Last week in the Picks section, we coined the term The Weekend of Brain Boilingly Awesome Music™ (TWOBBAM™ for short) to describe the onslaught of music going down in Bend from April 22 to 25. So, you probably want to know, is Sound Check's collective brain boiled? Yeah, it kinda is.
We began on Thursday night for the first installment of the local music marathon that is Last Band Standing competition, which featured sets from Never Heard the Shot, Capture the Flag, Klever Kill and G-String Stranglers. At the end of the night it was the crafty metal rockers of Klever Kill who took the fan vote with pop punkers Capture the Flag earning the wild card to the next round. Thrash-punk outfit G-String Stranglers didn't win anything, but took home an honorary award for most audience-directed F-bombs.
Friday night we stopped by the Old Stone Church, which was almost completely filled with Tony Furtado fans who were enjoying a solo show from the Portland multi-instrumentalist. Sure, it was just one dude with a guitar, but that didn't stop a select group of listeners who got up and danced to Furtado's fiery picking.
On Saturday night, Sound Check continued TWOBBAM™ by heading down to the Domino Room to check out Portland indie rockers Water & Bodies and Bend's favorite instrumental space rockers Empty Space Orchestra. We were taken with the rockers of W&B immediately. The quartet has a solid, streamlined sound that can be heard on their latest EP, Rain City Sessions Part 2. The room filled in when ESO took the stage. The fivesome played a variety of songs ranging from jazzy, saxophone heavy tunes to total rock songs where drummer Lindsey Elias really let loose. They also played new songs "Exit Strategy" and "Brain Jar."
So did we see everything we wanted to during TWOBBAM™? Well no, but we wanted to somewhat preserve that brain of ours.
