SOU’WESTER EVENTS!
See what’s happening during your next stay or plan a visit around our free live music, workshops, wellness offerings and more!
Anna Fritz is a cello-wielding activist folksinger based in Portland, Oregon. She creates a musical alchemy of cello and voice, strumming the cello like a guitar and playing beautiful melodies with the bow as she sings. Her songs boldly dig into themes of colonization, climate change, racial justice, gender, spirituality, and connection to the natural world.
Like the great folksingers of previous generations, Anna is a catalyst for people to sing together. Her songs are infectious and easy to learn, imbued with a sense of timelessness as if they’ve been sung for generations. Her disarming, gentle nature and powerful presence gets unlikely crowds of people singing together from town halls to night clubs. A founding member of Portland Cello Project, Anna has released three albums of original songs and can also be heard on albums from My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, The Decemberists, case/lang/veirs, and First Aid Kit. Her most recent project as composer and cellist for a modern retelling of The Iliad toured prisons, shelters, schools, and theaters across Oregon.
David plays music to keep himself company. He digs records that sound like they were recorded in bedrooms and basements, and is inspired by the raw intimacy and honesty of Paul Simon, Elliot Smith, Blaze Foley and Gillian Welch. His songs are about healing, living in your car, longing to be found, gratitude, riding subways, finding silence, and stumbling along your path.
https://annafritz.com/
https://davidwaingarten.bandcamp.com/
This event is free and open to the public!!
All the way from New Zealand…
A special Valentine’s Day Feature…
Reb Fountain!!
“Songwriters don’t come much better than this.” (William Dart, Radio NZ)
Just back from supporting The Chills and recording her new album (release June 2019) Reb’s had a busy year; After touring and recording with Finn Andrews (The Veils) she released ‘Hopeful & Hopeless’; “the most perfect EP ever made,” (Simon Wilson, Metro) which was, “a perfect jewel of songs” (Simon Sweetman, Off the Tracks) that was recorded live at The Wine Cellar in Auckland.
Reb won the Tui for Best Country New Zealand Album/Artist 2018 for her album and also APRA New Zealand’s Best Country Song 2018 for the title track ‘Hopeful & Hopeless’.
After hearing her perform, Neil Finn (Crowded House, Split Enz) handpicked Reb to feature in his all-star choir for his month long album building and recording project, ‘Out of Silence’; she has since performed with Neil for his New Zealand and Australian ‘Out of Silence’ tour.
Reb released and toured the second of her stellar new projects, ‘Little Arrows’; a much awaited album featuring the late Sam Prebble that was nominated for Best New Zealand Folk Album 2018. Her band, “made up for lost time by putting on one of the finest shows of the year” (Marty Duda, 13th Floor).
Reb then jumped straight into ‘The Boy Next Door – a celebration of Nick Cave’ to further sold out shows around the country. “From the moment she arrives on the Spiegeltent stage she possesses it completely.” (Bridie Freeman, The Hook).
A pre-eminent singer and performer Fountain has for years been the musicians secret, having performed and recorded with The Eastern, The Warratahs, Marlon Williams, Delaney Davidson, Don McGlashan, Finn Andrews, Will Wood, Tami Neilson, Neil Finn and featuring in The Last Waltz 40th Anniversary tour as the voice of Joni Mitchell.
“Reb Fountain is to be counted among our finest songwriters whose imagery is both personal and universal, and her command of a melody and a song transcends genre.” (Graham Reid, Elsewhere).
This event is free and open to the public!
Society of the Silver Cross is led by husband and wife duo Joe Reineke and Karyn Gold-Reineke of Seattle’s famed recording studio Orbit Audio. Society of the Silver Cross draw inspiration from their many trips to India, it’s rich musical textures, traditional chanting and spiritual wisdom. Everything about Society of the Silver Cross is heavy with mystery: they lure the listener into their sound, and their world, like ghost lights in a dense forest. Follow, if you dare, and what you’ll discover is a band that has developed a singular style – one that draws from darker, more cinematic moods, textures and cosmic atmospheres resulting in an otherworldly blend of musical bliss.
“Society of the Silver Cross deliver haunting and cinematic dark rock on When You’re Gone” –Metal Injection
“Intense, layered, lush and just a little disturbing, it’s really rather good.” – Americana UK
https://www.societyofthesilvercross.com/
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Erina is…
Soulful, jazzy, vox-heavy melodic dreamers.
