be like, okay, I’m done for the next…
Liz Pesnel: Year? Two years? [Laughs]
Seth Dodson: Like I’m done buying tickets, that’s my show. So the rising costs of concert tickets across the board – especially for these big acts that people really want to see – just makes people more careful with their budget.
What we deliver on is music discovery, where you may not recognize every name on the lineup, but that’s appealing to a lot of the folks that come. They will discover a band that they’ve never heard of. When you have like Carly Rae Jepsen and Halu Mergia – an Ethiopian accordionist – playing the same day, what is the crossover there? And I think that discovery is so exciting, and is what we offer. But discovery may not be what’s appealing for every person who wants to buy a ticket and has a limited entertainment budget, I guess.
You mentioned keeping ticket prices low, and I’m always surprised each year that the price remains what it is, especially because I think there’s a certain amount of expectation of inflation right now, that things cost more than they used to. Has there been pressure on you to raise prices? And how do you push back against that?
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Seth Dodson: I mean, I love that Chicago has such a vibrant music scene and music festival scene. Every weekend in Chicago there’s some block party or some neighborhood fest that you could go to, and then there’s the big ones that you mentioned. But I think for us, just being a different scale of festival and the approach we have for the lineup, we are still a unique offering in that landscape. Other festivals have attendees who pick which one of the many they want to go to that summer, but a lot of folks that go to Pitchfork really just come to Pitchfork. Our attendees are pretty loyal to coming to us. I think they like the manageable size and that unique lineup. Riot has their vibe for sure, Lolla has their vibe, and we have our vibe. For the right person, I think they would want to do all three. Myself, I’m 42 years old, I could only handle one.
Liz Pesnel: When I was working as an agent I was going to a lot of these other festivals, and Pitchfork always remained my favorite. Like you can easily get around and, while there is some overlap in the schedule here and there, you could see everyone if you wanted to see everyone. I think that’s really great, that you’re not walking miles between stages to see what you want. And yeah, the audience really is so loyal, which is wonderful.
Artists also seem to really love being at our festival. A lot of the artists will stay and hang out on the days that they’re not performing, if they aren’t on a tour and have to split right away. You’ll definitely see them around, which isn’t something I’ve noticed so much elsewhere. Even with some of the local folks who have performed at the festival, a lot of them have worked at the festival too. You’ll see bartenders or operations workers that have been on stage before.
Recently we’ve heard a lot of stories about the increasing difficulty of running these types of events. This year, more than I think any in recent memory, you’ve seen festivals both big and small fold. What do you think has become harder about putting on events like this?
Liz Pesnel: I think every year things get more expensive. That’s not just limited to talent; it’s every single thing on our budget. I handle a lot of our finances and have the most insane spreadsheet tracking all of it. It’s things like grease removal – like the average attendee isn’t going to think that that’s something that we have to pay for, and while it’s not a huge line item, it’s on there. It’s every little detail that needs to be covered, and yeah the costs of things have gone way up. Talent costs get higher every year. I think too coming out of COVID, everyone was touring and trying to make up for the years that they weren’t able to be on the road. And I want them to get paid, that’s fine, but it’s still impacting our budget.
That’s normal across the board, and the challenge is that there are so many events that people could go to, so you want to keep ticket prices affordable. That’s something that we also work really hard to do – keep beer prices as low as we can, keep tickets as low as we can – while also covering our costs in the meantime.
Seth Dodson: I’m really proud of us for being able to keep ticket prices low, but that’s not really like the case in the larger industry. Last summer was the summer of Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. So as folks decide what their entertainment budget is, and you’re faced with the rising prices of concerts across the board, they have to be more selective about what they are spending their money on. I think a lot of stan culture is that you want to spend 800 bucks or 2000 bucks on your Beyonce ticket, because you love her so much. And if you’re, you know, 24 years old – or at least when I was 24 years old at the time – I would be like, okay, I’m done for the next…
Liz Pesnel: Year? Two years? [Laughs]
Seth Dodson: Like I’m done buying tickets, that’s my show. So the rising costs of concert tickets across the board – especially for these big acts that people really want to see – just makes people more careful with their budget.
