Mike Bookey

There was probably at least one band that formed in your freshman dorm, if, that is, you ever had the pleasure of living in the strangely scented and often concrete confines of a freshman dorm. And that band probably didn't make it through that first year of collegiate life. Inner-band turmoil, conflicting class schedules or maybe "artistic differences" brought these bands to an end all too often.

But Fort Collins' Head for the Hills is an exception to the freshman dorm band curse. What was once a group of musicians that coincidentally wound up housed on the same floor of a Colorado State University dormatory, is now one of the brightest young acts on the acoustic music landscape. A strange sidenote: in 2003 a friend of mine lived in this dorm with Head for the Hills and told me all about them. I promptly forgot about them - until I noticed their name listed as the winners of the Northwest String Summit band competition in 2007. Clearly, they'd broken the curse, and maybe that's because they started as an almost reluctant bluegrass outfit.

When Culver City Dub Collective heads onto what should be (hopefully) a sunshine-covered Les Schwab Amphitheater stage on Sunday, it will be a homecoming of sorts. This is confusing, obviously, given the band's explicitly Southern California name, but not once you realize that the dude on guitar is Franchot Tone.

That name probably sounds familiar to local music fans who know him as not only Reed Thomas Lawrence's collaborator and producer but also as a composer for Rage Films. Tone has a second life of sorts, however, down in Los Angeles where he's deeply immersed in the music industry and also captains Culver City Dub Collective, a reggae-infused jammy rock outfit, along with Adam Topol, best known for his work as Jack Johnson's drummer.
Tone, who lives in Bend with his wife and kids, is a busy guy, to put it mildly, but he's found time to place CCDC near the top of his priority list. Although the band is only able to tour in moderation given the other musical engagements if its members, CCDC has found time to, for example, open a tour last summer for Jack Johnson which put them in front of crowds numbering 20,000 or more. But this week, the band is on its own headlining jaunt, playing smaller venues in mountain towns, which is why when I catch up with Tone, he's eating at a taco truck in Twin Falls, Idaho. He and the rest of the band are there for the start of a weeklong tour that drops them in Bend on Sunday - something Tone is more than pumped about.

Illustration by Kristi SimmonsI assume I wasn't the only student who in the winter of 1991 sang along, sitting cross-legged on standard gray public school carpet, to Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," belting out the "Proud to be an American…" chorus along with my third-grade classmates. Iraq had invaded Kuwait and President Bush The First, looking sternly through his Dwight Schrute-esque glasses said, "This aggression will not stand," and so I pinned a yellow ribbon on my backpack with no idea where exactly Kuwait could be found on a map, and belted along with Mr. Greenwood. And I liked that song, too.

With the Fourth of July this weekend, we're not only celebrating our right to ignite incendiary devices (Thank you, Bend City Council), but it's an annual chance to unleash upon collective ear of your neighborhood barbecue your favorite patriotic, nationalistic and/or songs that merely include "America" in the title, including but not limited to the aforemenionted Greenwood hit. If you need some help compiling your play list, here are a few pointers. Again, many of these cuts have little or no connection to the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the celebration thereof, but who cares, right? A real song about the Fourth of July would largely be centered on hot dogs, sun burns and paid vacation, so let's not get too carried away people.