On Stage

Last year Kenny Rogers, this Year Michael McDonald. We love beards.

Shearwater
Rook
Matador
Upon the first few listens of Shearwater's Rook, I wanted to synch up the tracks to the cartoon version of Watership Down or The Last Unicorn, ala Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz. Rook is an album worth immersing yourself in, front to back.
The Austin-based indie band (which began as a side project of the equally dramatic Okkervil River) has created a vast lyrical narrative that is darkly beautiful and visually apocalyptical. Opening with the lines "From the wreck of the ark to the fading day of our star," lead singer Jonathan Meiburg's voice oscillates between choirboy delicate and forceful, while complex arrangements consisting of strings, harp, piano and bugle tell the story of a world gone wrong. The rockin' title track describes scenes more ominous than a Hitchcock film. The song "Century Eyes" warns: "You are not the last of this house, or the first to go over the side." And "I Was A Cloud" holds no empathy for the naivety of our sad hero with lines like, "Your frantic waving did not provoke feeling/But this little one/Steady your wings now sparrow."

The city of Paisley is best known for one thing - it's down-home, country-style Mosquito Festival. The Mosquito Festival is the only event other than city council meetings listed on the city's Website.

Get Your Stomp On
Sound Check's legs are tired after this weekend and here's why: We were out running our not-so-in-shape bodies around town lending our ears to whatever free (or at least affordable) music we could find. With the mercury stretching its neck into the mid 60s and the sun peeking out for more than it has in weeks, Bendites emerged from their homes, shedding winter jackets and pretending that summer has finally arrived.
Once we arranged our sweatbands properly, we jogged down to the Mirror Pond Plaza for the first-ever Downtown Sound gathering. We caught an earful about the horn section attack of Necktie Killers from a loyal fan while we watched a retooled Empty Space Orchestra (now with guitar and vocals!) play a well-received set to a swirl cone mix of 150-or-so local heads and curious fanny packing tourists.
With our heart rates in the 140s and anti-chafe cream applied liberally to our thighs, we strode to the Old Mill District for the Balloons Over Bend festival where Leif James' Springsteen-esque voice was melting nicely into his folk-rock strumming. He even tossed in bluesy takes on American traditionals (made famous by the Dead) like "Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad" and "I Know You Rider."
Gatorade be damned, we slammed a couple pints (needed the carbohydrates) and returned to Downtown Sound where the sun was setting, beanies were topping heads and the stage featured hip-hop artist Benzo hyping a depleted crowd and one terrifyingly confident and vodka-soaked young woman dancing in front of the stage with a toddler in one arm and a middle finger extending from the other. Gary Busey-style partiers aside, Sound Check did nonetheless give Downtown Sound a passing grade for its first time out.

Around his Bay Area stomping ground, Nickatina is a hip-hop legend who's best known for his hardcore "life-on-the-streets" ethos and silky smooth delivery. Some might call Nickatina "gangsta rap," and he might not even disagree with that label.

Santogold
Santogold
Downtown/Lizard King ★★★★★

Starting her music career in the post-punk group Stiffed and then working as a major-label A&R scout, Santogold has emerged as the most defiant, genre-bending explosion of the past year. A Brooklynite, Santogold (real name: Santi White) has a sound that embodies many different styles and resonates as if it's coming from a Run-DMC style cassette boom box on a Brooklyn brownstone stoop.

Spoken word or tamborine? Which is it, Al?Spoken word is hard to pull off. Sometimes this genre, or subgenre, if you will, brings to mind beret-intensive poetry slams where ideological rhetoric tends to trump skill. There are some heavy spoken word elements at play with Alfred Howard and the K23 Orchestra, but it's not the sort of aforementioned dimly lit coffee house nonsense.
 
AHK23 is a San Diego-based four-piece band that serves as the anchor for the vocal avalanche that is Alfred Howard. For the most part, AHK23's sound is marked by a laundry-line tight funk assault that rises in tempo along with Howard's pristinely clear speaking/rapping/singing voice.
Some might consider the band a jazzy hip-hop act in the spirit of the Roots, but what Howard is doing isn't always hip-hop, because half the time he's more singing than rapping and at other times his flow is more like he's reading from a leather-bound collection of contemporary poetry than hyping the crowd in the true spirit of hip-hop. Those who need a local barometer, one could compare some of Howard's riffs to what Bend's own Jason Graham does when out doing his solo stuff. Where Howard and Graham differ is in the improvisational orchestra department.

Friday - Michael Franti & Spearhead, Built To Spill
The drizzle had nearly subsided when Built To Spill took the stage, signaling the official beginning of the Memorial Day weekend bonanza at the Les Schwab Amphitheater. As BTS ripped their indie jam rock through the low-hanging clouds, a late arriving crowd, Sound Check included, wondered how it can remain dry for more than a month and then rain on the Friday before Memorial Day.
The sun never came out, but Franti and company did their best to make it feel warm by bursting out of the gates with the band's patented hip-hop/reggae/rock crossover feel that had a beanie-and-rain-jacket crowd pogo sticking up and down upon the towering Franti's instructions ("I wanna see you jump" - he must have said it 10 times). There was some talk of reform and making a difference in this world, as one would expect from Franti, but for the most part, it was pure funky dance party and Sound Check hasn't seen Bendites get down like that in a very long while, if ever.

Far and away, the highlight of the night was when Franti bounded
across the stage as the crowd joined him in a silly but fun version of
King Harvest's "Dancing in the Moonlight." And no, the moon never did
come out - all weekend. - Mike Bookey
Saturday - Death Cab For Cutie, The Decemberists, Mates of State
Coming into the amphitheater, the rain was either coming or going
and that constant rain limbo seemed to set the tone for Death Cab For
Cutie's set. Having never seen the Decemberists before, Sound Check was
blown away by front man Colin Meloy's stage presence, and soon believed
that the Portland band’s albums do not do them proper justice.
 

Did someone say old timey? the decembErists join death cab on Saturday’s lsa bill. This weekend is one of the biggest ever for the Les Schwab Amphitheater, which is hosting what we could fairly call Sasquatch Jr. or perhaps Baby Sasquatch, or maybe Oregon-quatch - take your pick. Any way you split it, we're basically just cashing in on the overflow from the Central Washington mega festival and bringing those acts down our way. This siphoning of Sasquatch Festival acts results in an added bonus - super sweet openers to already super sweet headliners.
 
The names on your ticket stubs will read Michael Franti & Spearhead, Death Cab For Cutie and Modest Mouse, but the bands warming the stage for those acts could each hold their own as headliners under different circumstances.
Friday night, it's Built to Spill, long time residents in the upper echelon of indie rock, taking the stage with their sometimes poppy, sometimes jammy and always tight brand of rock and roll. We've been looking for BTS to come by for a while now - their hometown of Boise isn't that far away is it? - and now we finally get a stop off.

Greg Brown's got love in Central Oregon. Why? Well, to start, there's the sweet irony of the fact that he shares his name with one of Deschutes County's most colorful former sheriffs - convicted embezzler Greg Brown.