SOU’WESTER EVENTS!

Ledford’s attention to lyrical detail is simply stunning. He makes the most of everyday circumstance, while never making the mundane feel normal. – 9X Music Magazine.

Louis Ledford is a great songwriter; witty, insightful and observant regarding the oddities of human behavior. – J. Kelly, Creative Loafing, Atlanta.

Louis Ledford achieves what Woody Guthrie was so good at–making an instant connection with the listener – Americana UK.

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Shorebirds, Seabirds & Little Brown Birds with Mark Elliott

This Birding Field Trip will meet inside the Sou’wester Lodge at 9:30am and finish at noon. Some birds we will be looking for are Yellow-rumped Warblers, Great Blue Herons, Violet-green Swallows, Caspian Terns, Surf Scoters (a sea duck), nesting Brandt’s Cormorants and Bald Eagles. We will learn about bird behavior and how to identify birds by using “fieldmarks” and habitat. We will be hiking in and around Cape Disappointment State Park and we can carpool. A Washington State Park “Discovery Pass” will be needed for parking (a $10 day fee). Bring binoculars. For those who want to continue birding in the afternoon please bring a sack lunch.

Audubon Society of Lincoln City’s field trip guide Mark Elliott has been birding for 35 years. He teaches raptor identification and basic birding at Oregon Coast Community College. Mark also leads field trips for Yaquina Birders and Naturalists in Newport, Oregon and at the Birding and Blues Festival in Pacific City, Oregon. Mark stays active in citizen science by taking part in annual Christmas Birdcounts and has been recording data for COASST (Coastal Observation And Seabird Survey Team) for seven years. He has birded 48 states, the Caribbean, Canada, Mexico and Europe. He now lives on the Oregon coast.

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Experiments in Writing & Zine Making with A.M. O’Malley & Grant Gerald Miller

Come experiment! This workshop will consist of 4 hours of generative writing and then and 1-2 hours of zine making with a lunch break. We will explore erasure poems, flash memoir and flash fiction and will do our best to embody the spirit of play in our writing. The class include a zine-which is a self-made publication made by one person or a small group.

A.M. O’Malley lives in Portland, OR where she is the Executive Director of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. Her writing has appeared in Nailed Magazine, Poor Claudia and The Burnside Review, among other publications. Expecting Something Else her first full-length book of poem-memoir is out on University of Hell Press. Find her at amomalley.com

Grant Gerald Miller was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama and an assistant editor at Black Warrior Review. His work has appeared or is set to appear in various journals including Hobart, Qu Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, Necessary Fiction, and Nimrod.

COST:  $25 – $40 sliding scale

BRING: a writing utensil and paper, and please bring a sack lunch and/or snack (hot tea and coffee provided)

All workshops are open to the public.

All Skill Levels Welcome.

This workshop is for students age 15 and up.

RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542

Lili St Anne is an experimental trip-folk-hop band based in Portland Oregon. With lyric melodies and unexpected syncopation, the intimate songwriting and soulfully enticing vocals envelope you in an ethereal world permeated by strains of neo-soul, 1940s jazz, appalachian folk, and human howls. The songs live in a curious juxtaposition of whimsy and thoughtfulness, creating an intimate life soundtrack that ponders themes of love and loss from a distinctly female perspective. These songs, in collaboration with funk and hip-hop drummer Jason Miller, make Lili St Anne an uncommon genre-bending experience. They are in the midst of releasing their first single together, “Wolves”, and will be touring the West Coast in August 2017.

Photo by Hunter Faacks

Indira Valey (Portland, OR) is an avant garde multidisciplinary performer and a second generation Latinx Spanish speaker. Her ancient-sounding, resonant voice is a force of nature, and she utilizes looping technology, effects pedals, and a unique palette of instruments (including flugelhorn, timpani, kalimba, electric guitar) to create mesmerizing and memorable live performances that are ever-changing due to her spontaneous improvisational magic. Her debut album Recordar is a bilingual collection of oceanically soothing, powerfully healing songs about memory and finding your own inner power. In Spanish, “recordar” means both “to remember” and “to pass back through the heart”.

