MCGILL, NV (CelebrityAccess) – The Schellraiser Music Festival takes place June 1 – 3 near the small town of Ely, NV surrounded by stunning high-desert landscapes and the majestic Schell Creek Mountain range. The headliners for this year’s festival include Blonde Redhead, Meat Puppets, Asleep At The Wheel, The Joy Formidable, Blitzen Trapper, Murder By Death, and more.
This is the second year for the fest – with the first edition seeing Old 97’s, Houndmouth, BRONCHO, and more than 25 other artists perform at the remote McGill Pool Park in Salt Lake City. In the intimate environment, Schellraiser 2022 offered festivalgoers and live music fans the rare chance to interact and engage with each other in a natural seeing. Event founder, Rudy Herndon said, “Old 97’s frontman Rhett Miller announced that the lineup was probably the best-curated one he’d ever seen, and guitarist Ken Bethea paid us the ultimate compliment by comparing the overall vibe to that of Marfa, Texas.”
Schellraiser was created and is 100% curated by Herndon, who has lived in Eastern Nevada off and on since 2006 and is passionate about bringing more music and culture to the Steptoe Valley. So, in 2019, he walked away from his job as a journalist and dug in to make Schellraiser happen. He says the vibe “reflects our love of alternative and independent music, from country to cumbia, punk to pop, and soul to psychedelia.”
After getting inspiration to start a festival after attending the Trans Pecos Festival of Music + Love in Marfa, he saw potential. “I wanted to create a different kind of smaller-scale event that’s inclusive and welcoming and joyful – and free from the kinds of crowds, trends, social pressures, and pretensions that plague larger-scale festivals.” Herndon says the festival’s small size not only encourages greater interaction among festivalgoers; it also minimizes impacts from traffic, overcrowding, and waste.
To further reduce impacts on local traffic, the festival is partnering with the Ely Shoshone Tribe’s Tsaa Nesunkwa Cannabis Dispensary to offer free rides on board the one-and-only Canna-Bus. The bus will be shuttling festivalgoers between the festival venue and the tribe’s dispensary, along with other stops in Ely and at Schellraiser’s 80-acre campground.
The festival’s off-grid campground is home to the largest private solar power array in the surrounding area. A solar battery storage system keeps the lights on at 10 developed camping sites after the sun goes down each day.
Herndon is also hoping to jump-start the culture through the restoration of the historic and long-abandoned McGill Theater near Ely. The mixed-use project aims to restore the main auditorium for movie screenings, concerts, and other special events, while eventually creating a smaller second auditorium for screenings of classic, international, indie and arthouse movies.
Full Line Up
June 1
Main Stage:
Asleep At The Wheel
Blitzen Trapper
The Secret Sisters
Mapache
The Delines
Brit Taylor
West Texas Exiles
Side Stage:
Brennen Leigh
Vandoliers
The Two Tracks
Ali McGuirk
June 2
Main Stage:
Blonde Redhead
The Joy Formidable
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Blackwater Holylight
Frankie And The Witch Fingers
Tropa Magica
Anthony D’Amato
Side Stage:
Summer Cannibals
Grace McKagan
Los Shadows
The Mellons
The Plastic Cherries
June 3
Main Stage:
Meat Puppets
Murder By Death
SadGirl
Night Moves
Titus Andronicus
The Paranoyds
The 40 Acre Mule
Side Stage:
Joshua Ray Walker
Ottoman Turks
Jenny Don’t And The Spurs
White Rose Motor Oil
Noelle & The Deserters