What we deliver on is music discovery, where you may not recognize every name on the lineup, but that’s appealing to a lot of the folks that come. They will discover a band that they’ve never heard of. When you have like Carly Rae Jepsen and Halu Mergia – an Ethiopian accordionist – playing the same day, what is the crossover there? And I think that discovery is so exciting, and is what we offer. But discovery may not be what’s appealing for every person who wants to buy a ticket and has a limited entertainment budget, I guess.
You mentioned keeping ticket prices low, and I’m always surprised each year that the price remains what it is, especially because I think there’s a certain amount of expectation of inflation right now, that things cost more than they used to. Has there been pressure on you to raise prices? And how do you push back against that?
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Artists also seem to really love being at our festival. A lot of the artists will stay and hang out on the days that they’re not performing, if they aren’t on a tour and have to split right away. You’ll definitely see them around, which isn’t something I’ve noticed so much elsewhere. Even with some of the local folks who have performed at the festival, a lot of them have worked at the festival too. You’ll see bartenders or operations workers that have been on stage before.
Recently we’ve heard a lot of stories about the increasing difficulty of running these types of events. This year, more than I think any in recent memory, you’ve seen festivals both big and small fold. What do you think has become harder about putting on events like this?
Liz Pesnel: I think every year things get more expensive. That’s not just limited to talent; it’s every single thing on our budget. I handle a lot of our finances and have the most insane spreadsheet tracking all of it. It’s things like grease removal – like the average attendee isn’t going to think that that’s something that we have to pay for, and while it’s not a huge line item, it’s on there. It’s every little detail that needs to be covered, and yeah the costs of things have gone way up. Talent costs get higher every year. I think too coming out of COVID, everyone was touring and trying to make up for the years that they weren’t able to be on the road. And I want them to get paid, that’s fine, but it’s still impacting our budget.
That’s normal across the board, and the challenge is that there are so many events that people could go to, so you want to keep ticket prices affordable. That’s something that we also work really hard to do – keep beer prices as low as we can, keep tickets as low as we can – while also covering our costs in the meantime.
Seth Dodson: I’m really proud of us for being able to keep ticket prices low, but that’s not really like the case in the larger industry. Last summer was the summer of Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. So as folks decide what their entertainment budget is, and you’re faced with the rising prices of concerts across the board, they have to be more selective about what they are spending their money on. I think a lot of stan culture is that you want to spend 800 bucks or 2000 bucks on your Beyonce ticket, because you love her so much. And if you’re, you know, 24 years old – or at least when I was 24 years old at the time – I would be like, okay, I’m done for the next…
Liz Pesnel: Year? Two years? [Laughs]
Seth Dodson: Like I’m done buying tickets, that’s my show. So the rising costs of concert tickets across the board – especially for these big acts that people really want to see – just makes people more careful with their budget.
What we deliver on is music discovery, where you may not recognize every name on the lineup, but that’s appealing to a lot of the folks that come. They will discover a band that they’ve never heard of. When you have like Carly Rae Jepsen and Halu Mergia – an Ethiopian accordionist – playing the same day, what is the crossover there? And I think that discovery is so exciting, and is what we offer. But discovery may not be what’s appealing for every person who wants to buy a ticket and has a limited entertainment budget, I guess.
You mentioned keeping ticket prices low, and I’m always surprised each year that the price remains what it is, especially because I think there’s a certain amount of expectation of inflation right now, that things cost more than they used to. Has there been pressure on you to raise prices? And how do you push back against that?
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
That’s normal across the board, and the challenge is that there are so many events that people could go to, so you want to keep ticket prices affordable. That’s something that we also work really hard to do – keep beer prices as low as we can, keep tickets as low as we can – while also covering our costs in the meantime.
