Music

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.

Finn Riggins battle it out, Idaho style.The wave of bands hitting the airwaves in the early 1990s - Green Day, The Offspring, Nirvana and Oregon's own Everclear - has always been described as punk rock, or post-punk rock, mostly because of the music's attitude and the musicians' appearances rather than the music, which bears little resemblance to punk rock's working class roots and overtly political message.
To me, none of those bands ever came close to sounding like the original punk rock bands of the late 1970s, like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones or the Dead Kennedys, and it's pretty lame to lump together a band like Green Day in the same breath as The Clash.
Enter Idaho's Finn Riggins. Eric Gilbert (keyboards, vocals), describes the Finn Riggins sound as alternative, but to me it sounds closer to the music created by punk rock's pioneers than the typical "alternative" sound. It's loud, it's dirty, it's obnoxious, it's in-your-face, gut-busting, hair-pulling rock and roll with lyrics that make you think beyond whether or not you are an "American Idiot." But Finn Riggins' music is also melodic, full of hooks and riffs that will stick in your head for days after listening to their 2007 debut, "A Solider, A Saint, An Ocean Explorer."

country bands don’t dress like that.Two things to know about Dusty Rhodes and the River Band: 1) There is no one named Dusty Rhodes in the band and 2) they are not a country, bluegrass or any other sort of act to which the phrase "River Band" might imply.

Rather, the Fullerton, California-based band is the amalgamation of six music obsessed 20-somethings that have cultivated an indie-rock-meets-Levon Helm-while-everyone-sings-along sound. Dusty Rhodes just released its second record, Palace and Stage, which is gaining positive reviews and helped the band earn headlining shows and festival appearances, but there are plenty of people who still think the band is some sort of country band.
"When we started this band, we thought up this really silly band name and didn't really think it would ever come back to bite us in the butt, but it sure has, man," says guitarist Kyle Divine as he and the band headed toward Chicago last weekend as part of a national tour that brings them to town to headline the Bite of Bend festival this weekend. The name thing has been a problem; more than once unwitting promoters have booked country acts to open for Dusty Rhodes.