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!
Peter Donovan : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Peter Donovan is an astute musical storyteller. His perceptive songs span genres and feature narratives based on both real-life and fictitious characters, written with a contemplative heart. After finding success and a dedicated fanbase with Seattle’s All The Real Girls and his side project The Rose Petals (alongside Elijah Ocean), Donovan returns in 2022 with his first proper solo album, This Better Be Good.
His previous releases spun expertly-crafted character sketches that earned plaudits from Paste Magazine, Consequence of Sound, American Songwriter, and more. With This Better Be Good, Donovan spreads his wings, combining the plaintive soul of indie rock, the heartfelt sincerity of Americana, and the stirring studio pageantry of ‘70s singer-songwriters, drawing them together to explore more intimate depths.
This Better Be Good is Donovan’s most personal effort yet; a loose concept record about the ups and downs of an ultimately doomed romance between two people. The songs are more reflective than bitter; more nostalgic than sad. It’s an album about learning and growing from lived experiences and reflecting on past failures in the interest of future successes. Donovan has managed to create an album that is sonically nostalgic and modern at once, both soul-stirring and dripping with heartache. It’s a roadmap of his past seen through fresh eyes, and a triumphant first step in this new chapter.
LAITH : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Laith, known by some as Hutch Hartford, hails from the suburban hurricane of Houston, Texas. Laith’s music is soaked withmemories of Grandma and Grandpa’s bayou house, rides on a red vintage lawn mower packed with cousins, and smoky, music filled bars
New Victorian : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
New Victorian is the ethereal, small-rock project from Portlander Scott Taylor.
Hanna Haas : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Hanna Haas is a folk singer-songwriter based in Portland whose warm guitar and soft vocals carry songs that speak to the constant rising and falling of life and the eternal beauty of it all.
DJ Papi Fimbres : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
David “Papi” Fimbres creates sound out of thin air that feels familiar at first, but at a second thought, is nothing you’ve ever heard before. As a percussionist and multi-instrumen
In this workshop students will use transparent objects to create moving image cyanotypes without the use of traditional filmmaking equipment. This hands-on workshop will demonstrate how to clear coat 16mm film with cyanotype solution, compose creative film sequences with pre-coated stock, properly expose in the sun, and develop and tone images using household chemicals. At the end of the workshop, we will splice and project our sequences. Participants are encouraged to bring translucent fabrics, objects, 16mm negatives, transparencies and other materials to enhance their creative journey.
Stephanie Hough is an experimental filmmaker, production coordinator and director of photography whose work explores repetition, gender, relationships and emotional landscapes. Her films HOW TO FEEL (DV, 2010), HEART (16mm, 2013), SPOOKY ACTION AT A DISTANCE (Super 8, 2016) have screened in the NW Filmmaker’s Festival, Portland International Film Festival, Experimental Film Festival PDX, BendFilm, The Boathouse Microcinema, TriBeca Film Center and more. As an educator with the Northwest Film Center, Pacific University and the PNCA, Hough has a passion for sharing analog film techniques and making learning accessible for all.
Workshop cost $70
Register for all three Analog Film Workshops for $150
Sunbathe is the devastatingly catchy, fuzzed-out pop band brought to you by songwriter Maggie Morris. Suffused with lyrical honesty and a raw performance style, Morris can command the stage coasting along on an abundance of hooks and lighthearted guitar. Sunbathe has quickly gained notoriety for their captivating live performances, touring with the likes of Typhoon and Built to Spill, all the while living and breathing a DIY ethos. Referring to themselves as the most punk pop band in Portland, Oregon– Sunbathe cites ABBA and The Ramones as two of their biggest influences yet they will remind you of neither. Their songs will leave you feeling nostalgic for something that you probably only experienced in a dream.
Chitra Subrahmanyam loved Portland well before they moved here. As a youngster in the East Bay with a cool older sister, they were handed down a mix CD that included some material by the late Elliott Smith. Hearing “Between The Bars” opened the door to other Portland acts like Smith’s former band Heatmiser and Sleater-Kinney. The allure was immediate.
“When you’re going through something, especially as an angsty teenager, it’s not really hard to find something that speaks to you in music from people like Elliott,” Subrahmanyam said. “And when I was starting to drum, finding bands that were so dynamic —that had this balance between quiet and loud, and this seething undertone that ran through even the quieter parts — appealed to me as someone that feels like people think I had nothing to say or offer but at home, I got to bang on shit and let that out.”
Moving to Portland felt, in some ways, inevitable, drawn here as Subrahmanyam was by the music and a promising post-graduate program in speech pathology. Since arriving, they have slowly worked their way into the artistic community, starting their journey drumming for artists like Mo Troper and Balloon Club.
But after taking a few introductory guitar lessons, Subrahmanyam began to write their own songs, amassing a collection of lowkey but powerful material that they have recorded and performed under the name Phone Voice.
Their debut release, 2021’s cradle tape, is a perfect blending of the confessional and the metaphorical, as Subrahmanyam unpacks broken relationships and inner torment. “I am the air that surrounds you,” they sing over agitated waves of distorted guitar on “river.” “River of shame, you flow within me / yet you are nowhere / not around me anymore.”
In this workshop we will use plaiting and twining to create a small basket. We will be weaving with hand harvested and natural materials, including cedar bark, cherry bark, sea grass and iris leaf. We will be creating unique shapes and designs using these 2 techniques.
Rose Covert is a constant maker and an artist who creates in many directions. Her paintings, sculptures and woven works have been displayed throughout the Pacific Northwest. Most recently Rose has been engaged in woven sculptural work made of plants growing within a 30 mile radius of where she lives. Rose makes these very intricate and wild shapes by weaving one stick at a time, thus creating pathways to follow and build upon. As a member of the Columbia Basin Basketry Guild and a childhood educator Rose moves seamlessly between student and teacher, learning from the materials, the process and the people she works with.
As a teacher Rose is drawn to engagement and embodiment, beginning by exploring the mediums and materials we’ll be working with then using our senses and intuition to get a feel for what we’ll be making. Her teaching style has an emphasis on the magic and play of making, using questions and conversation as a way to encourage connection and imagination.
Workshop cost $80
Coach Phillips Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Initially formed in 2017 as an acoustic duo of vocalists Wade Phillips and Jessica Kim, Coach Phillips is a 5-piece band including Chet Baughman (drums/saxophone), Joe Oakes (guitars/misc.) and Tom Moskal (bass). The Seattle-based project has produced one full-length record to date and two EPs— the most recent being ‘Three-Chord Songs, Vol. 1’ released in May 2022.
‘…in the same sandbox as Hovvdy or the like, breaking bread with old emo tendencies and dipping it in the wine cup of present bedroom pop.’ – Nathan Lankford, Austin Town Hall