PJ Harvey
From the outset of her career, the work of PJ Harvey has commanded attention. She formed the eponymous bass/drums/guitar trio in 1991 in Dorset, England and by the autumn had released the debut single 'Dress' on independent label Too Pure. Dry, released the following month was hailed as an astonishing debut album, not just in the UK but worldwide and particularly in the United States, where Rolling Stone magazine named Harvey 'Best Songwriter' and 'Best New Female Singer' of 1992.
In 1993, PJ Harvey signed to Island Records and released her second album Rid Of Me. The album, supported by a lengthy world tour which drew increasingly wide audiences, garnered Harvey her first Mercury Music Prize nomination. The original trio dissolved and Harvey's solo work '4-Track Demos' was released in the autumn of 1993. To Bring You My Love, an eclectic and starkly original album, followed in 1995, and was accompanied by a tour that saw Harvey explore a more theatrical edge to her live performance. She received her second Mercury Music Prize nomination, two Grammy Award nominations, and 'Artist of the Year' Awards from both Rolling Stone and Spin.
Her fourth album Is This Desire?, released in September 1998, attracted plaudits globally gaining several BRIT and Grammy Award nominations. The much anticipated follow up, Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, was released in October 2000 and went on to win Harvey's first Mercury Music Prize. ‘Stories...' was supported by a sold-out worldwide tour. After a summer of live dates, including the first rock concert to be held at London's Tate Modern gallery, Harvey finished work on her next album Uh Huh Her. The supporting tour saw Harvey perform to sold out rooms in South America for the first time. White Chalk was PJ Harvey's critically-acclaimed seventh studio album, which marked a departure for Harvey as it was composed almost entirely on piano. It was supported by a string of notable solo performances including Manchester International Festival, The Royal Festival Hall, the Hay-On-Wye Festival of Literature, the New Yorker Festival, Sydney Opera House and a performance at Copenhagen Opera House for the Crown Prince couple.
In 2006 'PJ Harvey: The Peel Sessions' was released, a collection of Harvey's recordings for the veteran British broadcaster John Peel, spanning her career to date.
PJ Harvey's 2011 album, Let England Shake, was created with a cast of musicians and long-standing collaborators Flood, John Parish, and Mick Harvey. The songs focus on both her home country, and events further afield in which it has embroiled itself. The record evokes the troubled spirit of its time, whilst also looking back through our history. Let England Shake won Harvey her second Mercury Music Prize, setting her apart as the only artist to have won the award on two occasions, an achievement recognised by The Guinness Book Of Records. The album was also awarded ‘Album of the Year' at the 2012 Ivor Novello Awards and was named #1 Album of the Year by numerous publications including The Sunday Times, Los Angeles Times, Mojo, Uncut, Washington Post, The Quietus, The Guardian, NME, Spin, HMV, Sydney Morning Herald, Le Matin, OOR Magazine, Irish Times, Musikexpress, The Independent, The Sunday Telegraph, Stool Pigeon and BBC Music.
Harvey began collaborating on visual projects with respected photojournalist Seamus Murphy in 2011. Murphy, an award-winning photographer, has spent over two decades documenting the world through his lens. His work has taken him to Rwanda, Eritrea, Kosovo, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. 'Let England Shake: 12 Short Films By Seamus Murphy' served as a visual accompaniment to the album, with each track having its own short film.
PJ Harvey has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Thom Yorke, Nick Cave, Tricky, Björk, Hal Wilner, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, Pascal Comelade, Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes, and Sparklehorse. She joined Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) on his critically acclaimed 'Desert Sessions' project [2003] and worked with Mark Lanegan on his solo album, 'Bubblegum'. Harvey produced the debut album by American artist Tiffany Anders and also wrote, recorded & produced material for Marianne Faithfull's 'Before The Poison' [2004].
In 1996 she worked with John Parish on Dance Hall At Louse Point, both an album and a live accompaniment to the Mark Bruce Dance Company production of the same name. The follow-up collaboration with Parish entitled A Woman A Man Walked By, was released in 2009 ahead of an extensive tour of Europe and America. The video for the first single, 'Black Hearted Love', was directed by the acclaimed British artists Jake & Dino Chapman.
In 2009 Harvey composed the soundtrack for renowned Director Ian Rickson's New York production of 'Hedda Gabler'. They worked together again in 2011 on the music for Ophelia in ‘Hamlet' at the Young Vic starring Michael Sheen, and more recently collaborated to score the music for his highly acclaimed 2014 production of ‘Electra' at The Old Vic starring Kristin Scott Thomas.
PJ Harvey contributed original music to the soundtrack for Mark Cousins' film ‘What's This Film Called Love?' as well as for BBC television series ‘Peaky Blinders' starring Cillian Murphy, and BBC Radio 4 Drama productions ‘Eurydice and Orpheus' by Simon Armitage and ‘Orpheus and Eurydice' by Linda Marshall Griffiths. Other projects have included soundtrack work on the films 'Basquiat' by Julian Schnabel, 'Stella Does Tricks' by Coky Giedroyc, 'The Cradle Will Rock' by Tim Robbins and 'Six Feet Under'.
PJ Harvey also appeared as Mary Magdalene in Hal Hartley's movie 'The Book of Life' in 1999.
Harvey made a guest appearance on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show in May 2010, the week before the UK General Election. She was interviewed by Marr and performed 'Let England Shake' in front of Marr's other guest, the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. She was invited back on the show in April 2011 alongside Brown's successor, Prime Minister David Cameron, and performed the song ‘The Last Living Rose'.
A multi-instrumentalist, PJ Harvey is primarily a vocalist and guitarist while also an accomplished player of the autoharp. In addition to her musical career Harvey paints, draws, sculpts, and writes poetry.
