The Blender

The latest addition to the already strong fall music lineup is the rabble rousing British punk/folk rocker Billy Bragg, who will play the Tower Theatre on November 2.
This year, Bragg released Must I Paint You a Picture?, a collection of his greatest hits, a disc that should be required listening for the next generation of songwriters.

Let me beat you to it — yes, John Mellencamp was probably better than Bob Dylan at the Les Schwab Amphitheater on Friday night. Everyone has been saying this for the past few days (during which I’ve been battling a print deadline and ignoring my blogging duties) and I’ll begrudgingly agree.

If there’s one thing I’ve been anxiously awaiting (Hoverboards excluded), it’s the much-rumored documentary, entitled I’m Still Here, about the increasingly weird and insanely bearded Joaquin Phoenix, who gave up on his acting career in the past year to allegedly pursue a life as a rap star. Seriously.

Before I left on a glorious, glorious, non-blogging and out-of-the-office vacation, I chatted with Mat Kearney about his musical career and what it’s like to make music for television doctors to make out to. You can read about that here.

With such an awesome line up of music Wednesday night, you couldn’t go wrong wherever you ended up. I hit up the Hump Day Hash featuring The Autonomics at the new Century Center, and I’ve got to say seeing the venue, it’s got me pretty stoked for Bend Roots.

What in the world happened that Wednesday is now the best day for music in Central Oregon? It seems this summer our options for music have been better on Wednesdays than on most Friday and Saturday nights. Here’s a run down of the totally awesome line up in Central Oregon tonight.

Many people have probably already seen this video from Michael Franti’s website, but for those of you not in the loop, you’ve got to check this out. After Franti’s show at the Les Schwab Amphitheater on August 5 he recorded this short web-isode for his FrantiV series boasting about how awesome Bend is.