Music

Another New Year's Eve is on its way, bringing with it an array of
nightlife options for you to pick from. It's nice to have choices on
the one night in which you are allowed, nay, encouraged to let yourself
go bonkers or bananas or both. And we'll give you plenty of choices but
first, we'll cut to the chase…

We spend a lot of ink on the up-and-coming local musicians, sometimes
forgetting about the legions of older, more experienced musicians. Bo
Reynolds and Carl Ventis are two older and wiser artists that have just
released new albums. Both have been on the scene for a while. Both have
released albums for one simple reason: the love of music. So while they
may not be contenders for Teen Choice Awards anytime soon, they have
managed to produce albums that showcase their musical knowledge and
dedication. 

This is a little more serious than the out-of-gas scenario.The B Foundation has AAA. And this is a damn good thing because the Los
Angeles-based surf rock band has run out of gas and found itself
stranded on the side of the road somewhere outside of Pueblo, Colo.
This is unfortunate, but bassist Jason Moorehead, leaning up against
the band's 24-foot RV, says it's not a big deal. In fact this is the
second (and almost the third) time the band has run out of gas in the
last year.

Rather than hoof it the two miles to the nearest gas
station, purchase gas and a can in which to carry it before carrying
said gas back another two mile back to the RV, Moorehead and company
are waiting it out and the bassist uses the time to relay over the
phone some details about his band and the nine months they spent on the
road this year. During this trek the band opened a string of shows for
Sublime descendents Slightly Stoopid, including a packed show at the
Midtown Ballroom on a strangely snowy October night.

The Kids are all right and they're all here.The youth music scene in Bend sometimes feels like one of those things
that you're pretty sure exists, but you've never actually seen, so
you're not sure - like a panda bear or a McRib sandwich.
After two
years of trying to track down some sort of high school basement show
where we could send a youthful reporter (or at least youthful looking
reporter), it seemed like we'd found a real-live teen-age rock show.
The show at PoetHouse Art on Saturday night was a fundraiser for Rise
Up International, the Bend-based socially conscious clothing retailer
and humanitarian outfit, and featured a lineup that included names like
Mosley Wotta and Empty Space Orchestra, but it was the other acts on
the bill like Mirf the Bing and others that filled the room with mostly
high-school aged fans.

Braille: read him with your ears.Braille, the Portland-based rapper, is playing in Bend on Saturday night and the show is only his third appearance in town. One of the two other times was when he opened for James Brown at the Les Schwab Amphitheater. That's right…that James Brown, as in The Godfather or Soul, "Sex Machine", sequined cape James Brown.

The clean-mouthed hip-hop artist was picked by Brown's management to open shows for the Godfather between 2005 and 2006 in equal part for his positive (and f-bomb lacking) tunes and also his high-grade musical talent, both of which were thought to bode well with Brown's diverse and generation-spanning crowd. As Braille (real name Bryan Winchester) says, "You know, you don't want to be saying, 'Get your f'in hands in the air' when you've got somebody's grandma out in the crowd."

Relax, Mr. Tisdel. You've earned it.Editor's Note: This profile was originally slated to run in our Local
Heroes issue, but was inadvertently omitted. Better late than never, eh?
The
fact that Sisters has about 10 times as much musical energy as a
typical American town of its size is not an accident. While some of
this is due in part to the vein of creativity that seems to run through
the center of the cowboy town, a good deal of recognition also should
be handed to Brad Tisdel.

GROUCH: OUT TO STEAL YOUR CHRISTMAS.At the rate that hip-hop shows - both indie acts as well as
bling-and-boast rappers-are stomping through town as of late, it seems
we need a whole space dedicated to hip-hop music in this paper. While
we don't exactly have real estate reserved for that purpose quite yet,
we will give you a de facto column with this update on the Grouch and
Eligh show coming up at the Domino Room on Monday night.