Summer 2010 saw Harvey guest design Francis Ford Coppola's art & literary magazine; Zoetrope: All-Story. The issue featured her previously unseen paintings, sculpture and drawings.
In August 2013 PJ Harvey released a new song, 'Shaker Aamer', to highlight the detention of the then last British resident held without trial inside the US prison at Guantánamo Bay. The track was streamed exclusively on The Guardian's website and received positive worldwide attention.
She gave her debut public poetry reading at the British Library, and was a guest editor on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme in December 2013. Harvey was also awarded an MBE for services to music. In 2014 she was awarded an Honorary Degree in Music by Goldsmiths University.
PJ Harvey's first collection of poetry titled The Hollow of the Hand, in collaboration with photographer Seamus Murphy, was published by Bloomsbury UK in October 2015. To celebrate the release Harvey and Murphy presented The Hollow of the Hand show - an evening of poems, new songs, images and conversation - two sold out nights at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall as part of the London Literature Festival 2015.
On 4th November 2015, PJ Harvey appeared alongside Irish poet Paul Muldoon in a new experimental series of ‘in conversation' style evenings called ‘Soundings at the Byre', created by the University of St. Andrews' new International Writer in Residence, Reif Larsen, and Professor of English, Don Paterson.
In spring this year, PJ Harvey releases her ninth studio album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, documenting a unique artistic journey, which took her to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. The album was recorded during a month-long residency, "Recording in Progress", in early 2015 at Somerset House during which audiences were given the opportunity to observe Harvey at work with her band and producers in a purpose-built studio housed in the basement of the iconic London building.
PJ Harvey will play a number of select festival dates across Europe this summer including Field Day in London on Sunday 12th June.
Doors: 7:30 PM
Show: 8:30 PM
All Ages
Portland rap promoter and professional MC Idris Oferrall, better known as “StarChile,” is hosting a benefit for Trail Blazers’ DJ O.G. One (David Jackson) at Holocene on May 7. Jackson, who has been the Trail Blazers’ in-house DJ for nine NBA seasons, has not yet been able to resume his role with the team following major complications from cancer surgeryon March 14. He has instead needed assistance with medical expenses while unable to work, which you can read more about on his GoFundMe page, here.
The benefit, presented by Holocene and XRAY.FM, will feature an impressive lineup of local artists with whom Jackson has built relationships over the years.
LOUDER THAN WORDS: A BENEFIT FOR DJ O.G. ONE
SAEEDA WRIGHT, MIKE PHILLIPS, FARNELL NEWTON & THE OTHERSHIP CONNECTION, VURSATYL, MIC CAPES, JON BELZ, DJ JUGGERNAUT, HOSTED BY STARCHILE
DOORS: 7:00 PM / SHOW: 8:00 PM
Tickets: $8.00 - $10.00
This event is 21 and over
The community is coming together to actively join David "DJ O.G. One" Jackson in his fight against cancer and recovery from post surgical complications. A benefit event will be held at Holocene Portland featuring some of the many artists O.G. has built with and mentored throughout the years, great musicians and artists from right here in Portland.
The outpouring of support for Jackson has been tremendous, with over 200 people contributing financially in the last three weeks. If you’ve been hoping to help, now is your chance. You can join the community of giving by showing your support at the upcoming event. For ticketing and venue information, visit the Holocene website.
Nathan Carson is a musician, writer, and Moth StorySlam Champion from Portland. He is widely known as co-founder and drummer of the internationally touring doom metal band Witch Mountain, host of the FM radio show The Heavy Metal Sewing Circle, and the owner of the boutique music booking agency, Nanotear. In recent years, Carson has turned his sights toward weird fiction, earning immediate accolades and publication via Word Horde, Stone Skin Press, Strange Aeons Magazine, Fedogan & Bremer, and Lazy Fascist Press. His Newest book is Starr Creek.
This event is free and open to all.
Open Signal's first Open House drew more than 800 Portlanders to see our newly renovated facility and find out about our new media-making programs.
In fact, it was such a great party that we've decided to do it again!
On Saturday, May 6 from 4 to 10 p.m., Open Signal staff will throw open our doors to the community. Come explore our space, see work by independent media-makers and learn how we can help you realize your vision.
In Studio A, XRAY.FM will be hosting a live hip-hop show, featuring Alexis Cannard, Neka Perini and Blossom!
We'll also be screening XRAY TV, a new, curated television block created by XRAY.FM and Open Signal; offering 10% discounts on class registrations; and showing projections by digital media students.
Come hear live music, get your photo taken in a video synth photo booth and chill in a ten-foot-tall, twenty-foot-wide electronic pyramid installation (created by middle school students at Open School North and Open Signal resident artist Kello Goeller).
We'll have pizza and alcoholic beverages available for purchase, and those who register via Eventbrite will get a FREE slice of pizza and drink ticket.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-house-tickets-29905165154
Often referred to as “The Hendrix of the Sahara”, Vieux Farka Touré was born in Niafunké, Mali in 1981. He is the son of legendary Malian guitar player Ali Farka Touré, who died in 2006. Ali Farka Touré came from a historical tribe of soldiers, and defied his parents in becoming a musician. When Vieux was in his teens, he declared that he also wanted to be a musician. His father dissaproved due to the pressures he had experienced being a musician. Rather, he wanted Vieux to become a soldier. But with help from family friend the kora maestro Toumani Diabaté, Vieux eventually convinced his father to give him his blessing to become a musician shortly before Ali passed.
Vieux was initially a drummer / calabash player at Mali’s Institut National des Arts, but secretly began playing guitar in 2001. Ali Farka Touré was weakened with cancer when Vieux announced that he was going to record an album. Ali recorded a couple of tracks with him, and these recordings, which can be heard on Vieux’s debut CD, were amongst his final ones. It has been said that the senior Touré played rough mixes of these songs when people visited him in his final days, at peace with, and proud of, his son’s talent as a musician.
