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!
Susannah Weaver, or Little Sue, as she has been affectionately known since she was a teenager, grew up in West Virginia and moved to Portland in 1992. She has been a fixture in the local folk and alt-country scene in Portland for over 25 years and a big part of the Laurelthirst scene. Her quirky lyrical style, solid guitar playing, and bee-stung voice have won over music lovers of every age and stripe. Sue has released 7 CDs including the 2019 20th anniversary re-release of her 1999 album Crow, and her new CD titled Gold. Sue also has sung harmony on over 50 Oregon releases, including Jerry Joseph, The Minus 5, Fernando, Casey Neill, Lynn Conover, and kindie artist Mo Phillips. She has opened with her own music for Roger McGuinn, Loudon Wainwright III, and most memorably for folk hero Bob Dylan. Sue was recently honored as a 2019 inductee to the Oregon Music Hall Of Fame.
www.littlesue.bandcamp.com
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Walk down any street in Portland, Oregon and you are sure to encounter a mustachioed Brazilian spaghetti western rock and roll troubadour named Johnny Franco. Recently moving from Sao Paulo, Johnny has developed a cult following in Portland for his high energy street performances and stylish music. Signed by music producer Sterling Fox (Lana Del Rey, Elle King) on his label Blanket Fort, Johnny has put together a debut EP that feels instantly timeless. The debut single “Treated Like Grass” combines Dylanesque vocal stylings with a unique jangly Brazilian influenced beat. The EP Experience Report #1 is due out in early 2020.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/4JrSPyzLVPKQlEHHpqt4c3
Photo by Sean May
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
The Blank Tapes is the moniker of Los Angeles & Joshua Tree based multi-instrumentalist, Matt Adams, who has produced over a dozen albums of 1960’s inspired folk-rock-surf-psych-soul-pop on Volcom, Burger Records, Antenna Farm, and others. Their latest ’Super Bloom’ EP features Avid Dancer & Will Halsey (Sugar Candy Mountain) on drums, as well as Jason Cirimele (Guantanamo Baywatch, The Donkeys) on bass and was co-mixed by Nathan Sabatino (Dr. Dog, Jim James). The band has toured throughout the US, UK, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Japan & even Costa Rica. Matt also sometimes plays & records with Sugar Candy Mountain & has produced and/or performed on numerous projects by other artists including The Regrettes, The Pesos & Kath Bloom. Matt is also the artist behind his band’s posters & album covers as well as art for the Grateful Dead, CRB, FolkYeah & more!
“Alternating between dreamy and driving, dappled with delirious solos and seductive harmonies. The Blank Tapes radiated Ultraviolet Californian chords” – Backmatter blog
Photo by Cristian Sigler
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
This show is a part of a Sou’wester Arts Week Benefit Series! Suggested Donation is $5-10, no one turned away for lack of funds, and all proceeds go towards sponsoring an artist in residence at our first annual Arts Week.
BARNA HOWARD was born and raised in a quintessential Midwest town. His youth in Eureka, Missouri was pure Americana – the sort of childhood that inspired E.T.-era Spielberg – baseball cards in his bicycle spokes, flying freely down Main Street and through neighbors’ backyards.
However, much of Barna’s story is not unique to his hometown, and, like most of small town America, Eureka has lost some of that charm over time. Main Street has changed, kids don’t run around quite so carelessly, and in an almost laughably cruel twist, his childhood home was knocked down in favor of a Walmart parking lot.
After high school, Howard moved north to study animation in one cold and windy city and then east for love in another. Years later, he blindly followed two friends to the Northwest, crossing the Rockies for the first time, in search of inspiration, opportunity and a fresh start.
Barna’s self-titled debut chronicled these moves as he struggled with the contrast between his small town upbringing and these big city wanderings. The album was met with critical acclaim and underground success, partly thanks to an opportunely placed song in the hit indie film, Drinking Buddies. One critic even likened him to some “lost genius of the 60s.”
