Sound Stories & Interviews

You need goggles like that when you send these kind of e-mails.Aesop Rock is coming to Bend along with the esteemed gentlemen of the
Hieroglyphics crew and a gaggle of other hip-hop all stars for what
very well might be the most prolific hip-hop event this town has seen
since we got that shipment of water-damaged Sir Mix A Lot cassettes in
'91. I wanted to get some phone time with Aesop Rock, but was told that
Mr. Rock prefers questions be directed his way in the form of e-mail. I
obliged and here's what Aesop Rock had to type about Tom Waits, curtain
installation and reading National Geographic:

tSW: A slightly
pedantic question: Indie hip-hop, or alternative hip-hop or however you
want to "genre-ify" it, seems to be increasingly drawing on influences
outside of the hip-hop arena. What’s your most significant non-hip-hop
influences past and present?
Aesop Rock: Probably either the
Mountain Goats or Tom Waits. They both happen to strike that chord in
me that usually only a savage MC can get to. They both are masters at
their craft, they put a massive amount of effort into the lyric-writing
aspect of all of this, and each have distinct deliveries that work
hand-in-hand with the way they write. I'm a longtime fan of both. Tom
Waits' albums have such unique production, and overall drunkenness to
them. I dunno, I could go on about them each forever.

Those Camels like it loud.The above photo is actually the cover art for Global Noize's
self-titled debut CD, if you can believe that. It's hardly the stuff of
multi-thousand-dollar photo shoots or commissioned artistic renderings
that are often found on CD covers. It's just two dudes standing next to
a couple of camels with some stacks of records and a few speakers
photoshopped in for extra pizzazz.

But those two dudes are Jason
Miles, the illustrious jazz keyboardist also known for his producing
career, and the dude on the right is none other than DJ Logic, the
expert turntablist known for his collaborations with a myriad of
musicians of varying genres. As for the camels, they remain
unidentified.
The photo was taken when Miles and Logic were in
Morocco prior to the birth of the world music project known as Global
Noize and the all-star band that then sprouted. If you ask Logic, he
says the image has some weight to it.

Forget the Madonna headset, David Allan Coe is a badass.Wayne Newcome now leads the local rock band Problem Stick but 25 years
ago he was driving a delivery truck in San Francisco and hating nearly
every song he heard on the radio. It was around this time that he
bought the 45 single of David Allan Coe's "Willie, Waylon and Me." Now,
a quarter of a century later, Newcome and Problem Stick take the stage
in an opening slot for Coe's Midtown Ballroom performance.
"When all
those stupid hair bands came out, I couldn't stand all that shit. So I
started listening to country music and that's when I bought my first
David Allan Coe 45," Newcome says.

Get a good look at those dreads, ’cause you ain’t gonna see ’em again.The Source caught up with Aussie sensation John Butler over the phone last week before he and his band played in Flagstaff, Ariz. Their latest release, Grand National, has gone multi-platinum and enjoyed worldwide success. And it all started in 1998 with Butler busking on the streets of Fremantle, a small port city just south of Perth, on the West Coast of Australia. Which is where we began our line of questioning…

The Source Weekly: What's it like being so huge in Australia and then coming to the US as a lesser known act? Is it strange or do you like being somewhat anonymous?

John Butler: There's a big difference between mainstream popularity and underground popularity, which is what I guess we kind of have over here now after seven or eight years of [touring] America. We kind of just build it up from the ground up [so] by the time you're kind of getting to where your status is in the well-known region, it's solid and it just stays for a long time. That's kind of what's happened in Australia, every step of the way it's grown slowly, it's never been like a huge splash and so by the time we were big, the roots were very deep, it wouldn't really matter what storm came by, what we built wouldn't be knocked over.

Is it nice to go around and not worry about people coming up to you all the time though?

Mr. Red on Blonde himself, Tim O’Brien finally makes his way to the Sisters Folk Fest this weekend.It's late in the afternoon on a late August Thursday afternoon and that means Brad Tisdel is in his office and working late. It's only eight days before his labor of love, his raison d'etre (for the French speaking, or perhaps the hyperbolic), the Sisters Folk Festival takes flight. There's plenty of "i"s left to dot and "t"s to be crossed before the 13th installment of the roots music celebration, but Tisdel, the local singer-songwriter as well as the festival's artistic director, still makes time to talk about his hometown's cultural engine.

"The idea is to take a three-day music festival and make it have a year-around presence that's educational and also entertaining for the community," Tisdel says of the Sisters Folk Festival's standing in Central Oregon.

For several years now, the festival's presence has been felt on every page of the calendar whether it be through the Americana Project, Tisdel's in-school music education program, or perhaps the winter concert series, which this past year brought another solid lineup of national touring acts to Sisters. And as if the reach of the Sisters Folk Festival influence isn't expansive enough, Tisdel also recently launched Musical Memories, an inarguably innovative program that brings local musicians into senior communities to play tunes from yesteryear.

If you add in the Americana Song Academy, a songwriter’s summer camp of sorts that precedes the festival, it might be easy for some to forget that there are still three days at the beginning of September where the Sisters Folk Festival itself still exists. Starting on Friday and extending through Sunday while overtaking much of Central Oregon's favorite cowboy town, Sisters Folk is boasting a lineup this year that's full of national performers and as strong as any past gathering.

Mud on the Left, Wotta on the right. "It's not the bottom of the barrel or anything, but it's what I have around me that I love. It's the idea of using what's around you to improve what's around you," says Mosley Wotta, a.k.a. Jason Graham, of his new EP Scrap Mettle.

The five-track record has been in the works for a few months now, and is for the most part quintessential Graham - crisply voiced hip-hop lyrics that lean closer toward poetry than rap music laid atop constantly innovative instrumentals. While locals will likely recognize Graham's loud, low and direct voice within the opening seconds of the album's opener, "Boom For Real," the EP is hardly same-old-same-old fodder from one of Bend's most visible artists.

Just as he wears masks during some of his solo performances or is apt to changing his stage name (some might know him not as Wotta or Graham, but rather "The Rook"), Graham doesn't seem to mind reinventing himself, perhaps not drastically, but enough to keep things interesting in a musical landscape where change is often necessary.

"It's like stories I've heard of Japanese calligraphers who keep changing their names. They'll build up an entire career and then change their name," Graham says. "You gotta keep allowing yourself to be you - I mean I'm still going to be a six foot tall man of color in Bend, I'm not going to be able to get away from that, unless I become so successful I can go the Michael Jackson route or something like that, which I probably wouldn't."