Sound Stories & Interviews

It's good to have a fallback. You know, something that might make you a little money, or a lot of money, when everything goes to hell.
Justin Ringle had a fallback. But his fallback probably looks more like a dream job to most. Ringle, the songwriter and front man for whispery Portland folk act Horse Feathers, came to the Rose City in 2004 after wrapping up college in Moscow, Idaho, and wanted to start a career as a graphic designer. But there was a problem and one that Ringle realized soon after landing in the city.

Tyler Fortier
This Love is fleeting
Eugene-based singer/songwriter Tyler Fortier's fourth album, This Love is Fleeting, shines with Americana flare and folk-tinged rock numbers. Fortier's vocals are laced with just the slightest amount of rasp, which very well might leave you with a love for the record that is anything but fleeting.
Fortier, who spent part of his youth in Bend, opens the collection with “Blue Sky and Sunshine Again,” a strong number that immediately brought to mind early Bob Dylan. The song perfectly blends acoustic guitar with a healthy dose of harmonica for an emotional tale of lost love.

It's common, if not trite, to say that a particular band was “discovered” – maybe in a seedy bar or on a street corner. But if you're talking about Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, the word is more than apt, given that the band was truly found in a seemingly unlikely place by Western ears and exposed to the world by way of a documentary film that launched them to global fame.
The documentary, titled after the band's name, was released in 2005 and let the world in on a band that – somewhat impossibly – had formed in a refugee camp by musicians who'd been displaced from their native country by a decade-long civil war. Their story was inspiring and heartbreaking, but when it came down to it, the band's music spoke for itself and soon people began noticing.

Love Is All
Two Thousand and Ten Injuries
Polyvinyl
So, what the hell is going on in Scandinavia? All sorts of fantastic releases are streaming outta there, especially from Denmark (Mew, Raveonettes, Figurines) and Sweden (The Hives, Peter Bjorn and John, Shout Out Louds). Scandinavia is perhaps better known for the righteousness of its death metal, which inspired Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth to do their thing in the '80s, but that vein is pretty much mined out, and the region is now pumping out tons of groundbreaking indie pop/rock (so much so, in fact, that I dedicated my last show on KPOV to it).

“Here comes an ice cream truck,” says Jerry Joseph standing somewhere near 135th Street in Harlem, not far from his home.
What can be heard over the phone doesn't sound like an ice cream truck, but more like police sirens. That's because they are police sirens, but Joseph thinks it's hilarious to let the gullible person on the other end of the line conjure up an image of some brightly colored truck traveling down the road with grinning children following in its wake.
Joseph, the guitarist, singer and leader of the Jackmormons, his longtime power rock trio, still keeps an apartment and a sizeable fan base in Portland, but Harlem is home these days. It's there that he's got a wife, a six-month-old baby (his grown children live in Portland) and a chance to gig around the neighborhood when he feels like stretching his legs.

JOANNA NEWSOM
Have One on Me

Every song is an opus, each opus a symphony. Every single track on Have One on Me, Joanna Newsom's third full-length record, is a drama, a tragedy – Newsom being the trilling one-woman Greek chorus behind it.

There are some things that Cy Erickson doesn't want you to know – like how old he is or what he does for a day job.
But if you want to talk to him about his main passion – his band AM Interstate – then he'll gladly answer any question you might have about the Redmond-based act that he and his older brother, Seth, have fronted in one form or another for nearly a decade. He'll tell you about the throwback, true-blue rock and roll band's two new records and let you in on what its like to be signed to a record label, tour the world, then, on one occasion, get kicked out of the UK.

Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
Universal Motown Records

Erykah Badu is an island – thankfully. The longtime R&B artist seems completely isolated from trends, fads and unnecessary technologies on her latest record, New Amerykah Part Two. For an album that's peaking on top 10 lists worldwide, it's free of flimsy auto-tune and simple-minded, poppy love songs. Unlike the first New Amerykah, an album stocked with social commentary, songs about poverty and violence, this record is an offering to her heart.