By Joe Vickrey
From The Joy Formidable and Old 97’s to The Raveonettes, many of indie and alternatives bigger acts have begun to take the stage at Nevada’s own Schellraiser Festival. Now only three hours from Provo, Schellraiser’s Humboldt Hideaway Festival is scheduled to take place at Wells City Park in Nevada at the end of May 2026. This will be the festival’s first year at its new location so close to home for us.
With it just around the corner, I caught up with founder Rudy Herndon about Schellraiser’s origins as well as what attendees can expect this year.
In 2017, Rudy took a trip from his then-home in Moab to Texas to see Wilco perform at the Trans Pecos Festival of Music + Love. “The experience was unlike any other event I’d ever attended,” he said. “Far removed from the crowds, social media influencers, crass commercialism, and surrounded by the natural beauty of the West Texas desert. It also brought in the kinds of bands that rarely – if ever – roll through small, rural Western towns.”
Wilco affects all of us differently, but for Rudy, it was enough to end his 19-year career in print journalism, move to Nevada, and to “try something different.” After selling his home to fund the first Schellraiser festival, and after multiple pandemic-related delays, 2022 marked the inaugural Schellraiser festival.
“[The first festival] was a financial bloodbath, but it was an amazing artistic success. It was some of the best sound quality and some of the best sets I’d ever seen in more than 30 years.” Despite the stress, Rudy described the emotion of seeing the festival come to life as “being in a state of constant euphoria for three-and-a-half weeks afterwards.”
He was determined to make Schellraiser an annual event. With the help of his mother, Louise, who had taken him to see Iggy Pop and Ramones shows growing up, the festival continued. Rudy explained that as momentum was building, and even bigger artists were joining the lineup, his frustrations with state and local bureaucracies also grew.
After determining it was no longer possible to hold a small-scale, family-owned event in White Pine County, Rudy set out to find the festival a new home. Rudy’s initial conversations with the Wells City Council were so positive that it made Schellraiser’s new home an easy transition. It’s also worth noting that Schellraiser is beginning to rebrand as Humboldt Hideaway Festival to pay tribute to their new home near the East Humboldt mountain range.
Rudy was quite optimistic about their new headquarters and remarked, “Wells is a small, rural town, but it has so much going for it!” He hopes with a good turnout this year, the festival can continue on and bring in both more big-name artists as well as more regional artists to our neck of the woods. With a little luck, Humboldt Hideaway could become one of our region’s hotspot festivals, and it could become a regular part of our music scene’s extended vocabulary.
Rudy’s plans for the 2026 event is to have more food and art vendors alongside nearby RV parks and campsites. He’s planning on more of everything while still maintaining the wilderness feel that the festival is rooted in. I was excited to get a sneak peek and see that Camera Obscura, Swervedriver, and Ivy will be headlining the event.
For anyone with a love of nature and the indie/alternative scene, Schellraiser is promising to bring the best of both worlds together under one starry sky. Mark your calendars and get ready to raise some Schell.
What: Schellraiser’s Humboldt Hideaway
When: Friday, May 29, and Saturday, May 30, 2026
Where: Wells City Park, Wells NV (2.5 hours west of SLC, and three hours northwest of Provo)
Day 1 Lineup
Swervedriver, Hotline TNT, White Denim, Frankie Rose, GIFT, Psymon Spine, The Stevenson Ranch Davidians, Taleen Kali
Day 2 Lineup
Camera Obscura, Ivy, Dummy, Woods, Isobel Campbell, Tyler Ramsey, Fonteyn, MYLO BYBEE, Lapdog
Tickets and information can be found at schellraiser.com as well as updates at schellraiser2026 on Instagram. Art for the event is done by Provo’s own @dawghands.