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
CLINTON FEARON (acoustic)
Clinton Fearon is a composer, songwriter, singer and player of instruments since his early teens, and a professional since the age of 19.
He was born in Jamaica and become the bassist, vocalist and lyricist for the mythic Gladiators, as well as a session musician for Coxsonne Dodd in Studio One and Lee 'Scratch' Perry's at Black Ark, two of the main producers on the island at this time. He also composed some everlasting bass lines for well-known artists like Yabby You, Jimmy Riley, Max Romeo, Junior Byles and many others.
After leaving Jamaica 1987, Clinton Fearon start a new career from Seattle. With other musicians of the Gladiators, he decided to stay in the US and to found The Defenders. The band built a nice following in the Northwest. After five years the band split and Clinton Fearon formed the Boogie Brown Band with local musicians in 1993.
Clinton Fearon recorded eight albums with Boogie Brown Band and two albums in solo acoustic.
Each song of Clinton Fearon is a strong message coming from the heart of a man who dedicates his life to help a better world to come. With chiselled music and poetic lyrics, he opens reggae to a wider audience who simply loves his beautiful songs.
The Bridgetown Comedy Festival celebrates its tenth year of bringing the best in comedy to Portland. View the full lineup of over 100 performers and themed shows here.
2017 highlights include:
- Janeane Garofalo (Saturday Night Live, The Larry Sanders Show)
- Andy Kindler (Bob’s Burgers, Everybody Loves Raymond)
- Eugene Mirman (Bob’s Burgers, Delocated)
- Karen Kilgariff (My Favorite Murder, Mr. Show)
- Guy Branum (Talk Show The Game Show, Chelsea Lately)
- Baron Vaughn (Grace and Frankie, Fairly Legal)
- Jackie Kashian (The Dork Forest, Lady Dynamite)
- Laurie Kilmartin (Conan, Last Comic Standing)
- Kevin Avery (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver)
- Matt Braunger (Agent Carter, Big Dumb Animal)
- Brooke van Poppelen (Hack My Life, Girl Code)
- Nico Santos (Superstore, Chelsea Lately)
- Dave Hill (@midnight, Inside Amy Schumer)
- Eliza Skinner (The Late, Late Show with James Corden)
- Debra DiGiovanni (Just For Laughs, Last Comic Standing)
- Ahmed Bharoocha (Adam Devine’s House Party, Conan)
- Chris Fairbanks (Almost Genius, Conan)
- Annie Lederman (We Have Issues, @midnight)
- Shane Torres (Conan)
- Andy Erikson (Last Comic Standing)
Lock in your pre-sale festival now at a savings of $10 off of the standard price and visit bridgetowncomedy.com for performer and show updates.
*Note that festival passes do not include admission to the pre-festival special event Patton Oswalt show at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on May 2nd, ticketed separately atportland5.com, or any shows taking place at Revolution Hall, ticketed separately at revolutionhallpdx.com as they are announced.
***Performers and shows subject to change***
50 Song Memoir is the new album from songwriter Stephin Merritt’s beloved recording project, the Magnetic Fields. This personal album, containing fifty songs, one for each year of the artist’s life, is projected for a late 2016/early 2017 release on Nonesuch Records. The album commenced recording on Stephin Merritt’s fiftieth birthday, February 9, 2015.
To date, Merritt has written and recorded ten Magnetic Fields albums, including the popular and critically acclaimed album, 69 Love Songs. A song from that record, "The Book of Love," has been covered by Peter Gabriel, and has appeared in numerous TV shows and films; notably, the Nairobi Chamber Orchestra performed it at an official state dinner in Kenya, before Presidents Barack Obama and Uhuru Kenyatta delivered their toasts. Merritt has also composed original music and lyrics for several music theater pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radio’s This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.
Unlike Merritt’s previous work, the lyrics on 50 Song Memoir are nonfiction, a mix of autobiography (bedbugs, Buddhism, buggery) and documentary (hippies, Hollywood, hyperacusis). There is one song per year for the fifty years since the songwriter’s birth in 1965. Musically, the sound ranges as widely and adventurously as possible, within the context of lyrics-driven music.
In concert, the music will be played and sung by seven performers in a stage set featuring fifty years of artifacts both musical (vintage computers, reel-to-reel tape decks, newly invented instruments), and decorative (tiki bar, shag carpet, vintage magazines for the perusal of idle musicians). The seven performers each play seven different instruments, traditional (cello, charango, clavichord) or invented in the last fifty years (Slinky guitar, Swarmatron, synthesizer).
In describing his approach to writing 50 Song Memoir, Merritt states: “The first song, ‘Wonder Where I'm From,’ explains that I was conceived by barefoot beatniks on a houseboat in St Thomas, Virgin Islands; born in Yonkers, NY, but never lived there; learned to talk in Baden-Baden, in the former West Germany (then called the BRD, for Bundesrepublik Deutschland), and moved around constantly throughout my childhood, so that when someone asks me where I'm from, I have no short answer handy. The musical treatment shifts to reflect each locale, as exemplified by Alvin and the Chipmunks' album Around the World with the Chipmunks.“
The stage extravaganza will be directed by the award-winning Jose Zayas (Love in the Time of Cholera, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter).
Born the middle of 5 children and raised by a single mother, Vice grew up in Oregon with dreams of becoming a filmmaker. She faced an unthinkable plot twist at the age of 15, though, when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and her kidneys began to fail. By 19, she'd begun what would turn into three-and-a-half years of dialysis, during which time she faced down congestive heart failure, dangerous weight loss, and a series of hospital-borne infections that could have proved fatal to someone in her condition.