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Drawing as Seeing and the Acceptance of Chaos: A Sumi Ink Wash Drawing Workshop with Heather McLaughlin

Drawing is a way of seeing, a way of understanding and an exercise. This drawing workshop will focus on plenair (on-sight) observational drawing the beautiful and chaotic material: sumi ink.

The ink is an excellent tool to capture light and shapes, as compared to the way pencils and pens lead themselves to more contours and patterns. This special ink has rich, deep blacks that are easy to swoon over. During this 3 hour workshop students will complete multiple small drawings using the Sou’wester grounds as their muse and model. We will cover techniques for recording scale, light and shapes while practicing plenair drawing skills and increase our understanding and mastery of the sumi ink medium.

Heather McLaughlin was born next to the Chesapeake Bay in Baltimore Maryland and relocated to Red Lodge Montana, on the north border of Yellowstone Park, in 1991. After high school, she continued west to Portland Oregon and continued her studies at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Heather completed her Bachelors of Fine Art in Printmaking in 2005.  She served on the board of Flight 64 Studio (a Member-run Print Studio) from 2008 until 2014. She currently serves at the Printmaking Studio Manager and adjunct Continuing Education instructor at PNCA. In addition to her art, Heather is a musician in the band Rotties, a performer and production assistant. Visit Heather’s website at hardcoremermaid.com

COST:  $40 plus $10 material fee (Please pay material fee directly to instructor.) 

BRING: Please wear clothes that you will be comfortable in outdoors that you do not mind getting art materials on. Please bring a sack lunch and/or snack. Hot tea and coffee provided.

All workshops are open to the public.

All Skill Levels Welcome.

This workshop is geared for adults.

RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542

Kendra McKinley perceives a song like a painter views a blank canvas: an opportunity to expand an audience’s mind, to wash their thoughts in brilliant hues of blue and violet, scarlet reds and effusive orange. Inspired by the past but not chained to it, McKinley’s music spans the diverse spectrum of pop music. She echoes the intricate vocal arrangements crafted by Brian Wilson, fractures the narrow definitions of a genre like St. Vincent, and recognizes storytelling as the key aspect of a great tune the way the best singer-songwriters have for generations.

“Kendra McKinley is a rising star in San Francisco.” – Annie Bacon, SF Critic

“Her 1960s chamber-pop sound and strong, undulating vocals — which slightly resembles St. Vincent (Annie Clark) — will make you feel like ditching work to skip through a field of sunflowers with your new lover.” – Melissa Hellmann, The Bold Italic

“…McKinley is no throwback act – her sound may echo the past but she belongs firmly in the present.” – Nick Schneider, The Bay Bridged

This event is free and open to the public!

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Yoga in the Sweet Sweet Summertime with Ivy Ross Ricci

Explore asana (yoga poses), journaling, and habits of mind as avenues to self-knowledge, serenity, and celebration during the height of summertime on the Seaview coast!

Ivy is a nationally recognized yoga teacher, musician, and youth development activist who creatively incorporates philosophy, poetry, humor, storytelling, and a radical understanding of human potential into accessible yoga practices, songs, and social service. She believes in the power of everyday life lessons to draw us all into the heart of Yoga and Music.

She is currently in the process of building an army of artists who will fight via creative critical thought and profound self-love to alter standards of beauty in this country. In the words of Bill Coperthwaite, “Beauty is not what something looks like, it is what it is made of.” Ivy imagines a world in which young people can find refuge from harmful images in mainstream media within a culture of vibrant and caring adults who embody self-love and acceptance.

She is also co-founder of a national movement called the Keepers of Wonder in which youth of all ages work hard to keep the world magical.

COST:  $20

BRING: Yoga mat, journal and pen. Hot tea and coffee provided.

All workshops are open to the public.

All Skill Levels Welcome. Open to all ages. 

RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542

Iowa-born, Portland-based, Nate Lumbard is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has toured the nation and the world sharing both introspective and groovy de and re-constructions of life as we know it.  When he is not inventing instruments or bouncing his newborn baby girl, he is eating clam chowder for breakfast.