Mike Bookey

What you can expect from Dfive9 at R3 in La Pine this weekend. So, you need to raise some money for your local parks and recreation district…Bake sale? Carnival? Cakewalk? Oh, wait, no how about a mega rock and roll festival? Yeah that's the ticket!

Such is the case in La Pine, which is host this weekend to the R3 Festival (Rock Reggae Rap), a two-day romp featuring a lineup of local and regional acts that's strong on the heavier rock, but with a few reggae and hip-hop acts also thrown into the mix. The festival is headed up by the locally based Back Alley Records, who will donate a portion of the proceeds to help the La Pine Park & Recreation District, which unlike its Bend counterpart, is an unfunded special district that runs on grants and donations.

"We as a board had the idea of using our park and rec facilities for fun. We thought, 'Let's have a concert here, how can we do that?'" says Tony Debone, the chairperson of the park district's board of directors.

After collaborating with Back Alley, the festival grew legs, despite the fact that it began with basically no budget, according to R3 co-organizer Stephanie Wagner. Even with few initial resources, the R3 has managed to attract a lineup of 40 bands for the outdoor/indoor festival slated to take place at the White School Park Building. Of course it helps when these bands all agree to play pro bono.

Vandals shirt meets acoustic guitar. That’s a good way to describe Matt Lewis.Matt Lewis and his band live in Utah and they don't have a problem with that. Some musicians might think of Provo, Utah as about the last place they'd want to call home base. Hell, some folks, buying perhaps a bit too deeply into Utah's ultra-conservative reputation, might not even be aware that rock music is even allowed within the state - forever banned in some sort of sweeping Footlooseian state mandate.

That's not the case, because if it were, the Matt Lewis Band wouldn't have cultivated the funky rock vibrations that have earned them the ability to tour nationally, along the way selling a few thousand records without any record label support.

"It's been really difficult at times and it's also been really easy," the 30-year-old Lewis says of playing music in Utah.

"I hated growing up here as a kid because I thought the place was just so conservative. As I've grown up I've really, really started to love it here," he continues. He goes on to discuss his youth listening to punk bands like Rancid, NOFX and Social Distortion

Fiddler in the greens.I hadn't exactly heard The Sweet Harlots when I arrived at a classically cozy house near Harmon Park. I'd heard of the duo, and I'd heard music by each of the members of the group, but it isn't until Laurel Brauns begins strumming her guitar and Julie Southwell commences massaging melodies out of her violin in the living room of the aforementioned house that I fully taste the Sweet Harlots.

The two names of this duo should be familiar to anyone with an ear on the local music scene. Brauns is a singer-songwriter who toured through Bend over the past few years before moving here last fall and releasing her indie-rock influenced folk record Closed for the Season. Southwell, of course, is the seasoned and classically trained violinist who has played with a range of local acts including Moon Mountain Ramblers, Blackstrap and David Bowers. The two met while cross-country skiing this past winter and their friendship soon descended from the mountains to Southwell's home for the practice sessions out of which the somewhat peculiarly named Sweet Harlots were born.
"It was always a dream of mine to have an all-girl band and call it The Sweet Harlots. People don't use the word 'harlot,' in everyday conversation…there's definitely some irony to it," says Brauns.

If you’ve got this much blood on your clothes, laundry probably isn’t your biggest problem.This week, two longstanding, albeit utterly different, popular music acts will arrive in Central Oregon to either get your fist pumping or your cowboy boot covered toes tapping. There's Brooks & Dunn, the popular country icons of the Coors Light genre, then there's Alice Cooper the original androgynous vampire, who now at 60 years old, isn't all that scary anymore. Here's how they look head to head - so pick your act and stick beside 'em.
Alice Cooper: Known for his pre-goth heavy rock.
Brooks & Dunn: Known for their Wal-Mart Country at the Honky Tonk.

Alice Cooper: Hit songs include: "Schools Out," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," "I'm Eighteen."
Brooks & Dunn: Hit songs include: "Boot Scootin' Boogie," "My Maria," "Hard Workin' Man."