There’s been plenty of news in the world of Seattle music venues of late with some struggling, closing and others changing hands… But that’s not exactly what this story is about.
This venue is, after all, in Quilcene.
Located on 85 acres of trust protected forest land, with a 50-some acre events space and 30 acres of protected watersheds along Tarboo Creek on the Olympic side of the Hood Canal Bridge, the property is a combination music venue/campground/cabin rental/event space just a few miles the Highway 101 exit. It’s about 40 minutes from the Kingston Ferry, an hour from Bremerton, and an hour and a half from Bainbridge. But the Lantern has been hosting some rad Seattle bands. Like Black Ends and MT Fog, who have been gaining traction in the city. Seattle punk band Dead Bars is playing early in August and folk songwriter Dean Johnson is coming out later that month.
The venue’s annual Tarboo Music Festival is also in August w/ La Luz headlining the second day. They also host locals, aiming to book at least 40 percent bands from the peninsulas.
Shows are either held in a massive 100-year-old barn, or in the smaller room they call ‘the milk shed.’ The acoustics are incredible. For many years, this old dairy farm was home to the Olympic Peninsula Music Festival–a classical/chamber/symphonic festival founded by a former member of the Philadelphia Orchestra. It ran for 32 seasons up until 2016 before it changed hands and moved to Port Townsend. The festival’s founder, Alan Iglitzin, had been an acclaimed violinist in the Philadelphia Orchestra and co-founder the Philadelphia String Quartet which would go on to play Carnegie Hall. In 1966, the quartet cut ties with the orchestra and won a lengthy and contentious legal battle with that organization to become the quartet-in-residence at the University of Washington. In the mid-70s, Iglitzin purchased the Quilcene land and began restoring and renovating the property as a summer home and rehearsal space for his quartet.
The festival debuted in 1984.
Iglitzin died, at age 93, last year.
The family that has taken over as caretakers of this property and venue, now under the name Quilcene Lantern, also came from Seattle.
We are sitting with brothers Bergen and Willem on the picnic tables overlooking the valley to the south as the sun drops behind the Olympic Mountains. It is the golden hour. It’s peaceful. We’re talking about hard work and the serenity of country roads. And the history of this place. Stories of growing up as city kids. And playing music in New York. We get damn close to starting a ska band after learning the brothers are both horn players. Bergen, the younger brother (trumpet) says he’s been itching to get back into music and said he’d be down to start a Specials cover band. I’m in. Frank, the camera guy, says he’ll play bass. Willem, the older brother (trombone) looks like he’s on the fence.
Bergen starts to tell the story of how the family came to run the property when he stops, and passes off the question to his brother, saying Willem will probably tell it better…
“Our parents, Laurie and Steve… they’re over there yonder,” Willem says, pointing. “They’ve got this little camper trailer that they like to take out all the time, so they thought maybe longterm retirement plan, maybe they’d run a campground or something so that they could just be doing the camper thing non-stop…At the same time, I was living in New York and I was looking to come back here. I was leaving a band that I had been playing in for a long time and kind of looking at a new chapter. Bergen was out here already, out here on the peninsula, but we started brainstorming ways of what if we combined forces? What if we combined the campground dream with the music dream and putting a music venue into the mix. Kind of like a roadside motel, campground kind of thing that had live music once in a while.”
That conversation happened around 2023 on a beach in Mexico during a family vacation. By January 2024, they had moved to Quilcene and began work on the property.
They had their first show later that year.
It’s all run by the family with a small crew.
Willem, a former professional musician, runs the booking/music. Bergen, who formerly worked for Libtech, runs promotions and marketing. Mom, a longtime youth arts advocate and non-profit leader, runs the permits and paperwork stuff. And Dad, an architect, inventor and tinkerer whose spent three decades bringing the family out for hiking, surfing and camping on the Olympic Peninsula, is living his dream. Everyone pitches in on property upkeep, construction projects, renovations and taking tickets, running sound and running the bar on show nights outside of day-to-day operations.
Willem looks tired. He kind of looks tired every time I’ve run into him. It’s the hardest he’s ever worked in his life, he says. His shirt holds the moisture of the end of a long day’s work when I give him a hug upon greetings. Today, he’s been working on a remodel of one of the cabins on the property, turning what used to be a hot water heater closet into a kitchenette. They’re also working on building an outdoor kitchen area by the cabins at another end of the property. I see another cabin up in the woods behind their shoulders and ask what’s going on with that one. Willem mentions nonchalantly that its going to be a recording studio. We walk up the hill to check it out. The light comes back into Willem’s eyes as he talks about what it is right now and what it will be. The room is empty to the floor and walls, mid-renovation at the moment, but the acoustics are incredible in this room too. ‘Our ska band is gonna sound great in here,’ I laugh, snapping my fingers for emphasis… But we haven’t booked a date just yet. There’s too much work to be done. // BILL MAN
CHECK OUT THE TARBOO MUSIC FESTIVAL AUGUST 21 & 22 at the Quilcene Lantern and find a full calendar, camping and cabin information at quilcenelantern.com. And check out the video of this interview on the @kitsapsmokestack youtubes or in the audio/video section at kitsapsmokestack.org
