Being a journalist nowadays offers very few perks. However, one that still remains is the opportunity to cover music festivals around Seattle.
Enter Bumbershoot 2025: an amalgamation of vendors, food, live music, and entertainment in Seattle Center, put on by New Rising Sun and Third Stone. Despite its reduced size this year, the festival was still able pack a significant punch. By securing headliners the likes of Car Seat Headrest, Aurora, and Janelle Monáe, while also turning audiences on to new and local talent, the organizers showed again how to keep the party going after 53 years in action.
Alongside reporter Nova Berger, the SGN was on a mission last Labor Day weekend to assess the vibes, scour the grounds, jam out among the crowd, and most of all, talk to as many talented people as possible and watch them perform their hearts out!
Performers
First off, the SGN talked to the Brooklyn-founded all-women group Say She She. Member Piya Malik recalled the band’s origin: first meeting member Nya Gazelle Brown at a rooftop party and then member Sabrina Mileo Cunningham as neighbors in the same apartment building. Cunningham said that the group derives their songwriting inspiration from discussing the goings-on of their lives together. Brown shared her hopes for the future of inclusivity in music, and spoke to how Say She She, in contrast to current technology in the music industry, prefers using more analog methods for recording their sound in order to “keep the warmth.”
The two women of The Army, The Navy (Maia Ciambriello (Navy) and Sasha Goldberg (Army) shared with the SGN how they landed on their band name. While on a long road trip from New Orleans to San Francisco, Ciambriello and Goldberg used to spitball potential names, like “Hall and Overnight Oats” and “Lemon Amount.” Then, when they decided to form their band, they polled their friends on the list they created. Goldberg said that despite only one friend voting for The Army, The Navy, the duo decided to trust their gut instincts and run with it anyway. Goldberg said of it proudly, “I don’t regret it a bit.”
“There are so few women and Nonbinary people in the [music] industry we’ve met, and we try to work with as many as possible,” Goldberg explained. Ciambriello echoed the sentiment, and said the duo makes it their priority to work with women, Queer, and Nonbinary people in every facet of what they do as a band.
Next, the SGN caught up with UK-based punk band Fat Dog, right after their stage performance. Band members Joe Love, Chris Hughes, and Morgan Wallace all brought a strong, dry sense of humor from across the pond with them to the interview. The three members riffed with the SGN on topics such as: how UK audiences lack the same level of enthusiasm as their US counterparts, which breed makes the best kind of fat dog, and the age-old US college pastime: the Fratboy Flick.
While in the crowd at Bumbershoot, the SGN came across Ishmael Butler, one of three founding members of the ’90s hip-hop trio Digable Planets. He offered his wisdom on creating music while getting older, and what it’s been like touring the country. Butler also spoke to changes in the regionality of music in the era of the internet and social media. When asked whether his relationship and feelings about music had changed over the years, the accomplished artist said, “I think at the core, the fascination and curiosity with music is something that is innate. If you have it, you have it.”
Near Bumbershoot’s end on Sunday, the SGN met with band Vika and the Velvets, all the way from Spokane. Front woman Vika shared the band’s origin story: “We’ve gone through many different rotations of players [and] some of them don’t like us anymore. There’s lots of lore with our history.”
As for how the events of 2025 have informed their creative process, a member spoke to the importance of music as an outlet for people to express their feelings: “With all the bullshit going, why not go to a show and fuck around in a good way?”
A member of the band also discussed an iconic Spokane attraction: the Garbage Goat. Vika gave an apt description: “a silver, aluminum, titanium goat that has been on the loose in Spokane for the last, forever. It eats up your trash, and it gives you a good time.”
But not everyone the SGN interviewed at Bumbershoot 2025 were musicians. Frankie Dove is a performer with SOS Pro Wrestling in Tacoma, which put on a show for the festival titled “SOS Presents: Bumbermania.” On Saturday, Dove told the SGN that when it came to bringing wrestling to a new Seattle audience, “We just want to have fun, and show people the culture.”
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