Thursday, July 12th, 2012
The band that was scheduled to kick off Bend’s popular Munch & Music series tonight — Live Wyya from Jamaica — ran into trouble getting its immigration papers in order and won’t make it to the show, according to C3 Events, which books the series.
Instead, another reggae act, Winstrong, will headline. Local band 2nd Hand Soldiers will open.
So now you know. Here’s more on Munch & Music.
Friday, July 6th, 2012
Today’s cover story in GO! Magazine is on local heroes Larry and His Flask, their recent tour of Europe, their history of busking and the stress that comes along with being in hard-touring band, even if you’re in one of the most fun bands on Earth.
They’ve come a long way from their old-school punk-rock days, that’s for sure. Just for fun, I dug up this old story I did on the Flask in 2006. Give it a read … it’s an eye-opener.
But back to the present. Larry and His Flask returns to Redmond tonight for a free, all-ages show that may be your only chance to catch them live this summer (if you live in Central Oregon). I met up with the guys last week where we chatted about, well, all the stuff I mentioned above. Here’s an excerpt:
This is a band, after all, that decided at some point to just go and travel and play for people and win their ears and hearts with the pure power of their live show.
I'm so happy with how today's cover turned out.
And it worked. Thanks to that initial DIY effort, plus subsequent support tours, the Warped gig and gushing press, Larry and His Flask is now one of the buzz bands on the white-hot roots-music-with-punk-spirit scene.
Banjo player Andrew Carew couldn’t have guessed what the future held. He joined the fold when he was 19, after his band broke up and the Flask was in flux. When asked if he saw this kind of potential in these guys, he answered simply: “No.”
Then, after a perfectly timed pause: “Hell no!”
He was wrong, of course. Late last week, the six band members … reflected on their favorite parts of the European tour, which carried them through 10 countries: the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A canal tour in Holland. A sunny drive across the snow-capped Alps.
Busking in Edinburgh, Scotland and Florence, Italy and London.
“Those were awesome,” Jesse Marshall said.
So were the shows, where crowds were bigger than expected and lots of folks actually sang along to the band’s songs.
This is a story of a band that did things the right way and now it’s paying off. I hope you’ll go read the whole thing.
Three other things worth noting in this week’s very crowded GO!:
– Local chamber-folk trio Hilst & Coffey will celebrate its new album Wednesday at McMenamins Old St. Francis School.
– Local roots-jam band Mark Ransom & The Mostest will do the same thing the next night at the same place.
– The popular free concert series Munch & Music kicks off Thursday in Drake Park with the reggae band Live Wyya.
Elsewhere in this week’s music section: Roy Rogers & The Delta Rhythm Kings, September Stayed, American Me, Keak Da Sneak, City Faire, The Dirty Words, Ray Lawrence Jr., Johnny Outlaw & The Johnson Creek Stranglers, Bryan John Appleby, Lemolo, Abbey Road Live!, Taarka, Chiringa, Beth Wood, Chris Kokesh and more!
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Another sign summer will come to Central Oregon at some point in the future: The 2012 Munch & Music lineup is here.
This year’s roster of bands features a couple of ’80s hitmakers — Modern English (“I Melt With You”) and The Fixx (“One Thing Leads To Another”) — plus blues guitar hero Tommy Castro and local faves Igor & Red Elvises and The Quick & Easy Boys.
Munch & Music runs for six consecutive Thursday evenings in July and August, filling Drake Park with food, vendors, playthings for kids, music and lots and lots of people. Oh, and it’s free. Here’s the whole lineup; click the names to learn more:
July 12 — Live Wyya
July 19 — Modern English
July 26 — Igor & Red Elvises
Aug. 2 — The Quick & Easy Boys
Aug. 9 — The Fixx
Aug. 16 — Tommy Castro
Friday, July 1st, 2011
Reggae legends Toots & the Maytals are coming to Redmond! It took a while, but I tracked down Frederick “Toots” Hibbert and talked to him about the key to his longevity.
“The good music makes me stay on the road,” he said. “People need me so they request me to come, so I have to be on the road. I love what I do, (and I) still like to tour to make sure my audience is happy. They love me very much and I love them very much.”
Their love is rooted, first and foremost, in a handful of hit Toots & the Maytals records from the late 1960s and early 1970s, including “54-46 Was My Number,” “Bam Bam,” “Pressure Drop,” “Monkey Man” and “Funky Kingston.”
The band’s early hits are durable classics of the genre, reflective of a time when reggae was a bit grittier and funkier than it tends to be these days.
The Maytals’ music remains popular because it’s “clean” and “positive,” Hibbert said.
