Music

In 2009, Gabe Johnson was down in the Crescent City for one of that town's biggest parties, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The Bend-based concert booker had a hell of a time hopping from concert to concert and club to club into the wee hours of the morning, listening to some of the funkiest acts in the world.
It was during one of these late nights as he was hearing the horns of several bands colliding in the crowded streets that Johnson began to think about bringing something like this to Bend. He knew, of course, that he was never going to replicate something on the scale of Jazz Fest, especially in Bend. But being a longtime fan of funk music who has played in several funky bands, Johnson wanted to at least give it a try, on a smaller scale. He explains his approach by taking a page out of a bayou cookbook.

On Saturday, September 3, a band will play at the South Park Rib and Wing Challenge at the Allegheny County Fairgrounds in Pittsburgh. The band will go onstage around 8:45 p.m. and they will be called Everclear. Two days later, this same band will play at the Rib America Festival in Indianapolis.
This is the same band that flooded the airwaves of alternative radio (a somewhat new innovation at the time) in 1995 with one of the greatest albums of that year, Sparkle and Fade, which included a song called “Santa Monica.” But the bleach-blond man at the microphone will be the only person who played on that record. His name is Art Alexakis and these days, he is Everclear and apparently he, or someone associated with the band, is fascinated by ribs and the consumption thereof.

Those of us who attended Viva Voce's Tower Theatre show last March were given a pretty strong preview of their new album. The overall performance was basically enjoyable, but husband-and-wife duo Kevin and Anita Robinson (Viva Voce) failed at times to command a dominant stage presence. This wasn't too surprising because Viva Voce has never come across as a true headlining band, nor have they written songs that audience members expect to hear. My concern was this record would expose creative fatigue evident by their less-than-engaging live show.
Their sixth full-length record thankfully continues to perfect Kevin and Anita's brand of shoegazing garage-infused rock sounds without sounding tired or unsure (and that killer cover art doesn't hurt, either). “Black Mood Ring” and “Cool Morning Sun” showcase the Robinsons sounding like a full band ripping through tasty melodic rock 'n' roll catalogs. The slow burning “A Viking Love Song” also displays both Robinsons confidently playing to their strengths while lighting up the sky with great guitars and well-chosen percussion. At times, the looping and drum tracks feel like surrender (“Diamond Mine”), showing the limits of a two-person band trying to sound as full as Viva Voce would like, but the strength is evident in how effortlessly each song points to Anita and Kevin's ability to work within their style and unique sound without ever imitating their influences.

This weekend, the 4 Peaks Music Festival will take place in Tumalo for the fourth time. Since its inaugural year in 2007, 4 Peaks has gained traction in Central Oregon with its roots-oriented lineup, family-friendly attitude and intimate environment. Here's how the festival came to be – then not be – and now is beginning to regain its stature as the region's go-to music festival, according to two of its founders and Jason Beard of de facto 4 Peaks house band Poor Man's Whiskey.

While for some, Toad the Wet Sprocket might fall under a collective '90s era “oh yeah I remember that song, who sang it?” genre, muddled with contemporaries like the Gin Blossoms, or later Dishwalla, the band continues to have a strong loyal fan base and cult following. This is noteworthy for a group that hasn't released an album of new music since the late '90s. Though they may be best known for their 1994 hit “Fall Down,” the group is far from alternative in the Pearl Jam/Nirvana sense of the term, residing closer to the calmer, less angry sounds of Counting Crows or REM.
Formed in 1986 when Santa Barbara-area high school friends, singer Glen Phillips, guitarist Todd Nichols, bassist Dean Dinning, and drummer Randy Guss started the band, they were widely successful in the early 90s. The band's sound – and perhaps also its bizarre name – appealed to a large audience, propelling them to mainstream radio play. Inspiration for the band's name came from a Monty Python sketch. British comedy writer and Monty Python troupe member, Eric Idle, wrote a fake music news sketch that included the band name that he thought, at the time, was so ridiculous no one would ever use it.

“So give me an idea of how this thing will work. When does it start? What's the format?” I ask, partially because I'm a reporter and I'm supposed to ask things like that, but also because I've seen plenty of posters and advertisements for the touring reggae event called Hempstead World Music Festival, yet I'm still not sure exactly what this large-scale party is all about. I do, however, have some guesses.
“Well, it starts at 4:20…for obvious reasons,” says Paul Stanford, the promoter of the festival, which also makes stops in Eugene on Saturday and in Portland on Monday, with a Sunday date up at the Deschutes County Fair and Expo Center. Stanford has been advocating for the repeal of cannabis prohibition since the mid 1980s when he placed another marijuana legalization measure, albeit unsuccessfully, on the ballot and is no stranger to events like this.