The songs on Barna Howard’s second album, Quite a Feelin’, ruminate on his relationship with home. Now entrenched in Portland, Oregon, many of the album’s tracks immortalize and reflect on the Eureka he once knew, while others focus on the relationships that define his new home out west. Small town life has long been celebrated in country and folk music, but Barna’s knack for capturing his own deeply personal nostalgia resonates in a rarely universal way.
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
This show is a part of a Sou’wester Arts Week Benefit Series! Suggested Donation is $5-10, no one turned away for lack of funds, and all proceeds go towards sponsoring an artist in residence at our first annual Arts Week!
Hot July is a vintage jazz project fronted by Joseph Appel and Kylie LaCour. With a rotating cast of musicians, the band plays mostly standards—from the classics to the more obscure—with a focus on the 1930s and Billie Holiday.
photo by Megan Eleanor Clark
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
This show is a part of a Sou’wester Arts Week Benefit Series! Suggested Donation is $5-10, no one turned away for lack of funds, and all proceeds will go towards sponsoring an artist in residence at our first annual Arts Week!!
“Kassi Valazza has a viscous, light gold voice. It swirls around in your head like whiskey in a snifter; vaporous, and intoxicating. For most of Dear Dead Days pedal steel and electric guitar lope along at half time, the in pocket rhythm section booming from deep in the low end. Its frequencies penetrate your flesh. The songs reverberate off your bones. Her lyrics drip down the inside of your skull. Kassi will be your peyote coyote; a guide through these psychedelic vistas. Here she’s found a way to trap the world of cheaters, drifters, lovers and leavers in amber. Wander from your own woes, and come walk with Valazza’s.” -Sean Jewell American Standard Time
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
This show is a part of a Sou’wester Arts Week Benefit Series! Suggested Donation is $5-10, no one turned away for lack of funds, and all proceeds go towards sponsoring an artist in residence at our first annual Arts Week!
ROBIN BACIOR is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. Her work has received praise from NPR’s All Songs Considered, Vh1, MTV, NYLON, L Magazine, CBS, Mother Jones Magazine, among other media platforms.
“Robin’s honeyed but vibrant voice hits gentle, bestowing the listener with comfort and calm.” NPR’s All Songs Considered
“Her brand of folk is straightforward at its core, but then nicely fancied up, with piano and strings allowing the intricacies and peculiarities of her massively affecting vocals to shine through.” The L Magazine
“A guitar. A voice. Sometimes that’s all a musician needs to lift the listener to a higher place. Smart lyrics help, too, and Robin Bacior has them.” – Dave Riedel, CBS News
“Carefully woven folk sound and tender vocals, showing that sometimes a quiet power is all you really need.” – Nylon
She is the recipient of a Regional Arts and Culture Council Grant, a nominee for the Independent Music Awards, and a member of the Recording Academy.
Bacior is also an arts & culture writer and has contributed to magazines such as Spin, Under The Radar, Portland Mercury, among others. She is the creator and columnist for “New Eyes”, a series on photographers within music for Berlin-based Majestic Journal, and currently a senior staff writer for Consequence of Sound.
She lives with her husband in Portland, OR.
Photo by Kim Smith
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LORAIN plays woozy American music. Singer Erik Emanuelson’s expressive tenor, which recalls ghosts of Nashville Skyline era Dylan and the late Jason Molina, floats over lush textures and an understated groove.
https://lorainmusic.bandcamp.com/album/through-frames
This show is all ages and open to the public!
SOU’WESTER ARTS WEEK: the Sou’wester will be given over to artists and art collectives for a week of residency work and a weekend of open houses and public performances.
The goal of this event is to highlight the creative process and the experiential nature of the Sou’wester Residency Program. Walking into an active creative process reveals valuable intersections among artists as well as with the public. Experience these living artifacts at the open studios and weekend performances. Visit HERE for more information.
