Treefort Music Fest

The Treefort Music Fest is a five-day, indie rock festival which is held at numerous venues throughout downtown Boise, Idaho in late March. The 2014 festival took place March 20–23 with the featured acts Built to Spill, The Joy Formidable, and Poliça; the 2015 festival, scheduled March 25–29, featured TV On The Radio, Trampled By Turtles, and Emily Wells, and locals Built to Spill and Josh Ritter. Treefort has been called "the west’s best SXSW alternative" and "Boise's preeminent artistic, cultural and musical happening" which has "morphed from quirky music festival to consuming community event." It has also been characterized as having become a "nationally renowned gathering just by maintaining its personable close-knit vibe" and a "music lover's joyous mayhem" which showcases and amplifies the soul of Boise.

Although the idea of a multi-day, multi-venue music festival has been bruited since the mid-80s, Treefort itself had its roots in tragedy when producer Lori Shandro's husband died in a private plane crash in 2009. The head of an independent health insurance agency, Shandro in taking up interests divergent from her married life eventually formed The Duck Club, which brings musical acts to Boise throughout the year and which now produces the Treefort Music Fest. Logistically, Treefort was inspired in part by the touring schedules of bands headed home from SXSW in Austin, Texas (some of which had been hosted by the Visual Arts Collective at a post-SXSW mini fest in Garden City, Idaho the previous year), as well as late March being the beginning of spring break for many Idaho schools. A week before the festival itself, the Boise-based bands TEENS, Hillfolk Noir, Le Fleur, The Brett Netson Band, Finn Riggins, Youth Lagoon, and Built to Spill had themselves played at SXSW. Producer Lori Shandro reflected on Treefort's genesis a year later at a Scenius town hall-style meeting on artistic endeavours and economic growth that "There were just a certain number of people who were all in the same place regarding [Treefort]. ... This sort of synergy happened to make the project come together rather easily... With scenius, there's the thought of trying to put the right people in the same place at the same time, and then things will happen. That's really how Treefort happened. Everybody had the same vision that the Boise music scene is ready to develop and be a force on its own two feet."

...
Wikipedia