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!
Grief Retreat with The Portland Grief house
Two night retreat with guided meditations and sound healing
Who/How much: w/Julia Francis and Laura Green of The Portland Grief House $498-807 includes lodging
What: We will spend the weekend in conversation with the non-human world; asking what medicine we can offer and what we can take. Except for grief spills and vocalizing during sound healing, we will keep conversation with humans to a bare minimum. We’ll use guided sound work, yoga practice and meditation to let spoken language shift away from the center of our attention. We’ll listen deeply, and talk sincerely with the world around us, and believe what we hear and learn. Retreat pricing includes various Sou’Wester lodging options. Full event details and itinerary found here: https://www.
Email: info@griefhouse.org
Screenprinting With Natural Dyes Workshop
w/ Katey Rissi $60
Learn how to make screenprinting ink from scratch using natural dyes and use those inks to create prints. In this class, students will create a screen printed edition on paper, working with a palette of color made possible by materials foraged and grown. The resulting work is entirely biodegradable, place-based, and beautiful!
Chibia
Live at The Sou’wester
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Her track ‘Honey’ has been featured in Marvel’s She Hulk as well as Queen Sugar on the Oprah Winfrey Network. It has also been voted one of KMHD’s best singles of 2020, quoted as “not a second of its 4 minutes land[ing] flat— and as soon as it’s over, you put it on again.”
Nature-Based Creative Writing Circle
guided by poet Charity E. Yoro
Saturday, Nov 18 | 10:30am | Sou’wester Geodesic Dome
Free & open to the public in The Sou’wester Lodge’s Geodesic Dome
Join Charity E. Yoro for a creative writing circle in a casual, low-pressure environment, as we allow our pen to be stirred by the elements of the coastal forest! Held in the cozy, light-filled Geodesic Dome, we’ll draw inspiration from nature-based prompts, gentle stretching/movement, and our collective energy. Bring a pen/pencil, your favorite notebook, and a mug for coffee/tea. This gathering is free & open to all levels/genres of writers.
Japanese Decorative Paper & Bookbinding
a workshop w/ Yuka Petz $60
In this hands-on workshop we will be introduced to sekkazome (also known as orizomegami), which is a traditional Japanese form of folding and dying paper to create a variety of colorful patterns. We will then use our newly designed papers to bind into a traditional stab-bound book.
FULL
Jess Clemons
Live at The Sou’wester
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Jess Clemons’ experience as a traveler, former island dweller, and small town girl have influenced her folksy homegrown musical style. Raised in Vermont, she attended music school in Nova Scotia where she was a side and front woman for various bands, touring around Canada in the summers. A big leap took her to Nantucket, working as a gardener & musician, rowing to and from a houseboat she called home for several years. After finding Baja in 2010 and subsequently the wind-loving community of Hood River, Jess now calls the Gorge home. Playing guitar & piano on stages around the Northwest and in Baja in the winters, she has become known for her powerhouse vocals, intimate originals and tasteful covers of folks like Patty Griffin, Brandi Carlile and Lori Mckenna, all of whom she has been compared to. Coming out of the woodwork after a couple of years of limited shows, Jess is excited to be back on the road this year.
Steph Green LIVE at The Sou’wester Lodge
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
11/22/23
Free & Open to the public!
Steph Green’s music is for those who fancy the art of songwriting, depicting a lonely world illuminated by strangeness and beauty. Her sophomore album, “Lore”, is a series of vignettes that immerse the listener in dreams and nightmares of the West. It’s a world of towering storm clouds, flooding rivers, the smell of ponderosa pines, the pull of desert moons, and revenge, regret, and redemption under diamond skies. The natural and supernatural collide, wailing spirits wander lost highways, and shapeshifting starling murmurations soar overhead of restless loners.
Green produced and recorded “Lore” at home on a borrowed 16-track reel-to-reel, creating a distinctive and otherworldly sound with weeping steel guitar, washy organ, and ghostly vocal layering reverberating from a distant dimension. Embarking on an almost entirely solo recording process that allowed room for experimentation, Green also enlisted long-time collaborator Duff Thompson as the rhythm section on bass and drums. Out October 20th on Mashed Potato Records, “Lore” is a rugged, eerie, and wild homage to both a real and imagined place.
Green brought the same DIY ethos and spirit of experimentation that characterizes “Lore” to her previous releases, all of which were also recorded analog and variously featured her in the roles of producer and multi-instrumentalist. Her debut album “Thanks for That” and second EP, “Spooky Love” were recorded mostly live in makeshift home studios while living in New Orleans, with both releases taking influence from a combination of garage, indie rock/pop and country music. Her first release and venture into writing and recording was the cassette 4-track EP, “Salt Spring Island Tapes”, created alone in a seaside barn in British Columbia, following years of traveling and performing as a street musician. In addition to her own project, Green has also performed as a backing musician and vocalist for numerous songwriters over the years, appearing most recently on recordings for Duff Thompson and Dean Johnson. Following an extensive era of collaboration in New Orleans, “Lore” finds Green returning to her roots in Canada, multi-tracking her way through the isolated, northern winter.
Reb & the Good News Live at the Sou’wester
11/25/2023 8p FREE
Reb Conner is the singer, guitarist, songwriter and band leader of Portland based Reb & the Good News. Her full band plays funk, world, and soul and brings optimism and cathartic release to the dance floor. Catchy horn lines and sultry vocals soar over grooves that you can’t help but move to. Led by vocalist and guitarist Reb Conner, Reb’s love of rhythms from around the world bring the dance floor on a journey that’s full of surprises. Formed in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic, these songs reach for hope in a world under pressure. Reb believes that through feeling deeply and dancing together, we can face all that we’re up against in this life. Her striped down solo set is where Reb gets to express the heart of her music and lean into her more intimate sultry side.
Reb & the Good News released their debut album “Wings” on May 11th 2021. This album is a culmination of a lifetime searching for Reb’s own voice in music. At 19, her love affair with music began by playing songs around a beach fire in her coastal hometown of Lincoln City. During a subsequent trip to Europe with a guitar, jazz was the music that most spoke to her, and she returned to the States to pursue an education. Reb went to music school at the age of 21 not yet knowing a major scale. With a lot of catching up to do, her education lasted all of 7 years, starting at LCC and finishing at the University of Oregon where she focused on Jazz guitar. Reb left her last collaborative project, High Step society in 2018, and moved from Eugene to Portland ready to tell her own story and bring her own aesthetic to life.
Tispur live at The Sou’wester
Sat, Dec 2nd 7p presented by Sou’wester Arts
Tispur is a chamber-folk project fronted by Samwise Carlson from Boise, ID, now located in Portland, OR. Known for their intricate guitar-work, dream-like vocals, and ornate lyricism that excite evocative imagery of imaginary worlds; Samwise creates gently hypnotic, moving performances akin to the spirits of Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, and Joanna Newsom.
J. Graves
Live at The Sou’wester
Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Tense relationship rock, sanguine lyricism, chord changes like a secret longing, a rhythm section that thuds, skitters, and melts over the determined voice of Jessa Graves. The heat of the cataclysm gives off a vapor known to galvanize meatspace
into writhing, dancing heaps, creating rabid, loyal fans. Joined by Kelly Clifton, perhaps one of the best bassists, and the
unassuming Aaron MacDonald, who would be a watchmaker were he not a drummer, J. Graves is back with a crushing new LP FORTRESS OF FUN, a first of it’s kind choose your own adventure record.