"Instead of praying that I would be healed, I was just so tired that I would pray for death every day," she confesses. "But every day I woke up, I decided to live that day to the fullest."
When well enough to work, she put herself through medical assisting school and was blessed with a much-needed kidney transplant. The new lease on life encouraged her to pursue her dream of filmmaking, long-since put on hold in the face of her struggle to survive.
"I decided I was going to make films and put people of color in them with no stereotypes attached," Vice explains. "I wanted to make movies that encouraged people to go out and do something in their lives, that wouldn't make them feel limited because they grew up in a certain neighborhood or family situation."
While working in film, she began attending a new church in Portland and inexplicably found herself compelled to audition for the worship team, a small group of singers and musicians who led the young congregation in contemplative, folk-inspired songs. Overcoming her intense stage fright, she auditioned for Josh White, the pastor of the church and who wrote much of the material for the worship team, and their connection was immediate. Vice began singing in smaller, laid back services during the week, until one Sunday, Vice was called to sing solo in front of the full congregation of nearly 400 parishioners.
"I remember as I was singing, it felt like every pore in my body opened up, and I was just covered in sweat like I had water poured on top of my head," she says. "I was so overwhelmed with the adrenaline of singing a song of that magnitude by myself in front of that many people. It felt like I just went to a new place and everyone disappeared, and then the song was over. There was so much emotion happening I had to sit down. My friend walked onstage in tears and she said, 'What was that?' I looked at her and started crying and said, 'I don’t know.'"
It was a life-changing performance. White decided to give Vice songs he intended for his own solo project. After just one rehearsal, she and the band headed into Jackpot Studios to record all of the instrumentation live to tape. The buzz about the music they were creating was so strong that when they announced a local release show, it sold out almost instantly. Her riveting performance led to dates with Cody Chesnutt and St. Paul & The Broken Bones, as well as a slot at the prestigious Blues Fest, and now, an international release for the album on Ramseur Records.
'There's A Light' opens with the funky R&B of "Abide," Vice's voice sounding like something straight out of the Stax vault over top of a slinky bass and drum groove. On "Empty Me Out," the keyboards take over front and center as Vice's voice grows in rich, expansive layers of harmony. It was hearing the recording of the slow-burning "Entrance" for the first time, though, that convinced her she was creating something special with White.
"When I first listened to the final mix, as soon as it gets to the first 'ooohs,' I couldn't believe that voice was mine," she remembers. "It was the first time I ever heard the things that people kept saying they heard when I sang. I started tearing up and had this moment of, 'Can I cry to my own song?'" she laughs. "It felt like an out of body experience."
The wailing vocals on "The Source" are the stuff that goosebumps are made of, while Vice found herself channeling Michael Jackson on "Everything Is Yours" and pushing deep into the kind of questions about faith and spirituality that one rarely has the courage to ask in church on "Enclosed By You."
Though it's not filmmaking like she originally dreamed of, Vice has found music to be a vehicle for the same type of positive social influence she hoped to have as a director. She imagines the up-tempo gospel of "Pure Religion" as the kind of song a mother might sing to her children to keep them on the right track, and "All Must Be Well" is a message of resilience and survival through hard times. It's perhaps on the title track, though, that we hear the purest expression of love and hope, with Vice joyfully singing "There's a light shining over me" throughout the two-minute, feel-good album closer.
There is indeed a light shining over Liz Vice. It saved her all those years ago just when she thought her life was ending, and it shone down upon a new calling, one in which she gets up onstage every night and shares that light with the world. Come what may, Liz Vice is gonna let it shine.
50 Song Memoir is the new album from songwriter Stephin Merritt’s beloved recording project, the Magnetic Fields. This personal album, containing fifty songs, one for each year of the artist’s life, is projected for a late 2016/early 2017 release on Nonesuch Records. The album commenced recording on Stephin Merritt’s fiftieth birthday, February 9, 2015.
To date, Merritt has written and recorded ten Magnetic Fields albums, including the popular and critically acclaimed album, 69 Love Songs. A song from that record, "The Book of Love," has been covered by Peter Gabriel, and has appeared in numerous TV shows and films; notably, the Nairobi Chamber Orchestra performed it at an official state dinner in Kenya, before Presidents Barack Obama and Uhuru Kenyatta delivered their toasts. Merritt has also composed original music and lyrics for several music theater pieces, including an off-Broadway stage musical of Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline, for which he received an Obie Award. In 2014, Merritt composed songs and background music for the first musical episode of public radio’s This American Life. Stephin Merritt also releases albums under the band names the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes.
Unlike Merritt’s previous work, the lyrics on 50 Song Memoir are nonfiction, a mix of autobiography (bedbugs, Buddhism, buggery) and documentary (hippies, Hollywood, hyperacusis). There is one song per year for the fifty years since the songwriter’s birth in 1965. Musically, the sound ranges as widely and adventurously as possible, within the context of lyrics-driven music.
In concert, the music will be played and sung by seven performers in a stage set featuring fifty years of artifacts both musical (vintage computers, reel-to-reel tape decks, newly invented instruments), and decorative (tiki bar, shag carpet, vintage magazines for the perusal of idle musicians). The seven performers each play seven different instruments, traditional (cello, charango, clavichord) or invented in the last fifty years (Slinky guitar, Swarmatron, synthesizer).
In describing his approach to writing 50 Song Memoir, Merritt states: “The first song, ‘Wonder Where I'm From,’ explains that I was conceived by barefoot beatniks on a houseboat in St Thomas, Virgin Islands; born in Yonkers, NY, but never lived there; learned to talk in Baden-Baden, in the former West Germany (then called the BRD, for Bundesrepublik Deutschland), and moved around constantly throughout my childhood, so that when someone asks me where I'm from, I have no short answer handy. The musical treatment shifts to reflect each locale, as exemplified by Alvin and the Chipmunks' album Around the World with the Chipmunks.“
The stage extravaganza will be directed by the award-winning Jose Zayas (Love in the Time of Cholera, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter).