“If you’re negative,” he said, “you won’t last long.”
It’s not often Bend gets a performance by an artist as influential as Toots, so you should click here and read what else he had to say.
I also want to highlight my story on Ashland-based indie-folk trio Kites & Crows, who are playing a free show at McMenamins on Wednesday. I really think this is talented up-and-coming band with great songs, so click here to read all about ‘em.
Elsewhere in this week’s music section, we’ve got Ween’s return to Les Schwab Amphitheater, Tracorum kicking off Munch & Music, Sunriver’s Rhythm on the Range festival, Lauren Shera at Silver Moon, a trio of country songwriters at Maragas Winery and Third Seven’s last show before tour, plus Sagebrush Rock, Boxcar String Band, Chris Beland and Last Band Standing.
Enjoy the long weekend and gorgeous weather, folks! Have fun and be safe.
Friday, June 10th, 2011
… goes like this:
July 7 — Tracorum (Bay Area funk/soul)
July 14 — Curtis Salgado (veteran Oregon bluesman)
July 21 — Rootz Underground (Jamaican reggae/hip-hop)
July 28 — Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (ska/swing/rock)
Aug. 4 — Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (swing)
Aug. 11 — Shemekia Copeland (blues)
If yer keeping score at home, that’s one Daddy, one set of Daddies, and one concert series that is not spelled “Munchin Music.” (It’s kind of amazing how many people/organizations don’t get that tiny, minor detail right. I mean, it’s just the name of the series.)
Munch & Music shows are held on Thursday nights at Drake Park in downtown Bend. They are free and they are popular.
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
The previously announced performer at tonight’s Munch & Music in Drake Park, Jah Sun & the Redemption Band, is not playing. Instead, attendees will get the roots-reggae sound of Portland’s the Instigators.
Combine the replacement of one middling west-coast reggae band with another and the fact that a lot of Munch attendees barely pay attention to the music, and you have what may be the least important post in the history of Frequency. So here’s some bonus content: Jah Sun isn’t showing up tonight after a dispute over money. I and lots of other folks know this because Cameron Clark — founder of the company behind Munch & Music, C3 Events, and a man who values transparency and is not afraid to thoughtfully speak his mind — talked about that dispute in a post on C3′s Facebook. That post drew a couple dozen comments about whether it was an appropriate forum for such a topic before it was deleted earlier this week. (This post immediately followed the one that was deleted and includes further discussion.)
Which is all to say this: If you want an entertaining and eye-opening look at some of the behind-the-scenes business of putting on concerts, you should go befriend the C3 Facebook. Watch Bend’s biggest event-production company search for a piano to rent for Paula Cole! See them try to book an opening act 80 minutes before showtime! (Or 36 hours before showtime!) Read details of their haggles with a booking agent in an effort to bring John Hiatt to Bend! (It worked.)
I find it all to be quite fascinating, organized chaos.
Friday, July 9th, 2010
Who is Branden Miskimon? And how does he keep ending up in photos of Munch & Music in The Bulletin?
First check out this photo from July 24, 2009, when Rhythm Culture played the popular Drake Park event:
Now, check out this photo, which ran in today’s paper and was taken last night as Aphrodesia performed:
It’s the same kid doing basically the same thing at the same event, just a year apart! In case you were wondering, this was totally by chance; different photographers took the two photos. In fact, Ryan Brennecke, who took the 2010 photo of Miskimon, didn’t even work for The Bulletin in 2009.
Here are my two questions:
1) Does Branden hang around the front of Drake Park’s stage every day, waiting for bands and photographers to show up?
2) Can we (The Bulletin, that is) get this shot every year from now until Branden goes off to college or whatever? Now that I feel like I’ve gotten to know the kid, I kind of want to watch him grow up … in 365-day intervals, of course.
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
Aphrodesia, an Afrobeat (and so much more) band based in the Bay Area, will kick off the 20th season of Munch & Music Thursday. I spoke with bassist and bandleader Ezra Gale about the rising profile of Afrobeat in America.
“I think (Afrobeat) is definitely more in the mainstream consciousness than it was when we started doing this,” Gale said via telephone Monday. “Where I live in Brooklyn, there’s now at least three or four young Afrobeat bands who are playing (in the style of genre godfather Fela Kuti), and I remember when Aphrodesia first started, as far as we knew, it was us and (New York’s) Antibalas. It really was this new thing. Nobody knew who Kuti was, and we were playing this music that felt obscure.
“It’s important to keep it in perspective, because there are things that are pushing it into the mainstream (such as the Kuti-focused “Fela!” Broadway musical), but at the same time, when you talk about most people in this country, most still have never heard of it, really,” he said. “So us Afrobeat musicians kind of live in a bubble. To us, it may seem sort of played out and passé, but in fact, it’s still new to probably 98 percent of people.”
