Sound Stories & Interviews

One hell of a magic pipe.Mike Silverman has an odd sense of humor.

"I came up with the name in 1994. It was a joke or a dare, and it just
stuck. It still makes me laugh. It kinda shaped the direction of my
whole career," Silverman says of his onstage moniker, That 1 Guy.

Silverman is an irreverent wordsmith, creating seemingly nonsensical
songs that blend spoken word styling with funky/heavy metal bass lines.
Imagine Shel Silverstein hanging out with Primus and Parliment and
discussing, among other things, cheese and weasels. Now imagine that
bass line coming from a crazy-looking piece of roundabout art. The
one-man band has been a traveling sideshow oddity for upwards of ten
years now, and is making an appearance at the Silver Moon on February
12.

The Magic Pipe, as his instrument is so lovingly referred to, was hand
built by Silverman himself and is part bass, part sampler, and all
unbelievable.

Nature boys. Tweak Bird looks like hippie freakers and sound like a jet engine, a
strange combination of traits that is only the edge of the weirdness
emitted by this pair of Los Angeles-based brothers. With a helping hand
from producers Dale Crover (Melvins) and Toshi Kasai (Big Business),
Caleb and Ashton Bird released a quirky steamroller of an EP dubbed
Reservations in September that showcases the duo's ability to produce
an F'in S-load of sound with only drums and guitar.

David Bowers is celebrating the release of the David Bowers Colony's
first full-length album on Saturday night. Two days later he turns 44
years old.

"For me that's halfway dead, because, ya know, if I made it to 88 that would be pretty sweet," Bowers says.
He
could pass for younger with just a few wispy gray hairs around his
temples and a bone curled through his left ear lobe (a style he says is
inspired in part by the Decemberists' Chris Funk, an acquaintance from
Bowers' Eugene days) but seems comfortable with his age, as well as his
status in the local music scene.

Two Bros, two beers.There was a time when A.

"We walked into Parrilla tonight to get something to eat and it was a
flashback for me of the goals we used to have," says Moon Mountain
Ramblers guitarist and singer Matthew Hyman.
He's referring to the
band's early target of securing a gig at Parrilla Grill, which they did
- playing in the corner of the Westside eatery in front of a garbage
can with no P.A. system. That was in 2000 and now, more than eight
years later, the band is unveiling its new album, Let it All Be Good,
at a much-talked-about Tower Theatre show.
Four-fifths of the
group is gathered in percussionist Dale Largent's home studio space
near downtown Bend before a Friday night rehearsal with a collection of
five or so friends sitting outside the semi circle we've formed in the
center of the room. Beers are sipped freely and frequently by all and
the mood is laid back to the point that it's tough to tell whether or
not the actual interview will actually begin. But soon we're discussing
the band's popularity in Bend, the year-plus recording of its new
record and why they don't mind being called a bluegrass band.

Who’s up for a jog?On a Friday morning, Guttermouth front man Mark Adkins talks for more
than an hour over the telephone from his home in San Clemente, Calif.
about, politics, honesty, distance running, guitar down strokes, Hot
Topic stores, paddle boarding, real estate values, self-imposed racial
segregation and several other topics related or un-related to punk
rock. Adkins is funny, knowledgeable and courteous, but is also
supremely confident in his opinions. In a strange way, the Guttermouth
front man is punk rock and anti-punk rock all at once.

The 42-year-old Adkins is known for his boisterous stage antics and his
practice of gently (and sometimes not so gently) harassing his
audience, but he's also deftly intelligent and in supreme physical
shape. He says that after our conversation he's going to run between
eight and 10 miles. How punk rock is that?

But it seems that Adkins has struck a balance after 20-plus years of
playing in Guttermouth and gladly celebrates his two decades in punk.

Our readers know that we've celebrated a recent surge in our local music scene in these pages over the past year or so and we'd like to assure these readers that things should remain strong in 2009. Our evidence, in case you were wondering, lies in the list of new local CDs that are slated for release this year.

Blues through the fisheye.Tim Langford has seen some of the wildest weather of his life in the
recent weeks. More than a foot of snow fell outside his downtown
Seattle home, which forced someone to abandon a city bus in front of
his house. Not long afterwards he was dealing with flooding from the
melting snow. And the road didn't offer any refuge for Langford, better
known as Too Slim, who had a large-scale Christmas show slated in
Spokane canceled before the holidays when some five feet of snow fell
on that city - which happens to be his hometown.

But with I-5
reopened and a freakish warming trend hitting the Northwest, all looks
good for Too Slim and the Taildraggers' show at the Domino Room on
Friday night. With the tumultuous weather behind him, Langford is
excited to get back on the stage - something he's been doing for much
of his life and more than 20 years alone with his current band.