Portland sister act Joseph will be performing in Atlanta on Friday, October 14 at Terminal West. Here's a set they recorded on a dock on the Willamette River for Oregon Public Broadcasting, including a radio interview sandwiched in the middle.
One of my favorite Seattle bands (actually, make that one of my favorite bands), Deep Sea Diver, will be playing The Earl on February 27 with one of my favorite Portland bands (actually, make that one of my other favorite bands), Radiation City. Before setting out on tour, though, Deep Sea Diver recorded a set in Portland for Oregon Public Broadcasting, giving us an early taste of some of their new material.
If that doesn't have you psyched, a) I don't understand you, and b) here's the title track from their forthcoming album, Secrets, to get you to the tipping point.
Ending the year by discovering a new (at least to us) artist from (where else?) Portland, Oregon. Here's Edna Vazquez, both solo and with her band No Passengers. Rather than blather on here, I'll let her introduce herself in her own words and let her music speak for itself.
There's absolutely nothing that could be said here about the tragedy in Paris, so here are some great and totally unrelated songs by LA's Julia Holter, recorded in OPB's studio in Portland.
Calexico at The Buckhead Theater, January 25, 2015
Tucson's California-Mexico hybrid, Calexico, recorded at a vineyard near McMenamin's Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon, where I caught My Morning Jacket during MFNW (RIP) 2012.
Calexico will be playing Terminal West on September 26.
If the members of Portland band Eyelids look familiar to you, it's because the band consists of current and former members of The Decemberists/Black Prairie (John Moen) and Guided By Voices (Chris Slusarenko), and their collaborators Jonathan Drews, Jim Talstra and Paul Pulvirenti. We saw them one night in 2013 during MFNW (RIP) at The Doug Fir before skipping across town to see Chvrches at the Roseland Ballroom and, later, Murder By Death at Dante's. That was a fun night.
We may have forgotten Eyelids in all of the frenzy of that club-hopping evening but they've been chugging along, releasing their debut album, 854, last October and a new EP earlier this year. Here's a video playlist of their songs by way of OPB.
Here's a stripped-down version of the Portland band Blind Pilot - Israel Nebeker and Ryan Dobrowski - performing with cellist Sergey Antonov at the Liberty Theater in Astoria, Oregon.
If you're a fan or orchestral folk-rock, you know, bands like Beirut, Lost In The Trees, Fanfarlo, and Shearwater, or, if you live in Atlanta, Little Tybee and Oryx & Crake (if you live in San Francisco, Family Crest, I suppose), and you haven't yet heard Portland's Typhoon, arguably the best of all of them, then prepare yourself because you're in for a real treat.
Here they are, all 11 of them, in an August 29 session at Oregon Public Broadcasting.
A day late (actually two - I'm posting this on Saturday but back-dating it to Friday) and a dollar makes me hollar, or whatever the expression is, here's a holiday-appropriate song for Thanksgiving, a poignant meditation on loss and remembrance.
It nearly went unmentioned among the frenzy of all the other activities of that day and that week, but at the Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) party at Mississippi Studios on Saturday, Sept. 7 (was it really a whole week ago?), Portland's Magic Mouth performed. This was my first exposure to them - the first I had even heard of them, I imagine like yourself.
Be prepared to be amazed. Their EP, Devil May Care, drops September 20th.