This event is free and open to the public!
Navid Eliot is best known as the songwriter and front man of the band Planes on Paper, but he is also an active touring sideman, studio guitarist, and producer for a slew of well-loved Northwest artists. Navid’s solo sets focus on showcasing unheard new works, as well as exploring a huge catalogue of the folk and pop covers that have influenced his writing.
https://soundcloud.com/user-700708283
www.planesonpaper.com
This event is free and open to the public!
SPACENESS is a celebration of time, space and the unknown through experimental art, media and performance. Each year SPACENESS takes over the Sou’Wester Lodge in Seaview, WA, as well as the adjacent forest, seashore and wild spaces.
The next celebration of Spaceness is MARCH 1-3, 2019. Spaceness is FREE, open to the public, and welcoming to people of all ages.
Follow @spacenesss ( ⏎ 3 s’) on Instagram for updates and special information about the event.
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Spaceness was founded by Portland artists Julia Barbee, Matt Suplee, and Alison Jean Cole and has been awarded funding by the Precipice Fund, Calligram Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Portland chapter of the Awesome Foundation.
Tobias Berblinger cranks out solid original tunes spearheaded by folk weirdness and sing-along barroom anthems. While fulling honoring the tongue-in-cheek trappings of country music storytelling, with the protagonist managing to lose his dog, his house, his girl, and his weed all in the same song. His latest album, The Luckiest Hippie Alive, is out now on TDRCO and is an affectionate testament to strong songwriting, a fertile period in American music, and the perennial highway blues.
http://tdrco.org/tobias_berblinger/
This event is free and open to the public!
Jonah Sissoyev writes deeply personal songs of struggle, longing, and reflection. Fans of lyrical country and Americana music will appreciate the way Sissoyev weaves together two classic genres with heartfelt sentiment. Jonah’s acoustic finger style accompanied by a gentle cello is Akin to Gregory Alan Isakov, Ryan Adams and Mandolin Orange.
https://jonahsissoyev.bandcamp.com
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Lindsay Clark finds balance between traditional folk, english folk, country, and her own version of experimental folk that seems to stem from her soul. With influences ranging from the Beach Boys, Elizabeth Cotton, Joni Mitchell, appalachian folk, her classical upbringing, and her father’s record collection, she blends many worlds into a uniquely warm sound. She has carved out a unique and vibrant place as an artist with her penchant for poetry, rich harmony, and and a style of self-taught fingerpicking influenced by Nick Drake, John Fahey, and others. Popmatters called Crystalline (2018) “a rare exhibition of the weight that minimalism can bear in contemporary, reflective folk music.” Atwood Magazine called her first single “apiece of poetry in and of itself.”
Originally from the small gold rush town of Nevada City, CA, she now resides in Portland, OR. Her sound has been described as “folk with angelic vocals washing over smooth edges” (1859 Magazine). She has shared the stage with musicians such as Alela Diane, Nat Baldwin (Dirty Projectors), Ryan Francesconi (Joanna Newsom), Laura Gibson. Her most recent effort was engineered and co-produced this year with San Francisco’s Jeremy Harris (guitar/vocals – Vetiver, Devendra Banhart). “Crystalline” was released in September 2018 via Oscarson.
Photo Credit – Myles Katherine
www.lindsaybethclark.com
facebook.com/lindsayclarkmusic
www.lindsayclark.bandcamp.com
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Bea Troxel started writing songs in the tenth grade about bad haircuts. In High School she played in a band called Bea, Rita, and Maeve (named “Best High School Band of 2013” by the Nashville Scene). The trio won Studio 360’s High School Battle of the Bands contest, and Thao Nguyen and Andrew W.K. covered Bea’s song, “The River,” as performed by Bea, Rita, and Maeve. Nguyen wrote of their music, saying there was a “subtlety and refinement in the musicianship.”
Troxel played all through her time at Sewanee in southern TN, but she did not begin to seek out shows until she moved to Pennsylvania where she found herself in the midst of the Northeast DIY music scene. She opened for musicians such as Glenn Jones, Laura Baird, and Sons of an Illustrious Father, and organized her first tour through the Northeast in 2017. She recently moved back to Nashville and released her debut album, The Way That It Feels, in September. Since the album’s release she has toured throughout the NE, played around Nashville, and was on official showcase artist at SXSW 2018.
