The Band That Threw Sandpoint a Party and Picked Up the Tab

Most bands do a benefit show the way most of us do jury duty — grudgingly, once, and never again. Snacks at Midnight did the opposite. On Saturday, June 13, the Spokane-based indie-rock project packed The Hive in downtown Sandpoint for a 21-and-up show whose entire point was to hand money to the region's kids, and by all accounts they had the best night of anyone in the room.

The show was a fundraiser for the Festival at Sandpoint's education programs — the in-class pre-K music lessons, the scholarships, the youth string orchestra — the year-round work that the Festival funds with its summer ticket revenue. Tickets ran $15 in advance, $20 at the door, and the Festival announced the whole thing back in March. That a rock band from over the state line would show up to bankroll North Idaho fourth-graders' first violins tells you something about how porous the Spokane–Sandpoint music border actually is.

Snacks at Midnight is the vehicle of Rory Babin, a songwriter with a magpie's ear and a stated "music for everyone" philosophy — which in practice means a set that can lurch from indie rock to alt to a little punk without apologizing. Their most recent album, What You Think You Want, is the clearest statement of that restlessness: songs that set a hook, then refuse to sit still inside their own genre. It is the kind of record that annoys playlist algorithms and delights people who actually go to shows.

Here is the "why this matters" turn, and it is not subtle. Regional scenes like North Idaho's live or die on whether working bands treat the audience as a community or a market. The easy move for a Spokane act is to play Spokane, cash the guarantee, and skip the two-lane drive north. Snacks at Midnight did the drive, sold the room, and gave the take to a music-education pipeline that will, with any luck, produce the acts headlining The Hive in fifteen years. That is a scene investing in itself, using a touring band as the delivery mechanism.

It also says something flattering about The Hive, which has quietly become the panhandle's most dependable year-round stage — a real room with real sound in a town that could easily coast on lake tourism and cover sets. A benefit only works if the venue is a place people actually want to be on a Saturday night. The Hive is.

If you missed June 13, the consolation is that Babin's project tours, the album is streaming, and the Festival's education mission it paid into runs all year. Catch them the next time the drive north makes sense — and it usually does.

Sources: Snacks at Midnight gives back to supportive Sandpoint community (Spokesman-Review, Jun 11, 2026); Snacks at Midnight headline Festival fundraiser at The Hive (Sandpoint Reader); Festival hosting Snacks at Midnight fundraiser (Bonner County Daily Bee, Mar 11, 2026)