Blacksmith is Back: Finding comfort in fine dining

With three appearances in Bend within the last year, Hot Buttered Rum
is in danger of being mistakenly added to our roster of bluegrass bands
- and we wouldn't complain if they did join our team. The San Francisco
acoustic-that-sounds-electric band is teaming with fellow Bay-Area
roots musicians The Waybacks for a co-headlining tour. Since our
municipality has showed respect for both acts, it makes sense that the
tour is making a stop at the Domino Room.

They've got the bluesman strut down nicely.Henry Kammerer of Portland's gritty blues duo Hillstomp is trying to
explain why and how he and his bandmate John Johnson play the blues and
after hitting some dead ends: He remembers a quote from Keith Richards.
In an impressively accurate impression of the Stones axe man's
swaggering, drunken-sounding British accent, Kammerer mumbles a few
lines about blues being embedded in our collective bone marrow.

After some digging I was able to find the precise text of Richards' quote:
Blues
is one of the most fascinating forms of music I know, and I listen to a
lot of styles…It's in our bones. 'Cause probably we all come from
Africa. We just went north and turned white. But if you cut anybody
open, bones are white and blood is red, man. It's kind of deep, you
know? And I think maybe it speaks to us in that way. Ancient bone
marrow responding to the source.

This ain’t your uncle chester’s kinda barn.In addition to its "this-is-cowboy-country" architecture and street names, Sisters is also home to a deeper, more community-rooted attitude rarely seen these days. And it's most visible within the town's musical community. This is a town with less than 2,000 people and maybe another few thousand living in the surrounding areas, yet there's a healthy and talented pool of musicians that often join forces on recording projects and live shows. And if that's not throwback enough, consider this: The town’s most talked about indoor music venue is an old barn - now that's throwback.