It's time to debate rent control in Portland!
In response to the housing crisis, the state legislature is considering lifting the statewide ban on rent control, and members of Portland's City Council are openly discussing what rent control might look like in our city. We need more public discussion of this important and controversial set of policies that will shape housing in the city and the state for decades to come.
XRAY.FM and the advocacy group Portland Forward are hosting a spirited debate between advocates on both sides of the issue: Economist Dr. Gerard Mildner of the PSU School of Business Administration and Margot Black, an organizer with Portland Tenants United. Jefferson Smith of XRAY in the Morning will be moderating the debate and the whole conversation will be recorded live for future airing on XRAY.FM and KXRW Vancouver.
Come participate in democracy!
This event is ALL AGES (alcohol will still be sold, don't worry)
Tickets are $7 (all fees included) and proceeds go to XRAY.FM
CJ Ramone served as the The Ramones' bassist and occasional vocalist from 1989 to 1996. Tonight he swings through Dante's with his backing band in tow supporting of his 2017 album, American Beauty. One-time Northwest regular Kait Eldridge and her beloved pop punk and rock outfit Big Eyes return to Portland to provide support.
At the end of Leif Vollebekk’s twenties, his own songs didn’t sound right. He had spent an entire year on the road, playing almost 100 shows, but every night his favourite moment came only right at the end, covering a song by Ray Charles or Townes Van Zandt. Every time he got home from tour he took a hot shower and lay still under a window, listening to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, feeling saved, wondering why his own music didn’t give him that. Why the songs he had written himself always felt like so much work.
He booked himself a secret show. One night only at a Montreal dive bar – not to play his own songs but other people’s. Leif found a rhythm section and they rehearsed once. Then midnight unspooled. Leif called it the most fun he had ever had playing music: Ray Charles and Tom Waits over a locked groove; Bob Dylan and Kendrick Lamar over a slow pulse. The light was dark blue and purple.
It was time, Leif understood, to make a dark blue and purple record. An album of locked groove and slow pulse, heavy as a fever. And the lesson he learned from singing all those other people’s songs was that none of those other artists seemed worried about anything except laying down their own souls, flat out. “I used to think, ‘This will be kinda like a Neil Young song,’ ‘This will be kinda like a Bob Dylan song,’” he recalled. “I kinda ran out of people to imitate. And then there was just me.”
His first new song came to him on his bicycle. He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t trying, but the rhythm, the chords, the melody – it all just fluttered up. He tried at first to let it go: the song was wasn’t meticulous enough, it wasn’t studied or conceived. The next morning it still came back to him, incontestable. “I told myself, ‘You’re never saying ‘no’ to a song ever again,’” Leif said. “I realized I had been saying ‘no’ to a lot of songs, over the years.” Twin Solitude is what happened when Leif stopped saying no. The songs started coming so fast: fully formed, impossible. “Vancouver Time” took 15 minutes; “Telluride” took less. It was as if the songs were waiting for him. Instead of obsessing about the details of recording, “I just showed up to the studio and went, ‘Let’s see what happens.’”
What happened was, they got it: “Big Sky Country” and its patient, coasting tranquility, “Into the Ether”, which rides to reverie with the Brooklyn string duo Chargaux. There’s “East of Eden”, an interpolation of Gillian Welch, which doesn’t seem like it ever ought to end. For a beautiful album, Twin Solitude is deceptively brave, filled with unexpected refrains. “When the cards get stuck together / so hard to pull them apart,” Leif sings, “I think your face is showing.” Then: “Ain’t the first time that it’s snowing.”
Yet in its heart, above all, Twin Solitude is a gesture back to Leif’s long nights under a pink moon, when a record was the only thing that could keep him company. Besides a wink to Hugh MacLennan’s novel Two Solitudes, this is the unlonely loneliness of the album’s title. “It isn’t a record I made for other people – it’s the one I made for myself,” Leif said. “It’s the album I wish I could have put on.”
Listen to it in a rental car in cold weather, with the windows all rolled up. Listen to it laying by an open window. Listen to it all the way through, alone. “By the time the last notes die away, all that’s left should be you,” Leif told me. “And I’ll be somewhere else. And that’s Twin Solitude.”
“Negotiations was a very long, introspective process,” remembers Summers of the band’s 2012 Sub Pop LP. “We shut ourselves off from the world and disappeared down the rabbit hole. That’s how we tend to work, but we wanted to try something new, open and immediate.”
In a sense, The Helio Sequence had spent their whole career preparing for this record. They’d sunk entire recording advances into studio purchases, collaborating with local engineers to build custom gear and a space where they could blend high fidelity with kaleidoscopic sound. In 2013, the pair took on their first full-scale production project, the Brazilian rock band Quarto Negro, after the group inquired about their space and availability through Facebook. As producers, they’d remixed Shabazz Palaces, picked up mixing sessions with Portland acts and earned representation from Global Positioning Services. Summers and Weikel discovered just how adaptable and powerful their studio could be.
In May of 2014, inspired by the “20-Song Game”, they began arriving each morning in their Portland space—housed in the cafeteria and break room of an old warehouse— with the mission of making as much music as possible in one month. They began exploring and capturing, recording guitar riffs and keyboard loops, drum patterns and bass lines. One piece documented, they quickly advanced to the next idea. Summers and Weikel didn’t discuss what they were making or the reference points that informed it, though such discussions had once been central to The Helio Sequence’s more self-conscious process. They just played. Created. In time, they returned to each fragment, broadcasting it over the studio PA, jamming and recording the results. Mistakes didn’t matter, and second chances didn’t exist. After two weeks, Summers and Weikel began cutting those loose takes into rough shapes, steadily building songs from their cavalier sketches.
