SOU’WESTER EVENTS!

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

www.tommyalexander.com

Photo by by Boramie Sao

This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!!

Tickets now available for this special show!!!
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4520384

Sonny & the Sunsets are a beautiful west coast thing. Birthed from the sand, the surf, and twilight campfires down in Ocean Beach, Sonny & the Sunsets busted beach-pop songs spark recollections of doo wop’s otherworldly despair, a dose of goofball humor from the Michael Hurley school, and positive possibilities exuded by Jonathan Richman.

https://sonnyandthesunsets.bandcamp.com/

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The Gonks is an indie rock band made up of Sami of The Shes and Sonny & Ava of Sonny & The Sunsets. As Smith says, In the shortest description it has a kind of Shangri Las meets Tronics thing. Voila, and were sold. Im A Lonely Night Driver is a sweet showcase of Lynchs vocals and track My Glamorous Mother has a solid Kinks feel were digging on pretty hard.

https://rockshead.bandcamp.com/album/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-gonks

Photo by Arvel Hernandez

This event is an all ages show!
Drinks are served in our Library Bar, open every Saturday night for shows.

J. Graves is Portland’s most passionate post-punk trio. For fans of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sleater-Kinney, and Joy Division, this highly charged and agonizing garage rock lures listeners towards angular guitar work, skittering disco beats, and thudding bass. Front woman Jessa Graves, who takes her cues from Karen O, Corin Tucker, and Kathleen Hanna, is joined by Aaron MacDonald on the drums and Kelly Clifton on the bass. Their debut LP, Marathon, is out in the world for all to hear as a new fall release fast approaches.
Photo by Sleeper Studios
https://www.jgraves.xyz/
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Jason McCue is an alternative folk musician based out of Seattle.
“He had filled up the entirety of the Sky Church with a banquet of characters and emotions and, I believe, the soft buzz that emanates from a group of people trying to hold onto a moment.” – Seattle Weekly

His intricate finger-picking and soaring hypnotizing vocals were undeniable, reverberating throughout the hushed room.” – KEXP Blog

https://jasonmccue1.bandcamp.com

This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Drinks are served in our Library Bar, open every Saturday night for shows.

Spring 2020 Wellness Retreat Series

CANCELLED

INNER SPACE:

Shamanic Hypnosis / Gathering Resources for Inner Healing

with Mali Drexelius 

WEDNESDAY

4-6pm

• Check in/get settled

9-10am

• Spirit Plate, Simple Breakfast provided

10:30am-1:30pm

1:30-5pm BREAK TIME

Feel free to grab lunch nearby, or bring something for yourself to snack on. Also free time to sauna, go to the beach, rest, or request private shamanic session, etc.

BRING: A journal, comfortable clothes for the weekend, and any instruments, rattles, drums, chimes, etc that may call to you if you wish to make sound with. You may also choose to bring extra blankets for the beach and/or to be cozy during our sessions. Please bring anything else that may help you be more comfortable in the Pavilion space…pillows, meditation cushions, layers for clothing etc.

BOOK ONLINE by clicking BOOK NOW, enter the date range and the access code 

The Sou’wester Lodge at 3728 J Place, Seaview, WA 98644

Visit www.souwesterlodge.com/wellness/retreats to see the full schedule of retreats.

The Cowtown Serenaders create collage-like performances blending song, story, and performance art, using puppets, props, accordion, musical saw, and more. The current show, called “A Trip to Cowtown,” features their Incredible Collapsible Magical Marionette Music Box, and was first performed as part of the Eureka Fringe Festival in 2019. It tells the story of Peggy Pilgrim and Toe-Tapping Tommy, two wandering spirits who become friends in a world where all travel and spontaneity has been banned by the Good Government.

Daniel Nickerson and Tayloranne Finch create work as the Cowtown Serenaders to combine their interests in music, art, storytelling and performance. Their recordings and shows are characterized by acoustic sounds, natural materials, and fable-like stories, woven together to create a living tapestry of alternative Americana. Based in Arcata, CA, the group produces their work at the Sanctuary, a community art studio and residency.

https://www.thecowtownserenaders.com/
http://thesanctuaryarcata.org/

This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Drinks are available during the show in our Library Bar.

Join us at the Sou’wester for a special multi-media release show for Nick Jaina’s first-ever novel, Hitomi.

Nick Jaina was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award for his memoir Get It While You Can.
Now he has returned with a disarming work of fiction exploring the world of music and love and failure.

His live show mixes looped electric guitar and melodic solos using these as a backdrop for his captivating readings. It’s like if Thom Yorke and Jonathan Safran Foer were to compose a podcast right in front of you. The shows are hilarious, thrilling, and emotionally honest. Hitomi is a novel about a band touring the country while trying to understand what the point of it all is, and if they are ever going to find the elusive whale, or if there even is a whale.

Can you grieve someone without confirmation of loss? Can you love someone without possessing them?

All will be explored in this one-of-a-kind show on Easter Sunday.

