Music

As tends to be the practice of this publication on the eve of any party-intensive holiday, we would like to take this opportunity to bully you into following our recommendations for a good time. In the past, we've given you plans for a perfectly ridiculous St. Patty's Day and laid the pavement for a marathon New Year's Eve (complete with both bluegrass and bull riding) so there's really nothing stopping us from pushing you in the direction of a Fourth of July weekend so explosively awesome that you'll have no problem using puns as corny as "explosively awesome."

Where does the leather end and the man begin?Danny Vernon prefers to be called an Elvis "tribute artist," rather than an "Elvis impersonator." He's clearly aware of the connotation that accompanies the word "impersonator" and is pretty serious about what he does.
This is why when I ask him to slip into his Elvis character over the phone and answer a question like "what are your thoughts on Michael Jackson, your former son in law?" he's not all that thrilled. He laughs at the request, but it's a trying-to-be-polite sort of laugh - a let's-change-the-subject laugh.

All Hail the King and LucilleIt was the summer of 1969 and there was a party goin' on backstage at Ravinia, the outdoor concert venue 30 miles north of Chicago. The classical music squares running the joint, they'd never seen anything like it: For sixty years, backstage had been the site of oh-so-sedate and oh-so-cerebral pre-concert soirees, fore-fronted this summer by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Maestro Georg Solti. And, man, if he'd got wind of this, he'd never have stood for all the laughin', drinkin' and cussin' this then-21-year-old journalism student saw and heard when he was admitted backstage to interview the even-then-legendary B. B. King. Here he was all crisp in his burnt-orange sharkskin suit a half hour before his first gig at Ravinia, maybe 45 miles but cultural light-years away from the Regal, Chicago's black music Mecca, which King repeatedly sold out.

Don’t know the language? Learn it from E-40.The last time E-40 came through town, about 14 months ago, this publication - the one you're reading right now - discussed the plus-sized rapper at length, but only briefly touched on his illustrious lexicon. The Bay-Area hip-hop mogul (who is approaching legendary status or as already achieved it in some circles), is best known for helping to cultivate the rambunctious and at times intentionally ridiculous "hyphy" sub-genre of rap and is returning to continue the lessons that he began with his 2007 Bend show. We thought we'd also help in the educational process.
 
The "hyphy" phenomenon is still alive, perhaps not as much as it was two or three years ago when the bump-and-crunch sound and "go dumb" dance moves lit up the hip-hop world, but alive nonetheless as you'll see when E-40 and his troupe of high-energy cats work the Midtown into a frenzy this week. Although "hyphy" has been a part of Bay-Area hip-hop culture since the mid-1990s, the movement didn't fully take hold until the major success (as in top ten Billboard success) of E-40's 2006 record entitled My Ghetto Report Card. Loyal hip-hop aficionados know all about E-40 and the hype of the "hyphy," (perhaps learning this from the documentary DVD E-40 and the Hype on Hyphy) but this article is not for the astute hip-hop fan. This is for the McSweeney's-reading sort of Joe or Jane who's main exposure to rap music comes in the form of 15-second intervals emanating from the cracked windows of passing Honda Civics on Third Street. In short, this is for the uninformed.

Through the looking glass with Reed Thomas Lawrence.The left arm of Reed Thomas Lawrence is resting on a sidewalk table in front of a downtown Bend coffee shop clearly revealing a tattoo that covers a healthy chunk of the appendage. The tattoo is a three-frame strip of film with one frame occupied by Salvador Dali's "Sleep," another filled with an Andrew Wyeth realistic work, and a third that remains blank. I ask if this is an intentionally blank canvas awaiting a stamp that represents the next phase of the rising soul-soaked Bend songwriter's life.
 
He laughs and then casually remarks that he's simply not sure what piece of art he'd like to drop into that particular frame. My attempt to connect the un-needled skin with a figurative blank canvas falls flat, but Lawrence gets where I'm coming from. In the last year, Lawrence has transformed from an amiable singer songwriter about town to a thriving up-and-comer who's become the fascination of Los Angeles musicians and producers. In the days before his self-titled album drops (slated for a July 15 release), things in Lawrence's life are still moving as fast as ever.
The 25-year-old Lawrence has Abercrombie good looks and almost never stops smiling - a combination of traits that for whatever reason doesn't come across as annoying as it should. Sitting across from Lawrence is Franchot Tone, the producer/engineer who's collaborated with a swath of artists including Ben Harper and Garth Brooks and has recently moved to Bend to work with Rage Productions (where Lawrence also works as a marketer). It was only a matter of months ago that Lawrence got a call from Tone, who is also a member of the Los Angeles reggae troupe Culver City Dub Collective.

Bluegrass is only skin deep. Tony Furtado very well might seem like a perfectionist upon first inspection. But that might not be completely accurate. First he's not a jerk. Invariably, perfectionists are jerks, mostly by necessity. Striving for perfection just has that effect on people. Perhaps it's more accurate to just say that Furtado really cares about his music.
 
Furtado is packing his bags for a trip to Boston when I catch up with him on a Friday afternoon and he's telling me about the plans for his new record, which is the reason he's heading across the country from his home in Portland. About a year and a half ago, Furtado released Thirteen, his 13th record featuring 13 songs (not a coincidence) and while the CD enjoyed a favorable response, he nonetheless had some reservations about the product. And this is where the hints of perfectionism come through - only to be quickly and casually quelled by an air of realism that seems to have been shaped by Furtado's lengthy recording career.
"In the end you just have to let it go. Everyone around me is like 'this is great!' so you have to kind of be like, 'cool,' and let it go," Furtado says.