Although making records can be a laborious and tedious process, Summers delights in the memory of making this one.
“We were coming to the studio on these sunny mornings everyday with an open mind,” Summers shares. “We said, ‘I’m just going to do what feels good in the moment.”
“We worked so quickly that there was a running optimism,” he continues. “There’s this sense of striving for perfection where you can actually take momentum away. But we wanted this record to be momentum in and of itself.”
When June arrived, the duo gathered their 26 finished songs and sent them to 31 friends, fans and family members. They asked each person to rank their 10 favorite tracks. By summer’s end, they had arrived at the brisk 10 tracks that shape the breathless and magnetic The Helio Sequence—a record so named because it’s a kind of clean restart for the longtime pair, a revamp of their process and a revitalization of their results.
The Helio Sequence is a renewed push forward for the band: From the cool wallop of “Deuces,” where guitars snarl and harmonies soar, to the stuttering anxiety of “Upward Mobility”, where pianos pound and drums race, this collection depends upon an effortless kinetic energy. Lyrically, “Stoic Resemblance” is a study of existential anxiety, but musically, it’s a beguiling burst of pop, Summers’ vocals rising over and sliding off of Weikel’s big, irrepressible beat. The bittersweet “Leave or Be Yours” evokes the easy twinkle of romance and the smoldering sadness of losing it. Crisscrossing vocals and cross-talking guitars and drums map a broad swirl of emotions.
With its easy acoustic jangle, “Inconsequential Ties” might be one of the most surprising, light moments within the bombastic Helio Sequence catalog. But considered within the band’s history, it points to the pop that’s bound Summers and Weikel for so long. Indeed, there’s a delightful candor to The Helio Sequence, an openness that is a rare and special feat for a band about to enter its third decade.
“It’s less about curating yourself or trying to put yourself across how you want to be perceived,” says Summers. “It’s about having a conversation with people and giving them something that’s who you are.”
Jackson's debut record Starlit was produced by Riley Geare (Unknown Mortal Orchestra), and released in July of 2014. His next, Natural Changes, is coming out in summer of 2015, and features members of Portland bands Radiation City, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Coma Serfs, and Sinless.
Benji Pope and Andrew Taylor started Orangutang in 2009 in San Jose, CA. David Lindman joined the band in 2010. Orangutang's debut EP was self recorded at the band's studio in a barn in the Santa Cruz mountains. Drums were recorded by Steve Forbes. Guest Vocals by Melissa Farrow, Lisa Lindman, Stephanie Woo, and Dusty Pope. Mixed and Mastered at New, Improved Recording in Oakland, CA by Eli Crews.
Diet Cig are here to have fun. They’re here to tear you away from the soul-sucking sanctity of your dumpster-fire life and replace it with pop-blessed punk jams about navigating the impending doom of adulthood when all you want is to have ice cream on your birthday.
Alex Luciano (guitar and vocals) and Noah Bowman (drums) have been playing music together ever since Luciano interrupted the set of Bowman's previous band for a lighter. The New York duo have since released the infectious, 2015 ‘Over Easy’ EP that introduced consistent sing-a-long lyrics with thrashing drums and strums that never held back.
‘Swear I’m Good At This’ is the first full-length from the band and accumulates their tenacity for crafting life-affirming, relatable tales with a gutsy heart at their core. Luciano has the ability to write lyrics that are both vulnerable and badass, perfecting a storm of emotive reflection that creates a vision of a sweaty, pumped-up room screaming these lines in unison. Diet Cig make it okay to be the hot mess that you are.
But there’s also a deeper, more powerful fuck-you among the bangers that see Diet Cig grow into an unstoppable and inspiring force. “I’m not being dramatic, I’ve just fucking had it with the things that you say you think that I should be” spits Luciano on “Link in Bio”; “I am bigger than the outside shell of my body and if you touch it without asking then you’ll be sorry” she yells on “Maid Of The Mist”. It’s the sound of a band doing things on their own terms.
Wrapping up ‘Swear I’m Good At This’ on Halloween 2016, exactly two years after they finished recording ‘Over Easy’ on Halloween 2014, Diet Cig’s first, full-length LP validates the experiences of punks who aren’t always accepted first time around; the punks who throw their deuces up at the dominating bro-dudes and ignite the importance of owning everything that you are.
With summer lying in wait, Lisa Prank is coming out of hibernation and embracing the sun. Robin Edwards' Seattle-based solo project has gained a dedicated following thanks to her expert marriage of a bubbly sound and all-too-relatable lyrics. Following 2014's exceptional Crush on the World, Lisa Prank returns with a breezy but focused collection of meticulously crafted bedroom pop gems. Adult Teen, the project's forthcoming record, is dominated by bruised romanticism, introspective longing, and a palpable sense of desire, building a sound heavily influenced by 90s pop punk and the decade’s lighthearted culture.
Robin Edwards performs all of the Lisa Prank songs live with an electric guitar and a Roland MC-505 drum machine, delivering memorable performances with ease. Thanks to that fact, Lisa Prank has become a project that's frequently celebrated among Edwards' peers, some of whom, including Bree McKenna and Emily Nokes of Tacocat, Julia Shapiro of Chastity Belt, and Andrew Sullivan and Ian Dugas of The Trashies contributed performances to the record. Lisa Prank has shared the stage with bands like Waxahatchee, Tacocat, and Pony Time. She also contributed vocals on Childbirth's Women’s Rights album for Suicide Squeeze Records. Adult Teen was recorded and mixed by Eric Randall (Tacocat), mastered by Carl Saff, with artwork by Faye Orlove.