Seth Dodson: I’m really proud of us for being able to keep ticket prices low, but that’s not really like the case in the larger industry. Last summer was the summer of Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. So as folks decide what their entertainment budget is, and you’re faced with the rising prices of concerts across the board, they have to be more selective about what they are spending their money on. I think a lot of stan culture is that you want to spend 800 bucks or 2000 bucks on your Beyonce ticket, because you love her so much. And if you’re, you know, 24 years old – or at least when I was 24 years old at the time – I would be like, okay, I’m done for the next…
Liz Pesnel: Year? Two years? [Laughs]
Seth Dodson: Like I’m done buying tickets, that’s my show. So the rising costs of concert tickets across the board – especially for these big acts that people really want to see – just makes people more careful with their budget.
What we deliver on is music discovery, where you may not recognize every name on the lineup, but that’s appealing to a lot of the folks that come. They will discover a band that they’ve never heard of. When you have like Carly Rae Jepsen and Halu Mergia – an Ethiopian accordionist – playing the same day, what is the crossover there? And I think that discovery is so exciting, and is what we offer. But discovery may not be what’s appealing for every person who wants to buy a ticket and has a limited entertainment budget, I guess.
You mentioned keeping ticket prices low, and I’m always surprised each year that the price remains what it is, especially because I think there’s a certain amount of expectation of inflation right now, that things cost more than they used to. Has there been pressure on you to raise prices? And how do you push back against that?
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Seth Dodson: Like I’m done buying tickets, that’s my show. So the rising costs of concert tickets across the board – especially for these big acts that people really want to see – just makes people more careful with their budget.
What we deliver on is music discovery, where you may not recognize every name on the lineup, but that’s appealing to a lot of the folks that come. They will discover a band that they’ve never heard of. When you have like Carly Rae Jepsen and Halu Mergia – an Ethiopian accordionist – playing the same day, what is the crossover there? And I think that discovery is so exciting, and is what we offer. But discovery may not be what’s appealing for every person who wants to buy a ticket and has a limited entertainment budget, I guess.
You mentioned keeping ticket prices low, and I’m always surprised each year that the price remains what it is, especially because I think there’s a certain amount of expectation of inflation right now, that things cost more than they used to. Has there been pressure on you to raise prices? And how do you push back against that?
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Seth Dodson: Production wise, we of course make money off of tickets. We also make money off of sponsors and our concessions margins and vendor fees for folks who are selling their crafts or posters or whatever at the festival. So there are those other buckets of revenue that come into the festival. I think over the years we’ve fortunately been able to do better sponsorship wise, and do it more consistently. That’s been an aspect that’s helped us. I can’t speak to other festivals, but it has helped us keep changes to the consumer ticket price only incremental.
Liz Pesnel: With our sponsors on site, we do our best to have activations that are value-adds for our ticket buyers. We just announced that we have Visit Austin sponsoring a stage where artists from the lineup will do an interview in a small shaded lounge area that attendees can go to. And we have Nespresso this year, so there’s going to be coffee on site, which everyone always wants. So when there are these other brands on site, we do our best to tie it in a way that makes sense for our attendee experience.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
How far in advance are you conceptualizing the booking process? And where does forming a lineup begin? Is it vision boarding? Do you have an ongoing wishlist you’re crossing off?
Seth Dodson: Booking starts usually right after each year’s festival. Those conversations start happening immediately. There’s a number of different factors that weigh into it. One of the most important is that we’re a media company, so we’re different from almost any other music festival, other than like Essence, which is a media company that has their own music festival too. There’s not really many other examples where a media company does these large scale events.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
And then we have this website that is, of course, very opinionated. It’s a criticism website focused on discovering emerging artists. So taking our editorial point of view and bringing that to life is really important. It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other events. Our head editors are in conversation with us through the booking process. The festival was started by the Pitchfork folks at the time and Mike Reed, who runs the Constellation and all these other venues. He’s our main production partner and he does the actual contracting and negotiations with the artists as well. So it’s Mike as a head, Liz and I as the Pitchfork event heads, and then our editorial voices. Those three groups come together to make a lot of the determinations about what the lineup is going to be each year.
