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!
Dear Nora Live
Songwriter Katy Davidson (they/them) revived the band Dear Nora in January 2017 when Orindal Records reissued the thirteen-year-old album Mountain Rock on vinyl. The reissue received great acclaim and the band toured the west and east coasts last year. Spurred by the momentum, Davidson decided to create the first album of new Dear Nora material in a decade, Skulls Example (release date: May 25, 2018).
Davidson has been composing, recording, and performing for nearly twenty years. Davidson is from rural Arizona, has lived in Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and currently resides in Twentynine Palms, California. Davidson has played under a handful of monikers, but Dear Nora is the one most widely recognized. Dear Nora originally started in 1999, released a handful of enigmatic, compelling albums throughout the early 2000s, and toured across the United States, Japan, Sweden and Australia. Throughout the years, the Dear Nora live band featured a rotating cast of band members, though oftentimes Davidson played solo. Davidson retired the band name Dear Nora in 2008 and began making music under the names Lloyd & Michael and Key Losers. Davidson also was a touring guitarist/vocalist in the bands YACHT and Gossip. Davidson’s music represents a spectrum of styles encompassing classic rock, experimental music, ethereal pop, new age, punk, and R&B. Davidson writes lyrics with layered meanings that contemplate the vast realms and intersections of wilderness, humanity, morality, technology, late capitalism, and love.
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!!!
Shag Rock!!
Sallie Ford, Maria Kohler and Amanda Spring present their latest rock n roll outfit!!
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public
This event is free, all ages and open to the public!
S P E C I A L K I D S S H O W
Mr. Ben!!!
Mr. Ben plays live music for kids and families in and around Portland, OR. His shows are the perfect blend of entertainment and education. Your child can participate as much or as little as they choose — they are free to explore new musical ideas and concepts at their own pace and in their own way.
So when you come to a Mr. Ben show, you can feel good about the fact that you are taking an active role in your child’s cognitive development, laying the foundation for their musical education, and helping to dispel the myth that only some people have musical potential. Who knew you could do all that just by attending a live children’s music show?
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Following the release of his latest album, Pearls to Swine, and his I Came to Sing the Song EP, both via Fat Possum in 2016 and 2017 respectively, Adam Torres has established himself as a powerful and poignant performer and songwriter. His explorations find him sitting equally within psych-folk and indie, and flavored by his affinity for his family’s roots in the U.S. Southwest. The resulting music offers deep, introspective journeys, both intimate and memorable.
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, Scott Taylor, crafts ethereal folk tinged with country funk & plastic soul influences. Following the disbandment of No Go Know, New Victorian sprouted roots as a pointed downshift into nuanced reflection. Self-recorded over a period of several years in between duties as a husband, father and mental health social worker, “High Mass,” presents a resonant song cycle detailing loss and reformation.
New Victorian are currently prepping two EPs for release in 2019, while continuing to tour throughout the Pacific Northwest.
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Shag Rock!!
Sallie Ford, Maria Kohler and Amanda Spring present their latest rock n roll outfit!!
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Noah Kite shapes pop, jazz, and classical influences to accent folk’s lyrical poignancy. This chambered folk-rock uses its roots in a childhood of Ravel, Sade, Van Morrison, Enya, and Steely Dan to make melodic and poetic sense of experiences teaching, traveling, and touring abroad. While these dynamically orchestrated dramas find an expansively symphonic home on the record, in live settings arrangements are distilled to their essential workings; Kite’s guitar and voice are laced by the haunting oboe of Laura Gershman, the eclectic percussion of Alan Cook, and the emotive cello of Esme Schwall to deliver each tune its own life.
http://noahkite.com/
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Mouth Painter’s music is an exploration of an alternate, exotic form of “New Country”. The foundation of Mouth Painter is the partnership/dichotomy of Barry Walker Jr. and Valerie Osterberg. Barry was raised in middle Tennessee where music abounded. He has played rock and roll, bluegrass, straight country, and experimental/new-age/ambient music. Valerie grew up in an isolated community in North Dakota where she learned to sing close harmony with her twin sister and play classical flute. Early Mouth Painter performances found Barry and Valerie simply singing together with acoustic guitar and flute accompaniment. Slowly, the more experimental side of their interests crept into the mix–Barry’s tectonic pedal steel guitar, and Valerie’s Flamstyle Music involving the formulation of synthetic natural sounds (the Hawaiian jungle, a buoy rocking in the ocean, meteorite impacts, etc.) using a variety of instruments. Since 2017, Jason Willmon has brought the low end on bass guitar. Over the past few years, Mouth Painter has shared the stage with Michael Hurley, Marisa Anderson, Little Wings, Howlin’ Rain, Lavender Country, Dragging an Ox Through Water, and Ralph White among others.
https://snakehandlerrecordings.wordpress.com/mouth-painter/
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
In 2007, Mathias Kom collected some of his songs and started a band, named after a religious tract handed to him by a wide-eyed zealot in Toronto. Mathias subsequently invited all of his friends to join him in performing these songs about seagulls, shopping malls, and the similarities between love and hurricanes. Over the next ten years and almost as many albums, the lineup and sound of the Burning Hell have changed often, but the band has remained idiosyncratic and unclassifiable—much to the delight of those who love them. The constant has always remained Kom’s singular outlook on the world: wise and naive, cynical and life-affirming, full of brilliant, unexpected narratives and a deeply felt generosity of spirit. The band’s live performances underscore these themes: they exhibit a joy and camaraderie too infrequently seen on stage. Indeed, the essence of the band is inclusive and celebratory; whether live or on record, there’s something for everyone. As Tom Robinson of BBC Introducing said about The Burning Hell, “even Jesus is going to enjoy this, once he finally gets here.”
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!