The Sou'wester Lodge and avenue of trailers

The music festival taking place at Seaview’s Sou’wester Lodge in late September features Portland artists who travel in many indie and alternative lanes.

Their genres cover folk rock, shoegaze, alt-country, psychedelic surf rock and other esoteric subgenres. But underlying them all is a “connection of phenomenal songwriting,” said Ivy Ross Ricci, the music curator at the historic lodge.

The all-ages festival, held Friday and Saturday, Sept. 29 and 30, is organized by Lose Yr Mind, an organization launched in 2014 that hosts an annual music fest in Portland.

The two-day show is more of a “mini-festival” — a kind of weekend retreat — the company’s founder, Elizabeth Elder, said. It also serves as a warm-up for Lose Yr Mind’s major festival in Portland next month.

The lineup — a representative sample of Portland’s tight-knit music community — opens shortly after 7 p.m. Friday with a solo performance by Aan’s Bud Wilson, followed by Nick Delffs, and closing with an hour of Jenny Don’t and the Spurs.

On Saturday, the show resumes at 4 p.m. with a “kickoff” potluck dinner and a DJ. The evening slate: Plastic Cactus, Sama Dams, Matt Dorrien, Sunbathe, Old Age, Candace and a full hour of Kyle Craft.

Elder said she chose the bands not simply to highlight a handful of her favorites, but because they are a “good fit for the aesthetic of autumn on the coast and the Sou’wester.”

“They’re not loud punk bands,” Elder said. “They’re really talented musicians that are a little quieter, that (make) for a relaxing weekend.”

Though rooms at the lodge will be booked, Ross Ricci said some camping spots will be left for festivalgoers. The festival, however, is for everyone, not just people staying at the Sou’wester.

Though sonically diverse, the bands complement each other, Pandora-playlist style. And many defy easy classification.

Take Nick Delffs, perhaps best known in the Portland music scene for his work as the lead singer of The Shaky Hands, a group that has been on pause for several years.

Delffs said he tries to compose from different genres and thereby transcend them — a trait exhibited by many of his favorite songwriters, such as Paul Simon, who “takes from a lot of different kinds of music and makes it his own thing.”

A father who now lives in Boise, Delffs, half tongue-in-cheek, described his music as “emo experimental dad electronic folk rock.”

After The Shaky Hands, he released an EP and plays in The Tiburones. He recently released his first album under his own name titles “Redesign,” bespeaking a process both exciting and daunting, he said.

At the Sou’wester, he and a band formed around his latest work will play songs from the album, as well as newer songs.

Jenny Don’t and The Spurs is similarly tricky to pin down; labels prove slippery.

“No one really knows where to put us when they’re booking us,” band member Kelly Halliburton said, adding that “alt-country” is usually the easiest to write down.

The band doesn’t play contemporary or singer-songwriter country, but a hard-edged, relentless, desolate-sounding “outlaw roots” country — “western with sprinkle of rockabilly in there as well,” Halliburton said.

“We’re more like the barroom country western,” he said.

“We like people to get rowdy,” Jenny Don’t, the lead singer-songwriter, said with a laugh.

The band has said in interviews that their sound hearkens back to Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.

“I mean, people love it, but a lot of people don’t play it,” Halliburton said.

“Or know what it is,” Jenny added.

Incidentally, the cover for their first LP was shot down the street from the Sou’wester.

The band will play songs from both their first, self-titled album, and their second, “Call of the Road,” released earlier this year.

Elder, who has lived in Portland for about six years, considers the artists performing at the Sou’wester to be family. But she began as a fan — as a someone who simply appreciated their work.

She remembers when she discovered Aan: “They were one of the first bands I ever saw in Portland, and I remember just, like, my jaw on the floor.”

To share that kind of experience with other people — who may only know one artist on a bill but are open to new and revelatory musical experiences — is Lose Yr Mind’s goal.

“It’s just a really good opportunity to share that kind of emotion, of just really, really raw and powerful songwriting,” Elder said.

The Sou’wester Lodge attracts a certain kind of artist, Ricci Ross said.

“It’s not the place that makes sense for most touring artists,” she said. “You have to know how special the Sou’wester is to want to come play there.”

$10 for Friday, $15 for Saturday, $20 for both.

Accommodations at Sou’wester are not included and must be booked separately via phone 360-642-2542 with the Sou’wester (not on their website).

The lodge has blocked out the most trailer, cabin and camping accommodations for attendees of Lose Yr Mind.

Door tickets will also be available for each day, but advance tickets are encouraged; they do not include accommodations at the Sou’wester.

For the festival potluck Saturday, Sept. 30, in the covered outdoor pavilion, bring something to share. A market is located a couple of minutes up the road in downtown Long Beach.

For more information, visit loseyrmind.com/souwester-weekender/