And you’re dealing with factors such as artist availability, their fees, what we can afford, who’s touring, who’s on route, who’s recently played Chicago, who has not – all of those factors go into it. We certainly develop a wish list of who we would like to go after. Some folks we’ve been going after since the beginning of the festival, and just ask every year if we could have them perform. We also reach out to all of the agencies and get submissions too. So then we just start to compare what’s been submitted to us and work off of our wish list.
We want the lineup to be diverse across multiple genres and multiple cultures. We’ve had a really nice balance between male identified and female identified performers over the course of the years, which a lot of festivals are just now getting hip to doing. But I’m proud that that tradition has been going on for a long time in terms of what you see at Pitchfork. So diversity and inclusivity and all of those things also factor into our decisions. And of course we want to pick the artists that we think are going to move tickets and bring in folks too. So it’s a whole tangled web of different actors that comprise the booking process.
But for me it’s one of the most exciting parts of the process of creating the festival. It can be very heart in your throat at moments like, “Oh, are they going to confirm or not?” or, “This person dropped out, oh gosh,” or “Okay we have Jamie XX as our headliner. What’s the right compliment to really vibe that day out so that we’re telling a story, which is something that we want to tell too?” We sort of want some cohesion while still again offering all the multiple genres and types of acts.
One of my favorite things is that we have the Blue Stage – kind of our side stage – which most years has its own narrative going on outside of the two main stages in the field. Saturday has Carly Rae and Jessie Ware and Jamie xx really delivering on this dance music vibe, and on the Blue stage we have like Unwound and Bratmobile and just like people who are going to be thrashing, like we have a mosh pit over here and “Call Me, Maybe” over there. I don’t know, putting together those stories is just one of my favorite parts of the process.
You said editorial folks are part of the booking team, and I’m curious how much Pitchfork’s editorial voice helps or hurts you in this process. I can imagine there are some artists you reach out to who are like, “I hate the score you gave me before” and just don’t want to do the festival on principle. And I’m sure there’s lots of folks where you’ve been such a substantial part of their career and they’re excited to do this. How much of that plays a role?
Seth Dodson: Yeah, for sure. We want the festival to reflect the editorial voice. And there are certain acts that are not covered favorably on the website, and those are probably not going to be on the top of our priority list. But on occasion there are acts at the festival that the publication hasn’t covered, usually smaller ones. We always try to have local Chicago bands kick off each day of the festival.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
But I think it’s a benefit to us just because the festival has such name recognition. I think it’s an exciting, somewhat prestigious event for acts to play because of the association with the website, just because it does kind of give you that “Pitchfork seal of approval”. Even if your last album didn’t get “Best New Music” or something like that, you’re still at our event. So that still means that we appreciate your music and adore you as an artist. I think it opens up some booking conversations and doors to us.
And then there have certainly been artists that shout us out over the course of the years that they were unhappy with their album review, and troll us a little bit on stage. That’s part of being a critic, and I don’t know, I kind of welcome critiquing the critics – we’re open to that! It’s always funny when that happens. As a criticism site, you can’t blame them.
There’s definitely a couple specific acts I want to ask about then. Angry Blackmen have a song, “Dead Men Tell No Lies” where they actually take a pretty pointed anti-Pitchfork stance. When you hear a line like that, how does that play into your interest in booking them?
Liz Pesnel: I don’t know that that necessarily played into it. Even though they say that, it’s still music that we think is rad. Like Seth was saying too, we try to be diverse, and we also try to have cool Chicago acts on the lineup every year too. I think them doing something cool and being from here is what goes into that. But yeah, I mean, we welcome the criticism. It’s fine. We can still think it’s cool.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Seth Dodson: Ultimately Pitchfork is composed of deep music nerds. So it’s almost like an honor that like, Jpegmafia disses you in a lyric or whatever. It’s like, “Oh, the cool people noticed us nerds over here!” I don’t think anybody ever really has hurt feelings about that.