Accompanying the Aphrodesia story are a few words from Munch & Music founder Cameron Clark on what two decades of the popular, free concert series means to him. I hope you’ll click here and read it all.
Also in the music section this week:
New recorded music just keeps on coming from Bend’s ridiculously productive scene. This week, I wax poetic about the new album from Sara Jackson-Holman (“it’s an aural tractor beam, drawing me in over and over again”), who’ll hold a CD-release show Monday, and The Autonomics (“bruising rock ’n’ roll that draws influence from both modern and classic sounds”), who’ll celebrate their new EP with a show tonight.
Elsewhere, we’ve got all the details on the Breedlove Festival, a concert and barbecue at Maragas Winery, Lisa C. Pollock’s Indie Freedom Tour at Silver Moon Brewing, Eric Tollefson and the Show Us Your Spokes lineup, Curtis Salgado and the Picnic in the Park lineup, folk singers Kasey Anderson and Anastacia, and a scaled-down Pinback returning to the Domino Room. And as always, you can find lots more in The Bulletin’s complete music listing.
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
Happy Fourth of July, patriot! I know the whole family is going to be hanging out around the grill this weekend, and that inevitably leads to a big, America-centric singalong, with ol’ Uncle Carl leading the way on “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
So when you hear Uncle Carl start in with “O say, can you see…” here’s what you do: Duck inside, grab your GO! Magazine, and read up on all the musical happenings around the region over the next week. Here’s what’s in there:
-An interview with Bend local Franchot Tone about his L.A.-based band Culver City Dub Collective, which will play Sunday at Les Schwab Amphitheater. Here’s a free download of a track from CCDC’s self-titled EP. Grab it. It’s groovy:
Download Culver City Dub Collective, “Lel’s Song”
-A short story on the kickoff of Munch & Music in Drake Park, featuring virtuoso guitarist Fareed Haque and his Flat Earth Ensemble.
-My review of two fine, local rock bands — Tuck and Roll and Goodbye Dyna — that played sets at Deschutes Brewery’s 21st birthday party last weekend.
-Details on the big Fourth of July party happening Saturday at Bendistillery Martini Bar, where local hip-hop artists Mosley Wotta and Cloaked Characters will release a split CD containing four tracks from each. What’s that? You’d like to hear what these folks sound like? The Frequency blog aims to please; go download tracks from MoWo and CCZ here and here.
-Blurbs on the Empty Space Orchestra/Ruins of Ooah show Saturday at Silver Moon, the return of reggae legends The Abyssinians, the reopening of the Harmony House concert series venue (featuring folkie Jack Williams), and a hip-hop show at New Hope Church.
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
I’m in Portland for a couple days, so please forgive me if the blog seems a bit quiet. I’ll make up for it when I get back to Bend. For now, a few local notes:
-If you were hoping to spend an “intimate acoustic evening” at the Tower Theatre with roots-pop singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile and you don’t already have your ticket, you’re out of luck; the show is sold out. Tickets sold out in less than two weeks, according to promoter Bret Grier, which around here is pretty fast.
-The Sisters Folk Festival is now accepting entries for its annual Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Contest. The winner will take home $750 and the five finalists will perform during the folk fest, set for Sept. 11-13 in Sisters. Entrants may submit up to three songs and must submit by July 31 through SonicBids. Click here to learn more about how to submit song files. (By the way, the folk fest’s lineup is already looking pretty sweet: Peter Rowan, Todd Snider, Alison Brown Quartet, Kelly Joe Phelps, Blind Pilot, The Belleville Outfit, Susan Werner … wow!)
-A new event called Jade’s Jazz Festival appears to be getting off the ground. It’s planned for July 11-12 in beautiful La Pine, and according to the Web site, performers include Nina Callaway, David Patrone, Ed Criss, Blues Quarter, Bellavia, Lino and Detour: Jazz. We’ll have more info in an upcoming GO! Magazine, of course.
-Finally, the acts playing at some of the summer events are starting to trickle in. Some of these are confirmed, some aren’t, but are probably safe bets: The Virginia pop band Carbon Leaf will headline The Bite of Bend June 21. The rest of the lineup is stocked with local acts and it looks like this. Folk legend Joan Baez will perform at the Athletic Club of Bend on Aug. 16 as part of the Clear Summer Nights concert series. Pollstar has fusion guitarist Fareed Haque slated for Munch & Music on July 9, and the Web site of the fine Malian singer Vieux Farka Toure has him playing Drake Park the following Thursday.
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