Music

There are only a few rock stars who can make a claim about how they want to pitch a television show about their band and be taken seriously. But Kyle Gass is one of those select few. First off, he's already been part of an act, Tenacious D, that was known for its TV series long before ever even releasing an album and secondly, his idea for his current band, Trainwreck is just crazy enough to work.
“So here's the deal. We tour around in a shitty wreckabago and we get mixed up in some crazy shenanigans and then we solve crime. Because, you know, you gotta have the Scoobie Doo element,” says Gass, outlining the basis of the show (the theme song for which appears on the band's album) he actually pitched to studio execs.

If you’ve already picked up the print edition of the Source this week, you’ve already seen the two-page spread we used to prove that (almost) every band in Bend is somehow connected.
Also, if you like local music, check out our FREE LOCAL MUSIC SAMPLER where you can stream and download new songs from some of your favorite artists.

I first heard Band of Horses playing at the Les Schwab Amphitheater four years ago playing over the PA between sets of a Flaming Lips show. I ended up spending the summer of 2006 listening to their debut, Everything All The Time, and almost nothing else.About a year later, Band of Horses released the highly anticipated follow up, Cease to Begin. The album lacked the grandiose spectrum embedded in their debut and sounded like outtakes from previous recordings. I'm still not sure if it was a result of co-founding member Mat Brooke leaving, but it became uncomfortably clear, Band of Horses may have little left to offer.

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.

Tyler Fortier
This Love is fleeting
Eugene-based singer/songwriter Tyler Fortier's fourth album, This Love is Fleeting, shines with Americana flare and folk-tinged rock numbers. Fortier's vocals are laced with just the slightest amount of rasp, which very well might leave you with a love for the record that is anything but fleeting.
Fortier, who spent part of his youth in Bend, opens the collection with “Blue Sky and Sunshine Again,” a strong number that immediately brought to mind early Bob Dylan. The song perfectly blends acoustic guitar with a healthy dose of harmonica for an emotional tale of lost love.

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.

Love Is All
Two Thousand and Ten Injuries
Polyvinyl
So, what the hell is going on in Scandinavia? All sorts of fantastic releases are streaming outta there, especially from Denmark (Mew, Raveonettes, Figurines) and Sweden (The Hives, Peter Bjorn and John, Shout Out Louds). Scandinavia is perhaps better known for the righteousness of its death metal, which inspired Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth to do their thing in the '80s, but that vein is pretty much mined out, and the region is now pumping out tons of groundbreaking indie pop/rock (so much so, in fact, that I dedicated my last show on KPOV to it).

“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.

JOANNA NEWSOM
Have One on Me

Every song is an opus, each opus a symphony. Every single track on Have One on Me, Joanna Newsom's third full-length record, is a drama, a tragedy – Newsom being the trilling one-woman Greek chorus behind it.