Liz Pesnel: There’s still always an appreciation for the art at the end of the day.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Another act that I wanna talk about is Jamie xx, who if I’m correct would be the first DJ/producer to headline Pitchfork. Was that something that you recognized after the fact, or was that an intentional decision to give him this moment for the festival?
Seth Dodson: Well I think with him, this is part of the benefit of having an editorial arm. We knew that he was going to be releasing a lot of new music this year. His album is out in September, but he’s been releasing a ton of singles in the lead up. So to get somebody who is on their album cycle, promoting something new when it’s been a minute – his last album came out almost 10 years ago – I think it was super exciting for us to do that booking.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
And we really wanted to have Jesse Ware this year. And then we started talking to Carly’s team. It’s just like, “Oh, we’re really creating a dance party?” Which is a fun, different kind of energy for this day compared to the other days or maybe some of what would be considered a traditional day in a past year. I think that’s what steered us in that direction, as we just started to visualize this amazing dance party day.
How do you think about the scheduling broadly for the festival?
Seth Dodson: We try to build these narratives with some cohesion throughout the day. What are our main stages saying, and what is our side stage’s focus? There are also some logistical things, like we don’t want Jessica Pratt on the Blue Stage while 100 gecs is on the main stage because they’re just going to wipe her out with volume. We’re a smaller festival, so there are sound bleed issues we have to take into consideration. I also like building up the energy throughout the day towards those final acts. We usually put the more singer-songwriter types earlier in the day so that for folks that have been at the park for hours and hours the energy and momentum is building to keep them engaged, and drinking [laughs].
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
One last act that I want to ask about – for a lot of folks there was confusion around Black Pumas as a headliner since Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed their last album, and it felt kind of out of character for the editorial voice. I’m curious where that booking came from?
Seth Dodson: It was a cool opportunity with their team. They had been in Chicago in support of their second album and had a series of sold out shows at the Salt Shed. So we know that their fan base is into them and is in Chicago. Yeah, we haven’t covered them a ton on the website, but we did review their first album. I think it was just offering something different and focusing in on a cool opportunity with them this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Liz Pesnel: Coming to the festival, even if you aren’t someone that reads the website, you know you’re just gonna see a bunch of good performances, and they put on a really great show. They’re great musicians. So yeah I’m definitely excited to see them a week from today.
Do you all read any of the lineup reactions after the fact? Or do you try to keep yourself away from that part of the Internet?
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Liz Pesnel: I definitely look at all of it. We have a pretty active festival Subreddit that…we peek at [laughs].
People have positive or negative reactions, but they’re really engaged whether they like it or not. And I think that’s something that’s really great about both the festival and the website – people are into it, whether they have something positive or negative to say. It is really fun to get in deep and see who people think we’re booking and their ideas. People make fan lineup posters with their predicted lineup and it’s really fun to see that. But yeah, there are times where I try to take a step back to not get too caught up in that, because we always do our best to put forward a festival that we feel great about.
Seth Dodson: I think that feedback is important, and we poll our attendees every year after the festival on “Who do you want to see next year?” We try to listen to those voices, be it positive or negative reactions. It definitely matters to us.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
What goes into curating the lineup for the night shows each year?
Seth Dodson: The smaller acts on the festival lineup are the ones that we allow to do the aftershows, and they program those with the respective venues. I think for us, it’s just an opportunity to support those artists even more by allowing them to have another show in the city while they’re in town for the festival. I think Pitchfork is definitely part of the fabric of the Chicago music scene, so we also want to support all of the venues that do these shows and we’re competing against this weekend. It’s kind of our way of being good partners to the artists and the venues while we’re holding this big event.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Your brand and footprint as a festival has expanded globally. There have been Pitchfork Festivals in Berlin, Paris, London, and now Mexico City. What are the discussions like around opening up to new locations? And how do you keep the brand cohesion while also conceptualizing doing something slightly different with each one?
