Idiomz performs with the help of three-year-old Paisley Porter at the Extreme Tour during Harvest Days July 21.
Che Place from Vancouver performs tricks on his skateboard while (left to right) Robyn Smith and Hailey Payne watch from above at the Battle Ground Skatepark during Harvest Days July 21.
Battle Ground Skate Park played host to hundreds Sunday as the nationally-touring Extreme Tour came to the city as the last event for the annual Harvest Days celebration.
Seven acts, ranging from more local, Portland-based musicians to even one artist from Canada, played near the skate park as others did tricks on skateboards, bikes and scooters in an event that was as much outreach as it was entertainment. The Extreme Tour is a nationally-touring event that features artists both signed and unsigned, providing free music to the places it stops.
The Extreme Tour Program Director Angelo Gonzales explained the organization has been around for 27 years, himself joining up in 2005. Though the tour has offices in California and Tennessee, he said it was founded in Salem.
Gonzales says the tour usually arrives at a city the day before the performance in order to do community outreach. The goal of the tour was to connect and lift up those who are struggling in any fashion, specifically youth.
Though the organization is ostensibly faith-based, Gonzales said they will work with any group that wants to support their community, though churches are often at the forefront of those pushes.
“We just want people to know that they’re loved — that they matter,” Gonzales said. In many cases the artists share their own stories to better connect with the audience. Gonzales, who performs hip-hop under the name Gallery Cat, recounted his own battles with depression as moving him to speak out.
“We’ve all been through some rough times (but) there is hope,” Gonzales remarked. “There are people who want to share life with you, not in a ‘tell you how to live’ fashion but in a sense of ‘let’s figure this out together.’”
Sunday’s event wasn’t the first time The Extreme Tour had touched down in Battle Ground, having participated in an acoustic event last September. Though it was pouring rain, Gonzales said close to 50 showed up for the event.
“It was kind of a makeshift (thing), let’s go see what Battle Ground’s about,” Gonzales recalled. “The kids here were really responsive.”
That first event was brought in part due to the work of Renea Miller from Battle Ground. She was spurred to action after reaching out to local youth herself, seeing the tour as a way to do more. She connected with Church on the Rock to bring the tour proper for this year.
“It’s amazing,” Miller remarked at the turnout.
Gonzales said the impact of The Extreme Tour keeps him participating more than a decade in, remarking that after the tour comes through there’s often a shift in the community atmosphere.
“There’s this saying that sometimes you have to see somebody else love something before you love it yourself,” Gonzales said, adding that the tour can be that catalyst.
Compared to come of the places the tour stops, Gonzales said that the love the community had for itself stood out in Battle Ground. Josh Calderon, the singer for Portland-area-based P1lot, said his group has been involved with The Extreme Tour for the past two years. He said the turnout for the day’s event was one of the biggest he’s seen while a part of the tour.
“Just the sense of community, it’s been really, really cool,” Calderon remarked about Battle Ground.
