Slack Water · a folk and maritime music festival · 28 to 30 August 2026
Slack Water is three days of folk and maritime music on the waterfront, the last weekend of August: fiddle tunes in the net loft, shanties on the pier at dusk, boats you can climb into. The QR on the back of your badge asks one question: would you like to be in the festival’s Pool, for the weekend and after? Say yes, and the person you talked to at the fiddle workshop can find you next month. Say no, and nothing happens.
Tickets pay for the festival. Nobody pays to be in the Pool or to be introduced.
Slack Water 202628 to 30 August · Port Ellery
Theo Lindqvist
WeekendEmail verified
Waiting for your answer
Theo’s badge, Friday at the gate. The code is drawn, not a real one; answer it here.
Today, a month laterThe festival is over. Its Pool is still here, kept by Birdie Novak, with 18 people who said yes.
All 18, in the order they said yesWhat happens after the tide goes out
The weekend
Three stages within a short walk: the net loft, the chandlery tent and Pier 3. Slack water is the still hour when the tide turns and boats can cross the bar. For one weekend a year, everyone crosses paths.
28 August
29 August
30 August
Why people come back
A festival is worth what it leaves behind. These are the four reasons people open the Pool again, and none of them needs a trick.
Before
Buy a ticket and you can tick a box to get the Pool’s question early, by email. Say yes and you are listed before the gates open, so people can see who else is coming, each with their own yes.
11 of this year’s 18 said yes before the gates opened.
During
Everyone who said yes is in one list you can ask in plain words: who plays bass, who has seats to Seattle, the fiddler from Olympia. Only people who said yes can come up.
6 said yes on their badge during the weekend.
After
On the Monday after, the festival office handed the Pool to Birdie Novak, a volunteer, and stepped back. A month later it is still here, still active, and everyone in it is still findable.
1 more said yes at home, inside the 14 days a badge’s question waits.
Next year
Returning people are marked beside their names. Seb Marchand told his own page to say yes to next year’s Pool for him; he will get a notice when it does, and he can undo it.
6 of this year’s people were in the 2025 Pool too.
Five Pools
Each is a Kindling Pool we host: a public file anyone can read, listing people who said yes. You can be in one and not the others, and leave any of them in one action.
The festival’s Pool · public
Everyone at Slack Water 2026, 28 to 30 August on the Port Ellery waterfront, who said yes, for the weekend and after.
Standing · public
Musicians who would like to be asked into a session, at Slack Water and between festivals: old-time and French-Canadian fiddle tunes, Irish, string band, and shanties at dusk.
Volunteers · public
People who worked a shift at Slack Water: the gates, the info tent, stage crew, sound, and the cleanup on Monday.
One night a year · public
Rides home from Slack Water on Sunday night and Monday morning: Portland, Seattle, Olympia, Eugene and inland.
Dormant · still readable
Everyone at Slack Water 2025, 29 to 31 August on the Port Ellery waterfront, who said yes.
Shifts 2, 3 and 11
A closed attendee app is worth only as much as the people it signs up, it starts empty every year, and when the festival is over the list belongs to whoever sold the tickets. On Kindling, each person’s page stays their own, the Pool is an open file anyone can host and any client can read by its members’ consent, and a volunteer can keep it after we step back.
On the Monday after, someone opening Familiar Faces for the first time found the people from the weekend already there: the ones who said yes, each still deciding who may write to them. Bellows showed the rides home. Neither app signed up a single festival-goer. They read our public Pools, which any client may do §3 §3.5, and every person’s own rules still apply §5 §7.
Our list, a sheet taped up at the info tent, a group in Familiar Faces and a ride card in Bellows all read one file, pools/slack-water-2026.json. We do not mind which door you use, and no door can keep you in. The interface is anyone’s; the Pool is the protocol §1.2.
A festival app lasts as long as its contract. Our Pool is a file with a named keeper, and when a keeper stops, the protocol says what happens next: quiet after 90 days, never deleted, and any active member may take it over §9. Last year’s Pool is showing that right now.
…and 14 more, in order.
WHO SAID YES · printed Saturday 8:00 from pools/slack-water-2026.json
…and 5 more, each with their page’s address. Taken down Sunday night.
Slack Water 202618 people
Theo has not said yes to this one yet, and Familiar Faces says so. Familiar Faces
Rides Homeasks and offers
Which apps can read our Pools. Familiar Faces, the friendship and groups app, reads Slack Water 2026, Session Players and Crew and Volunteers. Bellows, for asks and offers, reads Rides Home and Session Players. Heartwood shows Slack Water 2026 in its Friends room and Session Players in its Music room, Face Up deals Session Players in its Bandmates deck, and Card Catalog files all five in its drawers, last year’s included, by what each is for. Sundial opens each of them under its own name, and so do Face Up and Heartwood for the ones their decks and rooms don’t cover: the crew and the rides home, and in Face Up both festival lists too. Any other client may read a public Pool too §8.1. Every person still decides who may write to them, and every client honors the same two block lists §7.3.
The money
The Pool costs us one file on our web server and some of Birdie’s evenings. Kindling itself charges nothing at the connection layer §1.3.
The info tent