Mike Bookey

It's good to have a fallback. You know, something that might make you a little money, or a lot of money, when everything goes to hell.
Justin Ringle had a fallback. But his fallback probably looks more like a dream job to most. Ringle, the songwriter and front man for whispery Portland folk act Horse Feathers, came to the Rose City in 2004 after wrapping up college in Moscow, Idaho, and wanted to start a career as a graphic designer. But there was a problem and one that Ringle realized soon after landing in the city.

It's common, if not trite, to say that a particular band was “discovered” – maybe in a seedy bar or on a street corner. But if you're talking about Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, the word is more than apt, given that the band was truly found in a seemingly unlikely place by Western ears and exposed to the world by way of a documentary film that launched them to global fame.
The documentary, titled after the band's name, was released in 2005 and let the world in on a band that – somewhat impossibly – had formed in a refugee camp by musicians who'd been displaced from their native country by a decade-long civil war. Their story was inspiring and heartbreaking, but when it came down to it, the band's music spoke for itself and soon people began noticing.

“Here comes an ice cream truck,” says Jerry Joseph standing somewhere near 135th Street in Harlem, not far from his home.
What can be heard over the phone doesn't sound like an ice cream truck, but more like police sirens. That's because they are police sirens, but Joseph thinks it's hilarious to let the gullible person on the other end of the line conjure up an image of some brightly colored truck traveling down the road with grinning children following in its wake.
Joseph, the guitarist, singer and leader of the Jackmormons, his longtime power rock trio, still keeps an apartment and a sizeable fan base in Portland, but Harlem is home these days. It's there that he's got a wife, a six-month-old baby (his grown children live in Portland) and a chance to gig around the neighborhood when he feels like stretching his legs.

There are some things that Cy Erickson doesn't want you to know – like how old he is or what he does for a day job.
But if you want to talk to him about his main passion – his band AM Interstate – then he'll gladly answer any question you might have about the Redmond-based act that he and his older brother, Seth, have fronted in one form or another for nearly a decade. He'll tell you about the throwback, true-blue rock and roll band's two new records and let you in on what its like to be signed to a record label, tour the world, then, on one occasion, get kicked out of the UK.

On a rainy Wednesday afternoon, at least one member of 38 different local bands has gathered at Boondocks Bar and Grill. Yet upon entering the spacious Newport Avenue nightclub, hardly any of these musicians can be found – and that's because, quite predictably, they're all huddled around the bar. There's free beer to be had and some of these rockers, rappers and blues players seem more stoked about this (not to mention the equally free Chinese food) than they are about the fact that in a matter of about two months, one of them will win a package of goodies worth $30,000.
This is the scene at the kickoff party for Last Band Standing, a battle-of-the-bands-style competition produced by Combined Communications, the parent company of The Twins (98.3) and Clear (101.7), that will pit these acts against each other. The contest, spearheaded largely by Combined's Jennifer Meyer, features shows with four to five acts each night, beginning on Thursday and continue each Thursday through July 1.