Hopeless Jack and the Handsome Devil are the Laurel and Hardy of blues rock. Jack Beisel—Hopeless Jack—is a tattooed guitar player with bruising chops, and Pete Thomas—The Handsome Devil—is the subdued and unassuming baby-faced drummer. And while they may be different in stature, they are both bullheaded rockers, hell-bent on claiming a slice of the […]
Sound Stories & Interviews
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Unplugged
You won’t find Redwood Son online
It is par for the course in 2013 that musicians trying to make it must do a certain amount of online grunt work. Websites, free downloads and using social media to acquire fans outside their ZIP code. What club time was in the '80s and '90s is now done online. But Portland folk pop singer/songwriter […]
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Intelligent Folks
Bay Area music students earn high marks for their after-school band Aquadeer
Some things can’t be learned in school; like the meaning of the word “Aquadeer.” “Let your imagination run with it,” says Linnea Sablosky when asked to define the name she and her three California Institute of the Arts classmates chose for their band. The fictitious hooved marine mammal likely has nothing to do with a […]
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Out of Town 5/29 – 6/6
portland friday 31 Blitzen Trapper Taking vintage country sounds and making them new, Blitzen Trapper stylishly combines ’70s-style folk with modern rock and roll. Neil Young meets Wilco meets new-school experimental rockers in the family of Dr. Dog, Dawes and Deer Tick. The critics-favorite name drop hit a high point when Blitzen Trapper released the […]
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Summer Music Arrives
Endless Fantasy Anamanaguchi Dream.hax The 2013 version of music from a 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System—as conceived by Brooklyn chiptune rock band Anamanaguchi—packs a ton more oomph than the elementary bleeps and bloops that Mario saved Princess Toadstool to when we were kids. To create the electro-rock on its debut album Endless Fantasy, Anamanaguchi pipes live […]
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A (Sound) Bite of Cake
An appetite for conversation
Members of Cake visit and post on their Webpage more frequently than a teenage girl—an endearing quirk for an established band, especially, in an age when the social media profiles of iconic bands are most often run by third-party entities like record labels and publicists. And for a band with left-leaning political views, the Sacramento […]
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A Blank Canvas
Existential + nihilism = Sigur Rós
The 2011 Sigur Rós film for the double live album Inni depicts the unconventional Icelandic rock band—known for an ethereal-sounding bow guitar—in antique black and white, using odd camera angles to generate ghostly imagery. Lead singer Jónsi Birgisson is more a falsetto specter than performer. Frame by frame, the resulting movie manifests as an hourlong […]
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Out of Town 5/22 – 5/30
portland friday 24-saturday 25 Patton Oswalt No drunken heckling necessary, Patton Oswalt’s standup is sharp and relevant. Sure, he is remembered for a kitsch role on “King of Queens,” but he is also an original member of the Comedians of Comedy Tour, a vocal opponent of the George W. Bush administration and champion of geek […]
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Get Sassy!
Making the most of a four-day Sasquatch! weekend
When this article hits newsstands, the Pacific Northwest’s premier camping music festival will be a mere nine days away. That’s a realization that can cause equal parts panic and excitement. However, some of the preparation angst can be settled by putting the below guide to use. Must see Unless you see these bands, you truly […]
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Budgetary Blues
Keb’ Mo’ helps out Sisters schools By Ethan Maffey
Forget about passing a levy to overcome budget shortfalls. Sisters, Oregon, has a better-than-a-bake-sale approach to closing the education funding gap: live music. Since 1997, the Sisters Starry Nights concert series has used donated performances by top-notch musicians like Lyle Lovett, Kenny Loggins and Vince Gill to raise money for the Sisters Schools Foundation. On […]
