Skip to content

Food & Drink

Moisture Festival’s Ron W. Bailey Makes It Rain

Former rocker Ron W. Bailey discovered vaudeville—and helped Seattle do the same with the Moisture Festival

By Tim Appelo February 27, 2017

0317_rainman

This article originally appeared in the March 2017 issue of Seattle magazine.

“I was an army brat,” says Ron W. Bailey, 70, a Scot from Oklahoma with a ready grin. While his dad was stationed at Fort Lewis in the ’60s, Bailey discovered brash Seattle bands like the Sonics and The Wailers, and returned to Seattle from Oklahoma with his own guitar act in 1974. His bar band Dynamic Logs was a smash, but Bailey shifted his career focus after attending a Berlin vaudeville festival in 1996. It convinced him that Seattle was ready for variety shows, and in 2004 The Moisture Festival (moisturefestival.com) was born. “We rented a tent in Fremont in 2004, and about 300 people came,” says Bailey, one of six masters of ceremonies of the month- long festival, which now attracts vaudeville (and other) acts from around the world, plus 12,000 attendees. Mike Hale donated a keg for the first fest, which led him to opening Hale’s Palladium behind his brewery, the main venue of this year’s festival (March 16–April 9).

The fest is all about variety: jugglers, tap dancers and random acts like Zip Code Man. “Tell him your ZIP code, and he might know your local pizza joint—people think he’s a plant, but it’s just his weird genius,” Bailey explains. While talent comes from all over, says Bailey, “Seattle’s the best garden in the world for creativity. Young people train at Georgetown’s School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts, and we’ve had a couple people go on to Cirque du Soleil.”

In 2005, Bailey—who makes his living as a carpenter when not being ringleader for the festival—added burlesque to the lineup, attracting a new hipster audience. “Some people thought it was a gamble, but they don’t know how burlesque has evolved,” he says. Bailey traces it (and vaudeville) back to U.K. music halls, and did a fundraiser to renovate the world’s oldest such hall, in Glasgow, near his mom’s birthplace. “I just love the way variety performers make an audience feel,” he says. “The parents are drinking beer, the kids are laughing. Everyone is just feeling good.”  

Need to Know 

1. This year, the festival has four venues: Hale’s Palladium (Fremont), Broadway Performance Hall (Capitol Hill), Teatro ZinZanni (by Seattle Center) and The Islander (Burlesque cruise on Lake Union).

2. Every act, from Allez-Oops to Tamara the Trapeze Lady, gets paid the same.

3. Bailey wanted the festival’s title to signify “embracing rain instead of badmouthing it, but Rain Festival didn’t fit the bill.” His wife saw a poster for Shelton’s OysterFest and thought it said MoistureFest. “Some think it’s risqué, but that didn’t occur to us. The name still makes us laugh, and laughter is the key.”

Follow Us

Book Excerpt: Old White Man Writing

Book Excerpt: Old White Man Writing

Seattle resident Joshua Gidding examines his own white privilege

In his book, Old White Man Writing, Seattle resident Joshua Gidding attempts to come to terms with his privilege. Gidding grapples with the rapidly changing cultural norms in 21st-century America while examining his own racial biases and prejudices. As Manhattan Book Review notes: “Old White Man Writing is an introspective deep dive into an eventful life…

Glacial Expressions

Glacial Expressions

Local scientist and painter Jill Pelto spotlights climate change in a multi-artist show at Slip Gallery

The divide between the arts and sciences is long-fostered and well-documented. From elementary school onward, children are often singled out for their penchant for math or artistic ability and guided toward classes — and later careers — that align with their right or left brain tendencies. For Jill Pelto — a local climate scientist, painter,…

How Taproot Theatre Survived A Financial Crisis

How Taproot Theatre Survived A Financial Crisis

Theatre is planning for its 50th birthday next year

Karen Lund vividly remembers that sinking feeling she had in the fall of 2023. That was when Lund, producing artistic director of Taproot Theatre Co., first realized that the financially strapped, midsized professional theatre in the Greenwood neighborhood might not survive. The theatre had already weathered the worst of the pandemic, but costs were mounting….

Humanities Washington Fights ‘Midnight’ Cuts

Humanities Washington Fights ‘Midnight’ Cuts

Nonprofit loses previously approved federal grants with little warning

The letter came without warning, like a slap in the face from an invisible hand. Humanities Washington CEO and Executive Director Julie Ziegler had already been talking with peers in other states, and she readied herself for the blow. The National Endowment for the Humanities (think DOGE) had terminated her nonprofit’s previously awarded federal grant…