Frequency blog: Music news and reviews from Bend and Central Oregon, by Ben Salmon | The Bulletin

Portland indie-folk artist Laura Veirs will arrive in Bend Wednesday to play her gorgeous songs at the Tower Theatre. (There are a couple places in the article where it says the show is Tuesday. Oops. Ignore that. It’s Wednesday.) I spoke with her about her new baby and her seventh album, “July Flame,” which was released early this year and is a return to the folksier sound of her early work.

Stripping away some of the fancy production of past albums was the goal from the beginning, Veirs said, for two main reasons.

One, she wanted to challenge herself.

“This last album was quite a challenge for me to write because I’d written seven albums,” she said. “I’d played these chords hundreds of times, so it was like, ‘OK, I need to change the tuning on my instrument. I need to write on a different instrument. I need to surprise myself.’ I think that’s where the good art comes, when you yourself feel surprised and engaged in something new, because that’s what resonates with other people.”

I hope you’ll click here and read the whole thing.

California folk singer Rita Hosking will visit Sisters Saturday night to kick off the new season of HarmonyHouse concerts. My colleague David Jasper spoke to Hosking about what HarmonyHouse denizens can expect.

“We do mostly my original songs, which range from uptempo to pretty slow,” she explained. “It’s all very country-folk, and so it’s all acoustic, and you’ll often hear a lot of harmonies; they sing along with me.

“We also do some covers and banjo-fiddle tune instrumentals thrown in here and there. It makes for a nice, diversified show for an acoustic group. We do lots of different things. We can rock out a little bit, or play old-time music or bluegrass. I like to do folk ballads. We do it all.”

Click here to read the whole thing and to check out HarmonyHouse’s lineup for the season.

Elsewhere in this week’s music section: Super Adventure Club, The Mostest and Matt Miller, The Capitol Steps, Acorn Project and Sassparilla. As always, there’s more in The Bulletin’s complete music listings.