Sound Stories & Interviews

In the fall of 2010, Diego's Umbrella played a show in Bend and then promptly wrecked the group's old van while heading south out of town on a “semi-infested” Highway 97.
They love playing in Bend so much, they're back for more – this time at Player's and in a “nice big Ford from 2003,” says Tyson Maulhardt, the unofficial voice of the band, during a recent phone interview.

G. Love and Special Sauce has seen a lot change in the nearly 20-year-long career of the band.
Its first album was released in 1994, a novelty at the time that combined hip-hop and blues like no band had before. Now every college kid with a MacBook can mash up Muddy Waters and Snoop Dogg, but there is something to be said for this group of rag-tag Philadelphia natives who developed their progressive style before they could legally buy a beer. Almost two decades later the band members have perfected their signature sound and are now exploring their blues roots.

Larry and His Flask: Given'er Every time
In recent years, LAHF has transformed from a fun, but rough-around-the-edges local band, to a sharp and polished group, complete with multi-part harmonies and fast banjo picking. What was once a loose pack of half-drunken screaming lunatics, is now a tight collection of half-drunken lunatics.
Credit some of that polish to LAHF's time on the 2011 Vans Warped Tour. The percussion-powered string band also honed its sound and style touring with Celtic punk lords, Dropkick Murphys, icons in the larger post-punk world.
After WinterFest, the close-knit crew is spending the spring touring the Midwest. Catch the local boys now, for cheap. You won't be disappointed by a group that always answers the call of the crowd.

If you plan on showing up at Summit High School with your mother, you might warn her that Portland Cello Project is better known for its tour with Buckethead than its arrangements of Beethoven. They don't perform in black. They don't print programs. They won't offer you an intermission. And they have been known to grind on their cellos while performing Salt-n-Pepa's, “Push it.”
Perhaps best known for their rendition of Kanye West’s and Rihanna's “All of the Lights,” this string ensemble's repertoire is vast, genre-bending and clearly unorthodox; there is no style they won't play.
“The main philosophy when I'm making a set for any performance is to make it varied, and confuse the audience as much as possible,” explains ensemble leader Douglas Jenkins.

Over 7,000 miles away among the stunning scenery of Aso-Kuju National Park in Kyushu, Japan, members of the taiko drumming act, Tao: The Art of the Drum (say “dow”) have been training for their upcoming United States tour at a facility they call Grandioso.
Located on beautiful, mountainous terrain, this complex is the home base for an elite cadre of performers who will bring their modernized interpretation of an ancient art form to Bend on Tuesday, Feb. 7. These performers embrace a life of isolation to bring audiences a moving and energizing experience. To learn more about the Tao culture and the troupe’s traveling performance, we overcame a Pacific Ocean’s worth of communication barriers to bring you this verbatim Q&A:

“Hey, are you guys here to see the band?”
“We are the band.”
That's how my night starts at The Horned Hand when five young guys drift up to the bar looking confused. Apparently, they are Animal Eyes. And, apparently, they are playing a show later.
These guys are inconspicuous, to say the least. Probably because they are all barely 21-years-old and were born and raised in Homer, Alaska.They don't look like the types who would rock the roof off a venue but somehow, in a town of about 5,000, they developed a unique brand of worldly folk rock that's turning heads in Oregon.
“Pretty much no bands come there. I didn't see one big show in Alaska,” explains Tyler Langham, one of two guitarists and one of three vocalists.
Without a lot of live music, the band was left to discover their own style. They will be bringing their passionate and unpretentious indie rock-and-roll to a second show at Silver Moon Brewing on Friday.

London-based band Trailer Trash Tracys aren't likely to find themselves anywhere near prefabricated housing after releasing their gracious and nuance-driven debut album, Ester.
With songs washed in lo-fi greatness around every corner, lead singer Susanne Aztoria and her trio of supporting musicians have succeeded in doing something with Ester that several other bands embracing the lo-fi sound (and there have been a ton of them in the last two years) haven't done.

Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers and Noel Paul Stookey sang about “the hammer of justice,” “the bell of freedom” and “the song about love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land,” many times as their version of Pete Seeger and Lee Hayes’ “If I Had a Hammer” rose to number 10 on the Billboard national pop singles chart.
But one day was different.
This was not the trendy folk clubs of Greenwich Village or the friendly confines of a Northeast coffee shop.
The date was August 28, 1963, and the place was the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a brimming mall on a balmy, 84-degree day in Washington, DC. where Dr. Martin Luther King was about to deliver one of the most stirring and famous speeches in history, “I Have a Dream.”