Sound Stories & Interviews

When Culver City Dub Collective heads onto what should be (hopefully) a sunshine-covered Les Schwab Amphitheater stage on Sunday, it will be a homecoming of sorts. This is confusing, obviously, given the band's explicitly Southern California name, but not once you realize that the dude on guitar is Franchot Tone.

That name probably sounds familiar to local music fans who know him as not only Reed Thomas Lawrence's collaborator and producer but also as a composer for Rage Films. Tone has a second life of sorts, however, down in Los Angeles where he's deeply immersed in the music industry and also captains Culver City Dub Collective, a reggae-infused jammy rock outfit, along with Adam Topol, best known for his work as Jack Johnson's drummer.
Tone, who lives in Bend with his wife and kids, is a busy guy, to put it mildly, but he's found time to place CCDC near the top of his priority list. Although the band is only able to tour in moderation given the other musical engagements if its members, CCDC has found time to, for example, open a tour last summer for Jack Johnson which put them in front of crowds numbering 20,000 or more. But this week, the band is on its own headlining jaunt, playing smaller venues in mountain towns, which is why when I catch up with Tone, he's eating at a taco truck in Twin Falls, Idaho. He and the rest of the band are there for the start of a weeklong tour that drops them in Bend on Sunday - something Tone is more than pumped about.

Illustration by Kristi SimmonsI assume I wasn't the only student who in the winter of 1991 sang along, sitting cross-legged on standard gray public school carpet, to Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," belting out the "Proud to be an American…" chorus along with my third-grade classmates. Iraq had invaded Kuwait and President Bush The First, looking sternly through his Dwight Schrute-esque glasses said, "This aggression will not stand," and so I pinned a yellow ribbon on my backpack with no idea where exactly Kuwait could be found on a map, and belted along with Mr. Greenwood. And I liked that song, too.

With the Fourth of July this weekend, we're not only celebrating our right to ignite incendiary devices (Thank you, Bend City Council), but it's an annual chance to unleash upon collective ear of your neighborhood barbecue your favorite patriotic, nationalistic and/or songs that merely include "America" in the title, including but not limited to the aforemenionted Greenwood hit. If you need some help compiling your play list, here are a few pointers. Again, many of these cuts have little or no connection to the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the celebration thereof, but who cares, right? A real song about the Fourth of July would largely be centered on hot dogs, sun burns and paid vacation, so let's not get too carried away people.

Finn Riggins battle it out, Idaho style.The wave of bands hitting the airwaves in the early 1990s - Green Day, The Offspring, Nirvana and Oregon's own Everclear - has always been described as punk rock, or post-punk rock, mostly because of the music's attitude and the musicians' appearances rather than the music, which bears little resemblance to punk rock's working class roots and overtly political message.
To me, none of those bands ever came close to sounding like the original punk rock bands of the late 1970s, like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones or the Dead Kennedys, and it's pretty lame to lump together a band like Green Day in the same breath as The Clash.
Enter Idaho's Finn Riggins. Eric Gilbert (keyboards, vocals), describes the Finn Riggins sound as alternative, but to me it sounds closer to the music created by punk rock's pioneers than the typical "alternative" sound. It's loud, it's dirty, it's obnoxious, it's in-your-face, gut-busting, hair-pulling rock and roll with lyrics that make you think beyond whether or not you are an "American Idiot." But Finn Riggins' music is also melodic, full of hooks and riffs that will stick in your head for days after listening to their 2007 debut, "A Solider, A Saint, An Ocean Explorer."

country bands don’t dress like that.Two things to know about Dusty Rhodes and the River Band: 1) There is no one named Dusty Rhodes in the band and 2) they are not a country, bluegrass or any other sort of act to which the phrase "River Band" might imply.

Rather, the Fullerton, California-based band is the amalgamation of six music obsessed 20-somethings that have cultivated an indie-rock-meets-Levon Helm-while-everyone-sings-along sound. Dusty Rhodes just released its second record, Palace and Stage, which is gaining positive reviews and helped the band earn headlining shows and festival appearances, but there are plenty of people who still think the band is some sort of country band.
"When we started this band, we thought up this really silly band name and didn't really think it would ever come back to bite us in the butt, but it sure has, man," says guitarist Kyle Divine as he and the band headed toward Chicago last weekend as part of a national tour that brings them to town to headline the Bite of Bend festival this weekend. The name thing has been a problem; more than once unwitting promoters have booked country acts to open for Dusty Rhodes.

You're in the jungle, baby. I have a score to settle with Guns N' Roses, which
really has nothing to do with Appetite for Deception, an Oregon band
playing Boondocks on June 18 that looks, sounds and probably drinks
bourbon like the actual band.
The real Guns N' Roses, or at least
the band that Axl Rose likes to call Guns N' Roses, ruined a long list
of bets and/or claims I have made over the years with a number of
friends, acquaintances and ne'er-do-wells. You see, I've been using the
phrase "When Guns N' Roses finally release Chinese Democracy" in place
of the common adage "when pigs fly" for about nine years now. It seemed
like a safe bet as Axl had holed himself up in some clandestine studio
emerging only to make some zany threat to whoever may have leaked an
alleged Democracy song. Then, the damn thing finally came out, forcing
Dr. Pepper to give away a free soft drink to everyone in America
(except for Slash) and me to admit that, in no particular order: I will
someday buy a Creed album, I'll support the removal of the designated
hitter and that actual Chinese democracy will occur.
That effing album turned my world upside down.

THE BIRD AND THE BEAR

Grizzly Bear
Veckatimest
Warp Records
1. The new Grizzly Bear record has generated a grip of hype and press.

Mop tops welcome. A close friend of mine once wrote - in delicate cursive handwriting
nonetheless - that the fact that the Beatles ever existed is remarkable
in and of itself. The author, now a Ph. D. candidate in classics at the
University of Pennsylvania, asserted that the notion of four so
ahead-of-their-time musicians (well, three really - we all know that
Ringo doesn't count) living in the same working-class town at the same
time is on plane with sorcery. And, the fact that they came together to
form a band, as my Ivy League comrade insists, is nothing short of a
sign of divine intervention.

Volumes have been written on the
Beatles. Some have gone as far as to claim the band's music is more
spiritual than some religious texts and others have used the band as a
backdrop for the cultural rift created by the 1960s. Even with all of
this having been written, there are actually people who don't like the
Beatles. Seriously, there are people who just plain don't like the
Beatles. Just as I don't like Dane Cook, or Bud Light, or NBA
officiating, some people don't like the Beatles. But most people do
which, too, might be just as strange when you consider that the band
hasn't been playing together for almost 40 years.