Elsewhere in the music section: Izzy Cox’s voodoobilly, Euforquestra’s AfroLatin-funk, The Henhouse Prowlers’ big-city bluegrass, the stringy Americana of Dead Winter Carpenters and Fruition, and several options for live music that aren’t happening downtown.
–Plus: Half-of-Hillstomp Henry Kammerer comes to town with McDougall, Rosie Ledet brings zydeco to the Domino Room on Saturday, JPOD the Beat Chef heads up an electronic bill tonight at Midtown, “The Goat Rodeo Sessions Live” film screens at the Regal Old Mill 16, indie-folk chanteuse Ezza Rose plays The Wine Shop, Cadence takes on Players Bar, and much more!
I spend a lot of time talking about how great the Sisters Folk Festival is; it is without question one of the musical highlights of Central Oregon’s summer.
But SFF is a year-round organization, and you should know that its annual Winter Concert Series — three concerts held at Sister High School’s auditorium — is a good time, too. I saw Trombone Shorty there a few years ago, and it remains one of the best concerts I’ve seen in my time here.
This year’s winter series will kick off Monday with another seriously danceable band from the great state of Louisiana. Here’s a taste …
Jeffery Broussard & The Creole Cowboys will turn the high school auditorium into a zydeco dance party next week. My colleague David Jasper spoke with Broussard about how he learned to play accordion, among other things.
After seventh grade, he quit school to help out on the farm by picking and sorting potatoes. And as the story goes, every chance he got, he’d sneak in the house, reach up on the closet shelf and take down his dad’s prized accordion.
“(Dad) started working at another place,” Broussard, 44, told The Bulletin last week. “And when he would go to work, me and my brother would take chances and steal his accordion out of the closet. He didn’t even know which one to point the finger at.
“Every time we did that, though, our mom was like, ‘Y’all know, y’all’s daddy find out you’re doing that, you know what’s going to happen,’” he said. “But we would take our chances. That’s pretty much how I learned.”
Also highlighted this week is the Portland band Animal Eyes, which will play two shows in town — tonight at The Horned Hand and next Friday at Silver Moon — over the next week. Click here to read my take on their wide-eyed, globally inspired indie rock.
Elsewhere in this week’s music section, we’ve got artists that mine American folk, roots and rock ‘n’ roll as far as the eye can see: Peter Yarrow, Danny Barnes, Johnny A., Sassparilla, Calling Morocco, Restavrant and more.
Last but not least, I spent my Feedback column reviewing last week’s Pickwick show at McMenamins. Read that right here, and click here if you’d like to watch a few videos of the band’s performance.
Because of those social media sharing buttons to the right of this text, I always try to think of something to write up here to push the video down the page a bit. It just looks a lot better than trying to shrink or move the video to work within the layout.
But sometimes, I can’t think of anything to write. And this is one of those times. OK, let’s move on!
The veteran Chicago bluegrass band Special Consensus will play in Bend tonight to benefit the High & Dry Bluegrass Festival. My colleague David Jasper spoke with founding member Greg Cahill about how he first got into bluegrass music.
Cahill learned to read music by first playing the accordion, then strumming some guitar, but “the allure of the banjo” called to him, he said. At that time, he was still predominantly into folk, which was big in the hometown of John Prine.
That changed in 1969, when he was stationed at a Georgia army base.
“I was in a folk trio, and one Saturday afternoon a guy came in and said, ‘You gotta hear this.’ It was Flat and Scruggs’ ‘Foggy Mountain Banjo’ album,” Cahill said. “That did it.”
You should click here and read the whole thing! Then get on over to The Sound Garden tonight and help out High & Dry.
In Feedback, I offer up a list of good goals for the Central Oregon music scene in 2012. Here’s a sneak peek at one of ‘em:
Fewer hassles. It seemed like every few months last year a venue or event ran into problems with outside forces, whether it was noise complaints by a tiny minority or governmental nitpicking about the capacity of a mom-and-pop business.
I understand that it’s the responsibility of concert promoters and event organizers to ensure safety and respect the neighbors. But I also live here, and I want Bend to be a fun, vibrant town with a diversity of cultural offerings for people of all stripes.
If that means putting up with the sound of music floating through the warm summer air a dozen times a year … well, there are a lot worse things to worry about, right?
There are about 10 items on my list. I hope you’ll go read the rest of them right here.
Elsewhere in this week’s music section: Archeology visits McMenamins Old St. Francis School, Anthony B and Dick Dale return to town (separately), The Pimps of Joytime look to funk up Player’s, Mel Brown’s B3 Organ Band plays the Jazz at the Oxford series, Phillip Roebuck and Mike Brown stop at The Horned Hand tonight, and much, much more!
Slowly but surely, folks, we’re coming out of the holiday show slowdown.
There are several solid options over the next seven days, including a very busy Thursday night.
First up, a band that could very well blow up big in 2012:
Seattle indie-soul band Pickwick will play a free show at McMenamins on Thursday night. My colleague David Jasper spoke with guitarist Michael Parker about the band’s evolution.
From the start, Pickwick sounded fairly derivative of Wilco.