Adult Teen is out June 24, 2016 on Father/Daughter Records with a limited cassette release on MISCREANT RECORDS.
All 12" LPs come with a limited 4x6 sticker sheet designed by FAYE ORLOVE.
The NW Post-Rock Collective is excited to present our 3rd Showcase, featuring a specially curated lineup of prog/post/experimental music from the Northwest! Its also the album release for Long Hallways' new 5-track Vinyl, "The Way Home"!
Here's what is in store for this year, at the newly restored Tonic:
Volcanic Pinnacles | molten waves sax & drums
https://volcanicpinnacles.bandcamp.com/music
Human Ottoman | vibes, cello, drum power trio
https://humanottoman.bandcamp.com/
Long Hallways | soul-cracking storytelling (ALBUM &VIDEO RELEASE!)
https://m.facebook.com/LongHallways
You May Die In The Desert (SEA) | Post-Prog
https://ymditd.bandcamp.com/
A Collective Subconscious | Cerebral Post-Rock
https://acollectivesubconscious.bandcamp.com/
You don't want to miss this night!
$8/21+
Mauro Remiddi once ran away to join the circus. The circus was in Berlin and Mauro was 21 years old and at the time he was a street musician earning his living in Florence. Traveling with the circus he played accordion and percussion and violin while acrobats flew above the stage and magicians plied their tricks for the crowd.
Soon after this he found himself in North Korea, a visiting musical ambassador for Italy somehow shaking hands with Kim Jong-un in a display of state-orchestrated propaganda, an experience that drastically reconfigured his outlook for the rest of his life. Mauro remembers the astonishment of the people he encountered, none of whom had ever seen a Western face before.
To be a stranger in a strange land has been a recurrent theme across his career.
Born in Rome, his three decades as a journeyman musician have taken him from London to New York and now his new home of Los Angeles. His new EP as Porcelain Raft, Half Awake, was written and recorded in Greenpoint, mixed by Chris Coady at the legendary Sunset Sounds in Los Angeles and mastered by Heba Kadry. Half Awake will be available on Volcanic Field, Remiddi’s own new boutique art label.
Volcanic Field hails a new chapter for Remiddi ’I felt the need to create a house for all my music and ideas. A sort of archive, a diary of my work in progress, for the sake to tell the story and tell it all.’
It’s about the different way we explore new sounds and how the format influences our perception of it. It’s about how to return to listening to music in a slow, deliberate and appreciative act and how he might prevent his work from being lost in the stream. Where algorithms make our choices for us and the act of accumulating music for its own sake is a compulsion that most of us don’t think about, not realizing our loss of agency in choosing what to pay attention to; to really listen.
Half Awake will be released digitally and physically on cassette. The limited edition cassettes come with a run of linoleum prints, each hand printed in Remiddi’s home studio in LA.
The format choice for this EP comes from a long-held reverence for the sound of cassette tapes. Remiddi made his first music as a teenager on a four track and continues to enjoy the aural textures of the medium, its sound is a comfort of sorts, like a constant.
The songs on Half Awake are about letting go; of places and of expectations. The EP came into being at a juncture when Remiddi relocated from New York to Los Angeles, and explores a compassionate breaking with past selves and the places they’ve lived. Familiar androgynous vocals glide beneath dreamy keyboard washes and infinitely recurring guitars chime above a protagonist who has “Something after me, whatever is after me, I don’t want to touch the ground.”
Half Awake is out through Volcanic Field on June 2nd.
Prolific local trio the Woolen Men bring their jangle punk and pop sounds to the Turn! Turn! Turn! stage.
There is nothing like the sound of siblings singing together. Whether it’s the Beach Boys or the Everly Brothers—or, more recently, First Aid Kit—absorbing the same breathing rhythms and speech patterns adds an element to vocal harmonies that can be pure magic. With the release of I’m Alone, No You’re Not, the mesmerizing, hypnotic sound of the trio known as Joseph—made up of sisters Allison, Meegan, and Natalie Closner—joins this elite company.
“It’s just second nature, like a fifth limb that’s already on you,” says first-born Natalie. “There’s an ability to anticipate what’s going to happen and blend with it. When Meegan and Allison sing, they know exactly what I’m going to do and when.”
But the Closners didn’t actually start singing together when they were growing up in Oregon, the children of artistic parents (their dad was a jazz singer and drummer, their mom a theater teacher). Natalie was the performer—“the older sister who stood on the edge of the fireplace and told everyone, ‘Watch me!,’“ she says. Twins Meegan and Allison stayed out of her lane, joining in for their mother’s musical theater productions but otherwise avoiding the spotlight.
When Natalie was in college, she began pursuing music more seriously. The summer before her senior year, she went to Nashville to check out the scene and work on her guitar playing and songwriting. She had recorded an EP and done a few rounds of touring when a friend sat her down one day.
“It was kind of dramatic,” she says, “He took me aside and said, ‘I don’t think you really believe in this.’ It stopped me in my tracks.” She thought deeply about the music she was making and had a curious epiphany; she decided to ask her sisters if they would consider singing with her.
Initially, they didn’t really get it. “We thought she was asking us to be background singers, so we didn’t take it that seriously,” says Allison. “It was more commitment than I was expecting—I even tried to leave at one point, but after a while, I was convinced.”
A transformation occurred when the Closners were in the process of recording their first album, Native Dreamer Kin. At the time, they were calling themselves Dearborn, but their producer felt that the name didn’t fit the strength of the music. They went to visit their grandfather Jo, in the eastern Oregon town of Joseph. Allison made a playlist for the trip and called it “Joseph,” which is what influenced the band’s name.
“Once she said it, it just hit us all—that’s what this is and who we are, these are the sounds of the land that we’ve lived on,” says Natalie.
