Music

Mr. Red on Blonde himself, Tim O’Brien finally makes his way to the Sisters Folk Fest this weekend.It's late in the afternoon on a late August Thursday afternoon and that means Brad Tisdel is in his office and working late. It's only eight days before his labor of love, his raison d'etre (for the French speaking, or perhaps the hyperbolic), the Sisters Folk Festival takes flight. There's plenty of "i"s left to dot and "t"s to be crossed before the 13th installment of the roots music celebration, but Tisdel, the local singer-songwriter as well as the festival's artistic director, still makes time to talk about his hometown's cultural engine.

"The idea is to take a three-day music festival and make it have a year-around presence that's educational and also entertaining for the community," Tisdel says of the Sisters Folk Festival's standing in Central Oregon.

For several years now, the festival's presence has been felt on every page of the calendar whether it be through the Americana Project, Tisdel's in-school music education program, or perhaps the winter concert series, which this past year brought another solid lineup of national touring acts to Sisters. And as if the reach of the Sisters Folk Festival influence isn't expansive enough, Tisdel also recently launched Musical Memories, an inarguably innovative program that brings local musicians into senior communities to play tunes from yesteryear.

If you add in the Americana Song Academy, a songwriter’s summer camp of sorts that precedes the festival, it might be easy for some to forget that there are still three days at the beginning of September where the Sisters Folk Festival itself still exists. Starting on Friday and extending through Sunday while overtaking much of Central Oregon's favorite cowboy town, Sisters Folk is boasting a lineup this year that's full of national performers and as strong as any past gathering.

Mud on the Left, Wotta on the right. "It's not the bottom of the barrel or anything, but it's what I have around me that I love. It's the idea of using what's around you to improve what's around you," says Mosley Wotta, a.k.a. Jason Graham, of his new EP Scrap Mettle.

The five-track record has been in the works for a few months now, and is for the most part quintessential Graham - crisply voiced hip-hop lyrics that lean closer toward poetry than rap music laid atop constantly innovative instrumentals. While locals will likely recognize Graham's loud, low and direct voice within the opening seconds of the album's opener, "Boom For Real," the EP is hardly same-old-same-old fodder from one of Bend's most visible artists.

Just as he wears masks during some of his solo performances or is apt to changing his stage name (some might know him not as Wotta or Graham, but rather "The Rook"), Graham doesn't seem to mind reinventing himself, perhaps not drastically, but enough to keep things interesting in a musical landscape where change is often necessary.

"It's like stories I've heard of Japanese calligraphers who keep changing their names. They'll build up an entire career and then change their name," Graham says. "You gotta keep allowing yourself to be you - I mean I'm still going to be a six foot tall man of color in Bend, I'm not going to be able to get away from that, unless I become so successful I can go the Michael Jackson route or something like that, which I probably wouldn't."

Even cowgirls get the blues. Since the official beginning of the summer concert series at Les Schwab Amphitheater in May, nine male-lead bands have taken the stage in straight succession. It's a similar story with the Athletic Club of Bend, which has featured two male acts, and Midtown Music Hall has featured a slew of testosterone-fronted acts from E-40 to the Gourds, Tiger Army and The Melvins. This weekend, two female music power acts will take the stage in Bend, within days of each other, separated by less than a mile.

Sheryl Crow plays at Les Schwab on August 28 (with emerging folk pop star Brandi Carlile) while Lucinda Williams lights up the stage four days later at the Athletic Club. Bend's recent Lilith Fair-esque turn has brought two of this generation's most influential women in music to Central Oregon and we say bring on the estrogen!

First up, Sheryl Crow, whose 10th album release, February's Detours, peaked at number two on the Billboard charts, has nine Grammy awards, a slew of number one hits … and oh yeah, she's also beat stage-one breast cancer. Hardcore? Yes, quite so. Detours, Crow's first release since her battle with cancer, adoption of a child and breakup of her very public relationship with cyclist Lance Armstrong, reflects on everything from the war in Iraq to Hurricane Katrina along with plenty of songs about endings, beginnings and what happens in between.

Didn’t get the beard memo. It's Friday afternoon and hotter than all hell as Casey Wescott and I talk on the phone. The Fleet Foxes keyboardist and vocalist is at home in Seattle and it's hot there too. So hot, in fact, that this member of one of the most talked-about bands in the country describes the rare Seattle heat as "lay-around-the-house-in-your-underwear kind of weather."

Other than discussing our heat-induced discomfort, we're talking about a video interview the five-piece band did with former MTV News correspondent John Norris. In the interview, the established music guru admitted his Fleet Foxes fandom, and had no problem touting the band's mastery directly to the faces of its members.

"It's weird and rad when anybody likes your music, but it was definitely one of those moments where you're scratching your head and realizing that people are really getting a chance to hear this. Honestly, when you make a record, you just hope people will see it," Wescott says.

Two turntables, a microphone and a laptop. On a recent Friday afternoon, we connected with one Beck Hansen (most of you know him exclusively by his first name) as he relaxed at home in Los Angeles in between a recently concluded European tour and the North American trek that brings him to Bend this weekend. It was nearly a month to the day after the release of his latest studio effort, the much-heralded Modern Guilt, a record he co-produced with mastermind Danger Mouse. A new record, a new band, a new producer and now a new tour…clearly there was a lot to talk about. Here's a portion of the conversation.

tSW: Your live show seems to change from tour to tour. I'm guessing this show is going to be different from the last time you stopped in Bend. What can we expect?

Beck: I have a new band. We just did our first tour in Europe together and there are just four people this time.

I remember seeing you on the Odelay tour in 1997 and I think there were at least 10 other guys in the band, that's a pretty big change.

I feel like every time I come through town you're gonna see a different show. It's going to be a slightly different interpretation of the songs and then obviously the presentation is going to be different. You know, last tour we had puppets. We had a miniature stage built with puppets of ourselves.

What you can expect from Dfive9 at R3 in La Pine this weekend. So, you need to raise some money for your local parks and recreation district…Bake sale? Carnival? Cakewalk? Oh, wait, no how about a mega rock and roll festival? Yeah that's the ticket!

Such is the case in La Pine, which is host this weekend to the R3 Festival (Rock Reggae Rap), a two-day romp featuring a lineup of local and regional acts that's strong on the heavier rock, but with a few reggae and hip-hop acts also thrown into the mix. The festival is headed up by the locally based Back Alley Records, who will donate a portion of the proceeds to help the La Pine Park & Recreation District, which unlike its Bend counterpart, is an unfunded special district that runs on grants and donations.

"We as a board had the idea of using our park and rec facilities for fun. We thought, 'Let's have a concert here, how can we do that?'" says Tony Debone, the chairperson of the park district's board of directors.

After collaborating with Back Alley, the festival grew legs, despite the fact that it began with basically no budget, according to R3 co-organizer Stephanie Wagner. Even with few initial resources, the R3 has managed to attract a lineup of 40 bands for the outdoor/indoor festival slated to take place at the White School Park Building. Of course it helps when these bands all agree to play pro bono.