Owen Ashworth’s albums have always been about the human condition, and his latest is no exception. That may sound strange, given that it’s called Animal Companionship, but it’s as human as anything he’s done before.
After hearing problems forced the end of his electronic pop project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2010, Ashworth started making quieter music as Advance Base, releasing A Shut-In’s Prayer in 2012, Nephew In The Wild in 2015 and a slew of tapes and 7” EPs in between. After releasing a 2016 live album, In Bloomington, the prodigious songwriter shifted his focus to his label, Orindal Records, and put his efforts into helping other artists release their music.
This break from songwriting gave him time to explore not just how he makes music, but why he’s driven to do so. “I spent a lot of time thinking about why I write songs and what I get out of writing songs,” he said. “It took a while to get back to writing for myself, unselfconsciously.
“The reason I’ve always made music is because it’s therapeutic for me,” he said. “It’s a way of processing my feelings and understanding my subconscious. I love the ritual of writing a song and performing it over and over again until its meaning reveals itself. It’s the closest I get to meditation.”
The meditative nature of Ashworth’s new songwriting process can be heard in Animal Companionship’s spacious arrangements. Blissful drones and lush synthesizer textures envelop soft electric piano arpeggiations and spare drum programming, creating an almost hypnotic backdrop for Ashworth’s lyrical narratives. And the lyrics themselves have found a new focus: dogs.
“There was a while last year when a bunch of different friends of mine were having problems with their dogs,” said Ashworth, “and even though I don’t have a dog, suddenly I was giving all of this dog advice. I was just thinking and worrying about these friends and their dogs all of the time, and dogs just started showing up in my songs.
“When you explain the relationship you have with a pet, it can sound crazy. We all tend to anthropomorphize the animals we love, talking about them as if they’re children, siblings, even spouses,” said Ashworth. “I wrote these songs to help myself understand what pets mean to their owners, how those animal relationships affect our human relationships, and vice versa.”
Unlike the previous Advance Base albums, which were made at home on Ashworth’s trusty 4-track tape machine, Animal Companionship was mostly recorded at Palmetto Studios in Los Angeles with Ashworth’s old friend and former Casiotone for the Painfully Alone collaborator Jason Quever. Animal Companionship still sounds like Ashworth, but Quever’s production adds more depth and clarity than you’ve ever heard from an Advance Base or Casiotone album. The album opener, “True Love Death Dream,” is full of warm synthesizer textures and lush drum machine tones, the kind that sink deep into your soul and take root there. It shows how much time and consideration Ashworth put into Animal Companionship, and how Quever knew exactly how to capture it. From the pedal steel atmospherics of “Dolores & Kimberly” to the densely layered oscillations of “Rabbits,” every movement beautifully frames each song’s narrative. Animal Companionship’s production is expansive but always deliberate, allowing Ashworth to speak volumes through subtle, emotional gestures.
Taken as a whole, Animal Companionship is not just a step forward for Advance Base—it’s the culmination of everything Ashworth has been building for the past two decades. It’s a record that’s gentle in approach and endearing in practice, the kind of thing that only Ashworth could create.
Animal Companionship was co-released by Run For Cover Records & Orindal Records on September 21, 2018
Advance Base: http://www.advancebasemusic.com
Claire Cronin: http://www.overandthrough.com/
Ruth Garbus: https://ruthgarbus.bandcamp.com/
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
“It’s not as if Tommy disrespects genre lines. It’s as if he doesn’t know (or care) that they exist. They’re not pertinent to his survival. He’s a cross between poet, arena rocker, and dive bar star. His voice plunges deeply, then rises high, and the band follows him faithfully through tempo changes, and wall of sound string movements, adding electric guitar and in-pocket backbeat to his work. The songs cruise through switchbacks from earnest folk to early new-age-rock histrionics.
– Sean Jewell at American Standard Time
Photo by by Boramie Sao
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!!