With this new sense of themselves, Meegan and Allison began taking a more active role in the group’s songwriting. Meegan notes that while the process was a “totally new journey” for her, it felt similar to the candor and vulnerability of her long-time journaling—just “pulling out the gold and arranging that into neater lines.”
She and Natalie both point to the song “Honest” as a keystone for the development of I’m Alone, No You’re Not. “We were trying really hard to write a song, but nothing was coming,” recalls Natalie. “One night, Meegan was working on some lyrics and getting frustrated, so she wrote in the margin of the page, ‘I can’t say a true thing. It’s hard to be that honest.’ Immediately after that, her most honest sentence spilled out—‘There’s always two thoughts, one after the other: I’m alone. No, you’re not.’ And she thought, ‘Oh, there’s the song.’ “
Meanwhile, the group was cultivating a devoted fan base in the most traditional ways possible: touring the Western states playing living room shows, backyard parties, and secret house party gigs; reaching an audience directly through such platforms as Noisetrade; selling their self-released CD and building a loyal following step by step. By the time they were approached by ATO Records, Joseph had already built a strong community of fans on its own.
As they moved toward making their second record, the project took an additional turn when the Closners decided to work with some other songwriters in Los Angeles. “We were afraid of it at first because the songs were more pop than we were used to writing,” says Meegan, “but as we internalized them, they started becoming super-important to us.”
They point to “More Alive Than Dead,” co-written with Ethan Gruska, as an example of these contributions. “That song describes an experience with a partner where you have hard things in your combined past,” says Natalie. “You’re haunted by them until you realize that those things are dead, and as long as you dwell on them, you’re missing the real live person in front of you.”
She adds, though, that Gruska was critical in clarifying and sharpening the nuanced emotion of the lyric. “When Ethan sent us back the demo, I lost it, He was able to see the heart of the song and bring it out, cut to the core of what I was trying to say.”
Finally, the women of Joseph recorded the album with acclaimed producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Jenny Lewis, First Aid Kit) at his studio in Omaha. He was able to open up their expansive, evocative vocal sound with powerful and striking arrangements, adding depth while highlighting their haunting intensity.
“This was our first time doing a recording like this,” says Natalie, “and we learned so much about creativity. Mike is a genius, and he’s just a total maniac as a musician, so he took these bare bones songs and brought them to life with lush, gorgeous textures and sounds.”
The initial reaction to the music on I’m Alone, No You’re Not has been remarkable. Joseph was selected as a #SpotifySpotlight artist, and booked for festivals including Bonnaroo, Pickathon, and Sasquatch even prior to the release of the single “White Flag,” a song inspired by an article predicting a massive earthquake for the Pacific Northwest.
“Reading that created a heaviness that was making us jumpy, scared, and miserable,” says Natalie. “It became clear we had two options: be scared and cowering, backing away from the world into paralysis, or keep moving and live. Defy fear. Wear peace. Find better ways to love the people in our lives instead of huddling together like frightened sheep thinking about earthquakes.”
Most rewarding for the Closner sisters has been feeling the audience response to the new songs, as they tour supporting such artists as James Bay and Amos Lee. “This is really when you learn what’s special about a song, or if it’s special,” says Natalie. “It’s this crazy firecracker thing that happens—‘Am I feeling something? Is anyone? What is this song, what does it do, which parts make the most sense?’
“It really is about connection with people, and we’re so grateful we’ve gotten the chance to do that. This has been a totally wild journey, and we’re constantly blown away with possibility of what could be.”
When they're not touring with jazz virtuoso Raul Midón, or starring on London's West End in the hit show Close to You; Bacharach Reimagined, 25 year old twins Daniel (Bass) and David Bailen (Drums) are playing and singing in three part harmony with their 19 year old sister Julia (Guitar) in their band BAILEN. The three have been writing songs and performing since they can remember. As children, the siblings were all soloist in the Metropolitan Opera's children's chorus, singing along side the likes of Pavarotti, Rene Fleming and Placido Domingo. And before that, they were performing and touring with their parents, both professional NYC freelance musicians. Childhood friend Pierre Piscitelli (Keyboards) is the fourth member of BAILEN, and the only "non" Bailen, but the band says they are working on the paper work.
BAILEN has collaborated with artists such as Burt Bacharach, Bill Withers Alex Clare, Raul Midón, Jon Batiste and Stay Human, AJR, Kyle Riabko, Dianne Reeves, Liz Wright, Richard Bona, Marcus Miller, Bob Thiele Jr. and Joe Mardin. They have written music for Sons of Anarchy, Victoria's Secret, Paper Magazine, Marc Jacobs, Ansel Elgort and can be heard on Raul Midón's new album "Don't Hesitate" as well as Jon Batiste and Stay Human's "My NY." In 2014 they won the Elfenworks Foundation songwriting award: In Harmony With Hope. They have performed internationally and are regular guests at Madison Square Garden for the National Anthem. Grammy U and College Battle named them the best college band in the Northeast.
This past year the band has been cultivating a presence in London, where they have played dozens of shows, recorded with Grammy winning engineer Ricardo Damian (Uptown Funk), and have garnered a faithful following within the London folk scene as well as in NYC. The groups' three-part sibling harmonies have been compared to The Fleet Foxes and The Staves, and Entertainment Weekly described them as having "harmonies to rival Simon Garfunkel."
To Portlanders, Pond may always be the local trio of Charlie Campbell, Chris Brady and David Triebwasser, who recorded a couple of albums for Sub Pop in the '90s and were one of our town's true buzz bands back when most of the buzz was happening three hours up I-5. But it's 2014, not 1993, and a different band named Pond consists of a shaggy bunch of Australians who make psychedelic pop-rock that's as pure and pretty as fellow Perth exports Tame Impala, with whom Pond shares a few members.