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It was billed as a “love letter to Portland,” a chance for a classic beer brand to give back to the city that lent some hipster cred to its red, white and blue cans, reversing decades of decline.
But when the first Pabst Project proved a success in 2014, the summer music festival began to grow, adding spin-off events across the United States. By 2017, festivals were taking place in four American cities and Project Pabst had begun taking a fair share of the multi-billion dollar company’s marketing resources.
“It takes a lot to put on a festival,” said marketing director Rachel Keeton. “Throwing four means it’s the only thing you can do.”
This summer, Project Pabst will return for a two-day festival at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, this time working with local concert promoter TrueWest. With relatively inexpensive PBR tallboys, a newly built version of its signature 25-foot silver unicorn, and dozens of touring indie rock and hip hop acts, the revived festival marks a potential “We’re so back” moment for Portland.
The event, which will take place on July 27 and 28 on two stages built along the Willamette River, will include performances from the usual mix of nostalgic Project Pabst acts and more current hip hop and indie rock bands, which this year include Billy Idol, Big Thief, T-Pain, Violent Femmes and Gossip (see the full Project Pabst 2024 lineup below). Pre-sale tickets are Available now.
HOW THE PABST PROJECT CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD
After launching at Zidell Yards in South Portland, Project Pabst moved to Tom McCall Waterfront Park in 2016 and then held its last event in 2017. Considering the end came years before the pandemic, its return makes You wonder why it stopped in the first place.
“It’s kind of a tightrope act: There are reservations, there’s weather, and I’m not a music promoter by profession,” said Matt Slessler, who helped spearhead the initial run of Project Pabst. “After four years, we reluctantly said, ‘It’s a lot of work. Let’s go out on a high note. You’d rather leave the party too quickly than stay too long.’”
Instead of rolling that rock up the hill for another year, Pabst called it quits after the multi-city festivals of 2017. That should have been the end. But during his seven-year absence, a few outsiders—PBR fans, bar owners, a powerful distributor—kept the Pabst Project candle burning. Soon, interest in reviving the festival grew within the company itself.
“We have a lot of new people at Pabst,” said Slessler, now a vice president at the company. “They would see these photos and posters and say, ‘Wait a minute, we used to put on a festival with Beck, Iggy Pop, Duran Duran and Ice Cube, and we’re not going to do that anymore?’ We are crazy?'”
One of those new faces was Keeton, who joined the company in 2018 and became Pabst’s chief marketing officer in 2020. Internally, some of the same conversations that launched the original festival in 2014 were happening. For a beer company who sponsors so many festivals, why not organize one themselves, with Pabst beer and the artists they love?
“Pabst Blue Ribbon is well connected to music and we receive a million sponsored performances for every festival under the sun,” Keeton said. “It was kind of a joke to the team: ‘Why don’t we launch Project Pabst again?'”
A conversation with Columbia Distributing, Pabst Blue Ribbon’s distributor in the Pacific Northwest, helped turn that inside joke into reality.
“They were very supportive of Project Pabst and said it could have an impact not only on the market but in a broader sense,” Keeton said. “It was a big request from them this year. And since it’s Pabst’s 180th anniversary, that made it kind of special.”
Ryan Clough, Columbia’s director of business development, said the distributor first raised the idea of reviving the music festival during a meeting with new Pabst CEO Paul Chibe, who was touring the Pacific Northwest with the company for the first time.
“Pabst had moved some of its marketing people, moved its headquarters a couple of times (it’s now in San Antonio), and had lost a little bit of that ‘Portland is Pabst, Pabst is Portland’ feeling along the way,” Clough said. “So how do we get some of that hazy feeling back? How do we get Portland to fall in love with Pabst again?
The Columbia team suggested doing “something like Project Pabst” again. They didn’t know that Pabst was already thinking the same thing.
“Many of us in that room had attended those events in the past,” Clough said. “Was it always economically viable? Well, there’s a reason it disappeared. But you have to have fun in the beer business, and that resonates with consumers.”
WHY THE PABST PROJECT CHOSE PORTLAND
When Pabst chose Portland for its first music festival in 2014, the company saw it as an opportunity to give back to the city that played an essential role in the renaissance of beer, from an old-fashioned grandpa’s drink to an essential hipster accessory.
“Portland was having a really nice time,” Slessler said. “Everyone wanted to come to Portland, and Portland was ground zero for the Pabst resurgence. “We wanted to do a music festival our way and give back to our number one market in the United States.”
By 2016, the festival had expanded to four cities, with Project Pabsts landing in Denver, Atlanta and Philadelphia. Portland’s last festival, featuring Beck, Iggy Pop, Nas and a then-little-known Lizzo, was held in 2017.
Focusing on Portland makes sense. In the early 2000s, Pabst was approaching its 160th birthday and facing a sales free fall when representatives noticed something strange: Despite almost no advertising, in a city best known for its craft scene, young couriers bikers, music fans, and other Portland hipsters were gravitating toward cheap, Milwaukee-born beer at dive bars like The Lutz and Ash Street Saloon. The unexpected embrace sparked a surge in sales after decades of continued decline.
Still, Portland may not be the only city to receive a Pabst Project. Reviving the festival in other host cities is something that is “on the table in the long term,” Keeton said, but achieving it “would be up to our distribution partners.”
Slessler acknowledges that the festival is “a marketing play” for Pabst, but believes the festival could still bring some goodwill to the city.
“I travel all over the country and people always ask about Portland, but they only hear bad things,” Slessler said. “They don’t know how good the bars and restaurants are. I feel like this city could use some wins.”
SEE PABST PROJECT LINEUP FOR 2024
Saturday
- billy idol
- T-pain
- violent women
- Gossip
- STRFKR
- Shannon and the clams
- DEHD
- The light
- Internal front
- alien boy
Sunday
- great thief
- Denzel Curry
- Manchester Orchestra
- Jeff Rosenstock
- soccer mom
- military weapon
- Kenny Mason
- Miya Folick
- Radical promises
- brilliancefox
Project Pabst will take place July 27-28 at Tom McCall Waterfront Park in downtown Portland. The event is for those over 21 years of age. Pre-sale tickets available through this link using the code “UNICORN”.
—Michael Russell; mrussell@oregonian.com