“We all loved ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,’” Parker said, referring to Wilco’s acclaimed 2002 album. Taking a cue from Wilco, Pickwick infused their sound with elements of country and psychedelia, with a touch of “some electronic stuff,” said Parker.
They would stick to their sonic guns for two years before facing facts. Namely, that they were stuck in the middle of the alt-country pack.
The Wilco influence “didn’t really work for us. We have some friends who do music like that and are amazing at it, but for us, it just wasn’t really a good fit,” said Parker.
In 2010, he and (frontman Galen) Disston met and discussed breaking up the band, “just because the stuff we were doing, we weren’t very proud of,” Parker said. “One of the things we do well as a group is we’re just brutally honest. That’s part of our relationship that had already been established by that point. We can talk to each other about things that might be a little uncomfortable, but we’re still friends at the end of the day.”
Instead of disbanding, they scrapped the alt-country songs and started over.
“We threw it all away. We went from having close to 20 songs to having nothing,” Parker said. Inspired by Sam Cooke’s croon, Pickwick moved to Motown, so to speak, creating a soulful sound that showcased Disston’s singing ability.
Also, OPB Radio recently did a story on MoWo, aka Jason Graham, which you can listen to by clicking here. (Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the story and they used a couple of my comments.)
–Laurel Brauns — former Bendite and current Portlander who still plays here often (she’ll be at portello winecafe on Jan. 21) — released a video for the song “Kaleidoscope Eyes” from her 2011 album “House of Snow” (one of my favorite local releases of the year). It was shot by Bend’s FAR from EARTH Films at Dillon Falls. Enjoy!
–Last but not least, local dance-rock band All You All put out its first EP, called “Fluorescence,” right around the turn of the year. I’m still letting this one sink in, but I definitely hear a little Modest Mouse, Red Hot Chili Peppers, White Denim and White Stripes in the band’s urgent, bouncy sound. Check the EP out below!
That’s the situation this weekend as one of the year’s most festive holidays coincides with the most party-friendly night of the week, and I suspect the result will be a very crowded and crazy bunch of New Year’s Eve events around Central Oregon.
Local Celtic-rock band Five Pint Mary will celebrate its new album with a show tonight at M&J Tavern. I spoke with co-founder Michael Holmes about the group’s connection with its fans.
“A lot of these old songs were really meant to tell the history of a battle or something, so they’ve been repeated for centuries and they just kind of take on a life of their own,” Holmes said. “People have been singing along with them for hundreds of years, and a lot of people have heard these songs since they were little kids. So we have people who come to our shows and they’re singing the lyrics right back to us. Which is really the intent of a lot of the songs.”
He continued: “In the days before jukeboxes and recorded music, you went to the pub and you sang along with the band. It was just something that you did, and that’s really still happening today. And when you go to a show like that … it’s like you can’t sit still. It’s more like something you’re actually doing rather than something you’re sitting there listening to.”
As just about any musician will tell you, that’s what it’s all about: connection with the audience.
“Whenever people ask us for a request, it really makes us feel good because a lot of the songs … (are) near and dear to their hearts for whatever reason,” Holmes said. “It’s like this person’s favorite song since they were a kid, so it feels good.”
I hope you’ll click here and read the whole thing.
Elsewhere in this week’s music section: Washington-based dark-folk band Terrible Buttons stops at The Horned Hand on Sunday night. Click here to read my colleague David Jasper’s interview with head Button Kent Ueland. Also, Bay Area hip-hop/reggae dude RasCue returns to town, Hopeless Jack & The Handsome Devil brings dirty blues to Bend, and some news from the Sisters Folk Festival, including discounted passes for 2012 and the lineup for the upcoming winter concert series.
For some reason, Saturday’s show by local post-rock faves Empty Space Orchestra at Silver Moon Brewing & Taproom didn’t run in our live-music listings in today’s GO! Magazine. Not sure why.
But the show is definitely happening, although the previously announced opener — Portland’s White Orange — had to cancel to deal with a family situation. Instead, local pop-rock band Cadence will open the show, which will get underway around 9 p.m.
Tickets are $5 in advance here, or $7 at the door. Apologies to both bands for not getting the gig in the paper. As penance, here’s the poster for ESO’s ongoing December residency at Silver Moon!
–Jazz fusioneers Spyro Gyra at On a Lite Christmas Nite
–Throwback harp-guitarist John Doan does his Victorian Christmas show
–Broadway star Gary Morris plays A Starry Nights Christmas in Sisters
–Blind Boys of Alabama have already sold out the Tower Theatre
–Smooth jazz pianist Tom Grant is at The Oxford Hotel
–Bill Keale and friends do the holiday Hawaiian-style at The Old Stone
Elsewhere: PoetHouse Art hosts a benefit for paralyzed snowboarder Tyler Eklund tonight, Brandi Carlile’s back but tickets are long gone, a group of Sisters songwriters play at The Barn, and Bobby Lindstrom’s back in town, plus the Josh Hart Project, Little Black Dress, DSkiles Band, Bloodlust and Embrace the Fear. Again, it’s all right here.
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