Sound Stories & Interviews

Freakwater
Old Paint
Released: 1995

Janet Beveridge Bean and Catherine Ann Irwin both have roots in punk, but when they play together as Freakwater (backed by bassist David Gay) the result is stripped-down country music with Appalachian influences and vocal harmonies that'll make you weep.
Old Paint brushes through a variety of emotions that everyone of which everyone can relate. “I wasn't drinking to forget, I was drinking to remember” is the opening refrain of “Gravity,” a mournful song of lost love that concludes with the solemn “all your beauty will be stolen by a young girl in the night, a thief as quiet as dark cloud that stole away the light.” “Waitress Song” is a great traditional upbeat country song telling an honest story of working people.

The last time we wrote about a benefit concert for Haiti (Rise Up International's event at the Domino Room), there were predictions that news about the impoverished country and the devastating earthquake that killed so many of its citizens would soon vanish from the headlines. At that time, just a few weeks after the January quake, this didn't seem possible. But just this has happened – Haiti isn't in the regular news cycle that anymore.
In Bend, there have been continuing efforts and special events to raise relief money for the country and its people, but it seems even talk of those efforts has quieted down. This is all changing this week, however, with perhaps the largest-scale Haiti relief event coming to Bend on Friday, the Bend for Haiti benefit at the Tower Theatre.

Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose
Bridge Carols
Halocene Music

The newest offering from beloved Portland folkie, Laura Gibson, is a kooky but refreshing little record. Gibson, a warbling, marbly mouthed singer, breaks with her usual style by pairing up with instrumentalist Ethan Rose on Bridge Carols, an album of seven strange and simple songs. For the most part, Gibson's vocals are front and center here, with Rose weaving a tapestry of quiet plinks, placid drones and gentle static behind her. As a lyricist, Gibson keeps things simple and stark.

On Tuesday night, two men will be blowing their horns here in Central Oregon and both will be getting terribly funky. One specializes in the saxophone while the other favors the trombone but their styles both weave through the realms of jazz, soul and, again, the funkiest of funk.
There are plenty of other similarities to be found between these two men and their dance-happy sounds, but where they diverge is the 43-year age gap between them. The man on the saxophone is Maceo Parker, one of the forefathers of funk music, and the other is Trombone Shorty (real name: Troy Andrews) the 24-year-old New Orleans virtuoso who has already generated a mystique of his own, having burst onto the scene as a youth on his namesake instrument.

Quasi
American Gong Kill Rock Stars Records

All along – when Janet Weiss and Sam Coomes weren't busying themselves with Heatmiser and Sleater-Kinney and the Jicks, or being married and then being divorced – they were Quasi. So when they do occasionally choose to wear their Quasi pants, fans freak. On American Gong, Quasi's eighth record, the band (now a trio) offers more of what makes people love them: out of nowhere jams, lullaby-choruses, sing-song rhymes and dissonant juxtapositions. In fact, it's a bit of a show-off record – not hoity-toity, but a portfolio, almost, of everything they're capable of. “Bye Bye Blackbird” starts as a contagious, loud-quiet-loud rock song, before shuffling off into an all-out jam session.

When Eric Tollefson released his full-length disc, Sum of Parts, last year, it seemed like the towering redhead had come out of nowhere. There'd been little buzz about him before the release, but soon after he couldn't be avoided, opening shows for Jackie Greene and playing a hard-charging set to warm the stage for G. Love and Special Sauce in early September at the Domino Room.
While G. Love was on stage, Tollefson, wearing the Breedlove Guitars baseball cap that seems to be his constant around-town companion, was near the back of the crowd, leaning against the wall. On the Juneau, Alaska, native's face was the sort of grin that comes only from really kicking ass at something, which is what he'd just done – even if he did make the mistake of addressing the blues-guitar playing, hip-hop-rhyme-spouting artist as “G” rather than his preferred “Garrett” when the two met backstage.

In the back yard of Angeline's Bakery in Sisters, a young and dreadlocked Noah Gundersen and an even younger Abby Gundersen stood on a small stage, playing deftly arranged, intensely emotive folk songs and rarely looked up from the wooden deck below their feet to meet the gaze of the capacity audience rapt by their music.
The scene was a late-afternoon performance at the 2008 Sisters Folk Festival where a then teenage Gunderson played a supporting role. Now the organization is bringing Noah Gundersen and his new band The Courage back to town for the Winter Concert Series this weekend. But the Noah Gundersen coming through this time is far from the seemingly meek wunderkind we saw two years ago. He's older – still young at 20, but older nonetheless – and he now will gladly rock whenever he feels the need.

Shearwater
A Golden Archipelago
Matador Records

When Jonathan Meiburg decided to leave behind his shared writing duties in Okkervil River to focus more on Shearwater (a side project he and Okkervil band mate Will Sheff started in 1999), the result was the critically acclaimed Palo Santo. Less than two years later, with the release of Rook, Meiburg and Shearwater mainstays, Thor Harris and Kimberly Burke, showed even more evidence this band could go to any musical landscape they deemed fit. So, with Shearwater's sixth album, and third in a series relating to mankind's impact on the world, A Golden Archipelago is colossal in not just the physical land it covers, but the emotional, larger-than-life adventure, and grief-stricken scope it seeks. The best album to date in this new decade, Golden displays Meiburg and company fit for any stage.