Photo by Jonas Hill
https://www.beatroxel.com
https://www.facebook.com/beatricetroxel
https://beatroxel.bandcamp.com/album/the-way-that-it-feels
https://www.instagram.com/beatriceclaretroxel/
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!!
Has anyone described Von Wildenhaus as Omar Khorshid meets The Carpenters? New York Music Daily has called their sound “deep noir” and Spin has described it as “a tight confluence of meditative anti-shredding.” In Von Wildenhaus, band leader Ben von Wildenhaus (ex-Federation X, Prom Queen) takes a composer/sideman role to the lead vocalist Amanda Bloom, whose commanding voice and stage presence move fools to tears. Ben von Wildenhaus’s guitar playing has been compared to Marc Ribot and Jim Campiglongo. Amanda and Ben sing in duet that sounds like Carly Simon strangling Michael McDonald. The haunting sound is complimented by composer Jon Sampson’s (Bar Tabac) hot steamy city-at-night saxophone, Aaron Harmonsen’s (Evening Bell) deft bass fingers, and Andru Creature’s (Sugar Sugar Sugar, Lonebird) percussive weirdings on the suitcase and heavily washed out washboard. The band is currently recording their third album in the Pacific Northwest.
http://benvonwildenhaus.tumblr.com/
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
photo by Lord Fotog
Sonny & The Sunsets play a benefit show for Sou’wester Arts!!
Tickets Here:
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4076609
A note from Sonny about his new album, Hairdressers from Heaven, and his new record label, Rocks in Your Head Records:
Nitro. Astro. Boogeyman from space. My name is Sonny Smith. This is a Sonny & the Sunsets recording. We started a label. Rocks in Your Head Records, named after a record shop I used to spend time in, in Soho New York two decades ago that uplifted me in a way only old record stores can.
The first release is this record, Hairdressers from Heaven. We are going to put out some records that would end up in that old store. Some weird bands, some fictional bands, some real bands. San Francisco has taken hits. Clubs have closed. Artists have left. People have made eulogies – This is something up which we cannot put! There are good bands in this city. There are great artists making bizarre shit. There are underground HAPPENINGS. There are SECRET shows. There are artists in the streets duking it out with Nazis. Shit is going down. The corporate bulldozers ran through the city and they are still driving around demolishing the place. These tanks are called Death and they bring a foul stench. i don’t man maybe the city will drift into a long sleep with a hollow snore. Humbly, this label is our version of throwing nails at the tank tires.
Hairdressers from Heaven. Can I tell you it’s the only record this label has put out I stand behind? It’s a mixtape. Different sounds, different musicians on here, recorded different places. Things got loose. Piano driven at times, drum machines, strange harmonies, it was made by instinct, very unconsciously, loose. I don’t know how Kelley came up with a circular Kraut-like bass line for Ghost Days but he did, or how on Someday I’d like to Be an Artist, we slowed the tape down and made a strange arpeggiated piano solo and then Dylan Edrich turned it into a Moondog like orchestral solo. Or for Man Without a Past we made a bongo bass instrumental song then perennial collab Rusty Miller put a synth bass on it later, then what- Bruce Ackley brought his saxophone to my apartment. Now it’s almost Sun Ra in vibe. Or longtime sunset Tahlia Harbour started singing about worms in the subways and cafes with cloves and berets, or James Mercer stepped in to produce and brought us into his back yard barn studio and harmonized on a country song about death and it became transcendent and kind of life affirming, or when co-producer Yuuki Matthews put a minimal dance bass over Shayde Sartin’s already punk bass on Drug Lake. The record is full of weird shit, like a complicated accident, I saw it happen, but I can’t say how.
And also, this new label will include a Zine with every release, like the days of SST and Raymond Pettibon. So with Hairdressers comes Zine #1, about watching the apocalypse on the phone, and how Nazis should always be tossed out of town and things of that nature.
http://www.sonnysmith.com/
Photo by Sarah Moore
Come support Sonny and the Sou’wester on April 6th!
Tickets available here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4076609