Liz Pesnel: In terms of brand cohesion, Seth and I are involved with all of those festivals, in similar ways with the booking for Chicago. We do have local partners in each of those markets who help take the lead, and we work really closely with them to put together lineups that reflect what’s happening locally, but again also the editorial website.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
In terms of deciding what to do and where, London is a place where we have a ton of readership, so that made a lot of sense. Mexico City too, and we’ve been covering more Spanish speaking artists on the website and trying to amplify that a bit more, so that also made a lot of sense. And our partners in each of the markets produce tons of shows throughout the year that aren’t just our festival, and they all also work with very “Pitchfork artists”, so they understand our brand super well even though they aren’t direct employees here.
Seth Dodson: I think expanding the festival is one of my favorite parts of the job. It’s great to travel to all those countries. Paris has been going for over 10 years, London for four, and Mexico city just launched this year. As music and sharing music becomes a more global thing and an easier thing to do, I want Pitchfork Music Festival represented as far and wide as we could take it.
And something that’s really cool is when we launched Mexico City this year, before the lineup was even announced, we went on pre-sale and sold over 200 tickets.
Liz Pesnel: With zero information, other than that it was a Pitchfork Festival.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Seth Dodson: Zero information. Like, here are the dates and that’s it. And we’re in a non-English-as-a-first language speaking country. It’s like, do people know us down there or not? And then sure enough, it was a really big success. And now we’re growing that event to be even larger next year too. So all of these international iterations have also increased in size year over year, which is really exciting. And it means that they’re working well.
Liz Pesnel: It’s also great to be in partnership with folks all over the world in the festival business too, because we can talk about what’s happening in all of those cities and what they’re experiencing. And just on a personal level, it’s really great being able to collaborate with and learn from them too. It’s fun when we all get on calls together between the different markets, or attending different festivals – the Mexico City partners are coming next weekend, and they ended up coming to Europe last year to check out how they were doing things to keep in mind for their own festival in the spring.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
For a lot of folks tapped into Pitchfork, the big news of the brand was the Conde Nast layoffs and ambiguous merger with GQ. There’s been a lot of anxiety for readers. How insulated is the festival side from the editorial industry going through its own set of consolidations and difficulties? It’s clearly something that’s on people’s minds as they attend the festival and think about the brand as a whole.
Seth Dodson: Last week we announced our new Head of Editorial Mano Sundaresan, so we’re really stoked about him and his vision. He’s going to be at the festival this weekend, and has attended the festival over the years too. Liz and I are really excited to get to meet him and start visualizing what is a new era for the website and for the events as well. We’re all a team and in conversation with one another. So certainly what happens editorially, that division is not so removed from the festivals and events team that we don’t notice.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Liz Pesnel: It still impacts us even though we’re not directly on that team. We’re all still under that umbrella. But yeah, I’m so excited for him to start and be at the festival, and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the site and for artists that I think really aligns with the spirit of the festival and the way we’ve approached things in the past. So we’re just really looking forward to seeing what ways we can grow too.
Seth Dodson: What we know about Mano and No Bells is that he really loves niche, underground scenes. Liz and I, on a personal level, that really is what we get into as well. We love experimental stuff, we love new age stuff, and it’s this part of his background that’s really exciting and aligns with ours and what we do with our festivals. So we’re excited for the future ahead.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Speaking of the future ahead, who are you all most excited to see next weekend?
Seth Dodson: I’m most excited for ML Buch. That kind of ethereal, echoey, guitar-synthy stuff with female lyrics and vocals, that’s my favorite thing. She was on my wishlist for this year, and was my favorite album last year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.
Liz Pesnel: I’m excited for Yaeji. She played at our London Festival at the end of last year, and it was one of my favorite performances of the year. So I’m excited to see her again on our stage. And I mean, Alanis of course. I’ve never seen her live before, but grew up with her music and, you know, what an icon. So just excited to have her be part of it.
Seth Dodson: I’ll be looking forward to the moment where Liz and I are holding hands and bawling and screaming along to “Thank You” with Alanis to close out this year.