Nick will be joined by drummer Daniel Charles Hunt who will play an opening set of improvised percussion before accompanying Nick on his songs.

www.nickjaina.com

This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Drinks are available during the show in our Library Bar.

Portland OR based cosmic-americana-folk duo Dead Lee formed in 2017 when Brian Adrian Koch (current and founding member of Portland indie-rock band Blitzen Trapper) and partner, singer-songwriter Kara Harris, first started singing together for each other in their apartment. They soon branched to playing for friends at parties, special events and tribute nights before deciding to take their love of singing and playing together more seriously. For the last year and a half they’ve been playing all over the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana), Ireland and recently returned from a month long tour of Europe.

www.facebook.com/deadleeduo
www.instagram.com/dead_lee_duo
www.deadlee.bandcamp.com

This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Drinks are available during the show in our Library Bar, open every Saturday night.

Spring 2020 Wellness Retreat Series

Inbodiment: Applying Energy Concepts to Release Tension with Dr Heidi Walrath  

What stories are stuck in your body?

The “how to” look, listen and feel within.

led by Intuitive & Clairvoyant healer Dr. Heidi Walrath, DC

Inbodiment: is to inhabit. To bring into focus expressed curiosities and explore the expansivness within your own body’s vibration to gain tangible, sensory awareness of self-body.

This retreat is for those who wish to strengthen their ability to heal thy self.

Dr. Heidi will guide you through activities, movement, breath and meditation techniques that bring you into your body, as she accesses her intuitive and clairvoyant abilities to assist you in gaining firsthand experience with what YOU feel like. Learn how to discover your hidden stories and how to release your own pain and discomfort.

Dr. Heidi, DC BIO has always been curious. Guided by her strong inner voice, she has always listened.  When she was a child she had this feeling in her heart that lead her down the path. She started studying healing arts 20 years ago and fell in love with the idea that the body has many stories and that they could be accessed and healed. Since then, she has studied and explored different modalities receiving a certification in 200-hr Acupressure, an Assoc. degree in Exercise Rehabilitation and Injury Prevention, a Bachelors in Kinesiology & Exercise Physiology and a Doctorate in Chiropractic. She has continued her studies in quantum theory, conscious field work and dug deep into vibrational and tonal approaches through a chiropractic approach called Bio-geometric Integration (BGI) which teaches about the tonal expression through the structural body and how our bodies expressed distorted tension patterns through the whole person. She also continues to study theories on epigenetics, quantum medicine, as is currently practicing in Portland as an intuitive and clairsentient chiropractor who focuses on emotional integration and medical intuitive work.

FRIDAY

6-8pm

• Meet and Greet.
• Setting the tone for the workshop.
• Introductions and discussion about Inbodiment and why it is a powerful approach in self-healing.
• Participants share any specific health concerns they are experiencing.
• ACTIVITY grounding and clearing.

SATURDAY

8am-1pm

• DISCUSSION on body tension, consciousness and stored potential.
• Guided ACTIVE MEDITATION: Accessing awareness: Where do you exist? Finding hidden layers.
• DISCUSSION on energy, force dynamics, focus vs allowance.
• Guided ACTIVE MEDITATION: Giving attention to the volumes & accessing our infinite field.
• DISCUSSION the Waves of Breath.
• BREATH ACTIVITY: Breath & your body. How to reach the inside corners.
• Guided ACTIVE MEDITATION: Connecting to breath, as a vector, with purpose.
  

LUNCH BREAK

3-6pm

• DISCUSSION of concepts of awareness, focus and intention
• MOVEMENT ACTIVITY: Where are you in space? Following vs leading
• Guided MEDITATION: Body Scanning: where does your awareness lead you? What do you see, feel & observe?
• ACTIVITY grounding and staying open
• QUESTIONS on concepts covered

SUNDAY

10am-1pm

• DISCUSSION: Questions from yesterday.
• Guided ACTIVE MEDITATION: Breath on purpose, building attention & the meeting of vectors.
• DISCUSSION: Playing with body energies inside & outside, tension, disconnection, injuries, stored emotions & potential to heal.
• MOVEMENT activity: Activating body awareness and moving energy.
• BREATH Exercise: Creating space connecting vectors (purposeful breath & awareness meet intention.
• MEDITATION creativity and questions
  

LUNCH BREAK

3-6pm

• DISCUSSION: Stored Pain- How to change your broken story: does your past still exist once healed?
• Guided ACTIVE MEDITATION observing your sensations
• DISCUSSION on energy dynamics. Changing direction, pushing vs pulling
• Guided ACTIVE MEDITATION: Playing in all directions of moving energy or letting energy move.
  QUESTIONS?
• BREATH + MEDITATION: Putting it all together.
• DISCUSSION: Clearing and releasing the story
• SELF Guided Application: Each person focuses on one component of their body discovery to apply what they learned
• SHARING and OPEN DISCUSSION
• CLOSING gratitude share
• ACTIVITY Releasing energy and being in allowance of change.

