SOU’WESTER EVENTS!
Discover what’s happening during your next stay or plan a visit around our free live music, workshops, wellness offerings and more!
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
Alexi Erenkov’s duo, The Saxophones, create beautiful and personal music. Accompanied by his wife, Alison Alderdice, on percussion and samplers, they blend the darkness and melancholy of 1950s balladry with minimalistic woodwind arrangements, creating a hypnotic sound that hearkens to the past while affirming its place in the present.
Photo by Avery bibeau
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Lynette is an electronic music artist based in Portland, Oregon.
The pieces deal mostly with the idea and content of dreams, both conscious and not. This is music to be heard in imaginary spaces. Metallic fluid drips slowly off of fresh cool lettuce. An unseen bird mimics the song of a long lost cellphone. You awake in time to forget a vague unsettled feeling.
https://lynette.bandcamp.com/releases
This event is free and open to the public!
Join us for our 7th Anniversary Party!
Saturday, April 27th from 5-10pm
Music, festivities and cheer to celebrate 7 years of Sou’wester Wonder!!
<<<THE MUSIC>>>
Just added *** Fronjentress and Dustin Hamman (of run on sentence)!!!!!
Party Witch!
A dark and dreamy power duo featuring Alicia J. Rose (Miss Murgatroid) on accordion, synth and vocals and Shawna Gore (Captain Vs. Crew) on drums. Rose’s rich, commanding vocals soar over Gore’s fast and furious beats, the accordion and synth forging new wave song spells about power dynamics, witchy mysticism, and all manner of twisted souls. Reminiscent of early Siouxsie, Patti Smith and Kate Bush, these PDX dark-pop heroines are bringing much needed light to a quickly darkening world.
www.facebook.com/partywitchpdx
Rachel Blumberg!
Rachel is a drummer and multi-instrumentalist who composes her own music and performs and records both under her name, and under her moniker Arch Cape. She has toured all over the world and recorded with many widely acclaimed artists including The Decemberists, M.Ward, Bright Eyes, Califone, Mirah, Tara Jane O’Neil, Michael Hurley, Sam Beam/Jesca Hoop, Laura Gibson and Death Vessel.
https://www.rachelblumberg.com/music
VooVol!
VooVol is bassist and vocalist Kadi Rae Smith (Oro Azoro) and drummer Shana Lindbeck (Orquestra Pacifico Tropical). The duo, sonically only utilizing two instruments, engages low-fi, soulful rhythms with operatic, haunting vocals & stripped down percussion. This new project by these long time friends and occasional collaborators is an opportunity for them to create and contribute their voice to the collective, musical universe.
www.facebook.com/VooVolBand/
www.instagram.com/voovolmusic/
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Thomas Mudrick has been entertaining the Portland and Willamette Valley music scene with his Psychedelic sounds for over 10 years. This multi-talented musician brings together the diversity of world music with American Psych Rock roots. “Shoegaze”-influenced psychedelic guitar and you have a musical eclecticism that keep his faithful followers always coming back for more.
https://thomasmudrick.bandcamp.com
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Their shows involve original music consisting of blues, folk, swing, and 1930s style songs, along with a handful of carefully selected covers often played on unusual and whimsical instruments. The fun times also include storytelling, games, and the occasional guest performer!
When not off having adventures or performing together, Tave and Nikki are involved in several solo projects in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Additionally, Tave is the lead singer and Nikki is the drummer of Gerle Haggard Band, the “All Merle, All Girl” tribute. They will be on tour later this month to Muskogee, OK, to play the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and the Women’s Prison nearby, among other venues.”
https://www.theadventuresofchickenanddumpling.com/
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Kim Field and John Cep are – in studio – The Stargazer Lilies. A unit in marriage, long time – blissing as a song writing team with a rich and romantic, cutting edge presence in the musical ocean of the indie dream pop, shoegaze, ambient and psychedelic scene. They released three albums, aiding in the resurrection of shoegaze, as their former band, Soundpool. They then stripped down from the larger ensemble to create a more intimate, pulsating – primal project and released 3 full length albums as The Stargazer Lilies on Graveface Records. They have also collaborated with Part Time Punks LA for a full length live recorded album which was released exclusively on Casa del Puente Discos/South America. They toured South America, The U.S. and Europe extensively around these releases. They are currently working on their next album which is being produced by Tobacco and will be released on his label, Rad Cult. They are currently supporting indie psychedelic legends, Black Moth Super Rainbow. Live, the duo morph into a trio with the addition of a live drummer. Expect an intensely dynamic, ethereal – yet explosive, mind – altering, face – melting concert experience.
Discography –
We Are The Dreamers Graveface Records 2013
Door To The Sun Graveface Records 2016
Part Time Punks Live Sessions Casa del Puente Discos 2017
Lost Graveface Records & Anima Recordings 2017
FUTURE RELEASE COMING SOON ON RAD CULT
Photo by Crystal Joy Tuliszewki
https://www.thestargazerlilies.com/
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L O R K A S C H E R is a Russian-American, dream-folk songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and harpist based in Portland, Oregon. Her music weaves syncopated melodies, emotive imagery, ethereal vocals and delicate loops. The haunting and intimate melodies work with themes of ancestral longing, inherited memory, and the collective process of coming back to life. These are lullabies to wake us.
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Elisabeth Pixley-Fink is a Portland-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and band leader, born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan by a family of music-makers. Her blend of heartbreaking, heart-making folk songs and bratty garage rock hits you in the chest and mouth, with guts, trust and hunger.
“She has a campfire personality. You see her perform and you can’t turn away…you just stay there observing the fire, hypnotized.” -Luis Alberto González Arenas, rip.mx
Photo by John Hanson, Adam Levy
This event is free and open to the public!!
Art Exhibit
Forget Me Not Taxidermy
by artist Lindsay Bones
June 9 through August 4, 2019
A new art exhibit in a vintage travel trailer turned into a permanent art gallery, at The Sou’wester Lodge
‘Forget Me Not Taxidermy’ is a sculptural exhibition using taxidermy with road kill, bringing back animals in a new light. So they are remembered forever and not forgotten as victims of the road.
OPENING RECEPTION on Sunday June 9, 6pm-9pm.
OPEN: Fri/Sat/Sun 9am-9pm (and by request: visit the lodge front desk and we’ll open the gallery for you)
Art Gallery & Opening Reception free and open to the public.
Lindsay Bones
Raised in Astoria, and resides there now. Finished taxidermy school in Thompson falls Montana the summer of 2016. After having her housemates complain of having no room for ice-cream in the freezer from her collection of roadkill. Working on only animals that have died of natural causes/roadkill/pets. Dressing up squirrels, rats, mink, and mice. With inspiration from books like red wall & wind in the willows. She aspires to one day have her own boutique of oddities and taxidermy in her home town.
This trailer is a 1960’s Aloha made in Aloha, Oregon. It was rescued from a neglected RV park in the northern part of the Long Beach Peninsula. Now repaired and transformed into an art space, this art gallery is part of our Artist Residency Program and our non-profit organization, Sou’wester Arts.
The Best Intentions’ are Ani Banani and Pete Irving playing a repertoire that encompasses jazz standards, old blues, contemporary diamonds in the rough, and a surprising amount of classic-sounding original music.
This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
https://www.facebook.com/The-Best-Intentions-260509951525733/