BEGINS: Friday at 6pm

ENDS: Sunday at 6pm

COST: $250, plus lodging (20% off)

BRING: Dress comfortably to move, bring a water bottle, and yoga mat if you have one.

This workshop is best for students age 14 and up. 10 students max.

BOOK ONLINE by clicking BOOK NOW, enter the date range and the access code INBODIMENT

*For SHARED LODGING OPTIONS please contact souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542 between 9am-9pm

The Sou’wester Lodge at 3728 J Place, Seaview, WA 98644

This class is part of the Summer 2020 Wellness Retreat Series. All classes are open to the public and all skill levels welcome.

Visit www.souwesterlodge.com/wellness/retreats to see the full schedule of retreats.

Hailing from the Sierra town of Placerville, CA, Ms. Nelson wound her way down the hills and through the valley to land in San Francisco, spending the mid-2000s finding that the middle ground between electric folk and California pop is in fact a windswept urban hilltop with her five-piece ensemble Prairiedog, who released two albums in their time together.

Since moving on under her own name in 2014, Ms. Nelson has released two full-length albums on Burger Records, Fast-Moving Clouds ​(2015) and ​Oh, Evolution​ (2017). She has also earned a MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and subsequently published​ Illuminate The Ruins​ in late 2018, a collection of poetry written throughout the previous year.

Her third with Burger, ​Weird Glow​, released June 28, 2019. It’s a new approach for Ms. Nelson, foregoing the full band of the previous two records, and approaching this body of work with just one longtime-collaborator and an engineer/producer.

The result is a record that is more sprawling sonically and lyrically. The dreams are desert dreams, the longing almost tangible, but gone are the feelings of being trapped and the need to escape that we heard in 2015’s Fast-Moving Clouds​. The riffs are heavier, the fuzz is thicker, the push/pull of a deep groove against a lilting lyric, more salient. There’s a hard-won comfort in the new record, a discovery of something that was maybe there all along but couldn’t be seen. Bright light, in ​Weird Glow​, has burned through the fog.

—Christopher Wind

There is a pulsing radiance resonating from Sarah Bethe Nelson’s aptly titled third studio album, Weird Glow. You can hear it right from the first cut. “Desert Song” opens with instantly catchy electric guitar riffs – the ragged old amp distortion almost seems to be growling alongside her gauzy vocals in a beauty-and-beast contrast. There are other passages where her breathy singing recalls moments of bygone 1990s indie rock. The transcendent and catchy “Too Rich” invokes memories of the British C86 sound crosspollinated with the ethereal dream-pop of the same era. But Weird Glow is hardly an Anglophile’s affair.

Throughout this alluring album, Sarah Bethe’s native California roots vine upward and out toward the sunshine. With its subtle guitar jangle, delicately descending melodies, and romantic lyrics, the title-track taps into veins of yesteryear’s West Coast canyon-rock sound. “Sunspots” is a gorgeous and haunting standout with slowly building layers of sonic textures – it’s a bewitching and romantic dirge that begs to be placed in the love scene of a soundtrack to a cool independent film or new streaming series. If the plot of Stranger Things ever moves into the early ‘90s, this one would feel right at home.

Throughout Weird Glow, Sarah Bethe never succumbs to full blown retrospection, but manages to invite musical ghosts into her recordings for a sublime, spectral sound of warm familiarity. Van Morrison’s “Everyone” haunts “To Be Continued,” while traces of Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone” can be heard wafting from “Paralyzed Waltz.”

Where her former recordings involved a larger ensemble, Weird Glow takes a different approach with the sole accompaniment of multi-instrumentalist and longtime bandmate Rusty Miller, making for a more cohesive listen that dodges predictability. There’s an uncanny chemistry between them. In a live setting, they play together with an extra sensory perception in their communication that sounds like they’re reading each other’s musical minds. Miller’s parts garnish Sarah Bethe’s thoughtfully crafted songs with an extra dimension not heard in the tunes of her contemporaries. With this natural confluence, the slow burning groove of “Natural Disaster” somehow manages to balance naked vulnerability with armored confidence, all the while being catchy enough to put on a make-out playlist. She bookends Weird Glow with a smoldering epic – “8th and Hooper” plays for nearly nine minutes, taking the listener on a journey that stretches and winds through the sonic topographies of her musical soul. Vestiges of her former band Prairiedog surface here, laced with lovely guitar leads that dare to braid Ennio Morricone’s classic spaghetti western soundtracks with Galaxie 500’s hypnotic mantras of timeless guitar tones.

— Eric Shea

https://sarahbethenelson.com/

Photo by Jennifer Lewis

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GRAVY: https://curlycassettes.com/album/gravesest-hits?fbclid=IwAR12ieH3vuYe-uIxgWYRIIp2lbS5eDEcmcD3v8rcquUA6wGoDKfgXsWXpbw

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This event is free, all ages, and open to the public!
Drinks are served in our Library Bar, open every Saturday night for shows.