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!

Dec
3
Sat
Erisy Watt : Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Dec 3 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Erisy Watt : Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Portland-based Erisy Watt will release her sophomore album Eyes like the Ocean on April 1 via American Standard Time Records. This is the highly anticipated follow-up to her 2019 debut hailed by No Depression as “an exercise in what contemporary folk today sounds like at its peak.” With this new offering, Erisy returns with a lovingly crafted, sophisticated collection of songs, recorded live-to-tape and produced by Y La Bamba’s Ryan Oxford.

Erisy’s sound reliably alludes to iconic vocalists of the 1960s, but here, finds a more fitting home in the vintage-tinged indie ether of Bedouine or Julie Byrne. Her vocals are intimate and alluring, an artful alternation between soothing whispers and gentle howls, backed by an instrumental bigness that evokes windy mountainscapes and piercing blue skies. Throughout Eyes like the Ocean, Erisy calls upon the expanse of earth and sky to navigate life as an adult woman—satiating restlessness, finding connection, and fostering that ever-elusive sense of self that allows one peace.

Erisy Watt grew up in Nashville, but it wasn’t until she left the city of music for college in California that she began writing her own songs. Both of these formative settings are present in her creative instinct—Nashville’s knack for a timeless melody, California’s bewildering vastness and dusty free spirit—but upon these sonic bones lives a body of global adventure. Erisy is an environmental professional with a deep fondness for nature, and has spent time in eclectic locales like Nepal, Thailand, and Hawaii, most often in rugged, remote wilderness. She approaches the music profession with a similar sense of purity; she once toured Europe on foot, banjo on her back. This wide-open way of moving through a capacious planet enlivens Erisy’s music with true troubadour soul. Her songs spring not so much from one place in particular as from a series of well worn travel journals.

This stretch of inspiration calls for acute musical capacity, and fortuitously, Erisy no doubt knows what she’s doing. An accomplished multi-instrumentalist, she can walk up and down a fretboard in gymnastic Jazz chords, craft complex guitar patterns in a wide range of tempos, and masterfully press her vocal performances past previous limits. In the midst of recording her debut album in 2018, Erisy underwent surgery to remove a problematic polyp on her vocal chord. While the diagnosis and procedure proved traumatic, Erisy discovered a new vocal freedom in the healing process. Today, she describes the feeling of being uninhibited, both physically and creatively, as integral to her artistic evolution. The transformation is most palpable on crossover hit “Big Sky,” one of Erisy’s oldest songs, which she polished to shine.

On Eyes like the Ocean, Erisy lets her newly liberated talent shimmer, but her real art is in connection: tracing the invisible vessels between an ocean’s black depth and a mountain peak’s twinkling tip, tracking the slow immensity of glacial paths to the monstrous canyons they carve. She ties her insides to the outside, taking tips from the cosmos, a naturalist with a knapsack of stardust, making luminescent the dark parts of her path, finding a way forward.

Dec
10
Sat
The Apricots : Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Dec 10 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

The Apricots: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

The Apricots, an emerging Portland project, is serving indie-rock with funky, soulful influences. They have fun exploring cracks between the genres they love and growing sound between them. Spend a night with the Apricots and you’ll walk away with a pep in your step and a little teeny tiny sparkle in your eye, hopefully wondering “who the hell was that?”

Dec
17
Sat
Crooked Valley / Will Elias / Paper Plates / Bones: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Dec 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

A special evening of local songwriters at The Sou’wester Lodge. 

Jan
7
Sat
Sam Pinkerton: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jan 7 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Sam Pinkerton: Presented by Sou’wester Arts
 
Portland-based singer/songwriter Sam Pinkerton, from Venice Beach, Florida, began her career as an artist in 2012, after moving to Nashville, TN to study Songwriting at Belmont University, and releasing her first record titled An Introduction. In 2016, she moved to Portland, OR, and formed and fronted the blue-eye r&b band, Prolly Knot, touring on one EP and multiple singles. Over the past few years, Sam has worked on writing for other artists, releasing new music, and forming a songwriting group in Portland, where she organizes and hosts writers’ rounds, workshops, and events. She’s put out four songs this year and is currently working on an album.
Jan
14
Sat
Jonah Sissoyev and Anna Hoone: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jan 14 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Jonah Sissoyev and Anna Hoone: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Anna Hoone and Jonah Sissoyev are both Portland-based songwriters who recently tied the knot.
 
Anna’s upcoming release “You’re the Only One Here,” was written during a period of chronic illness. The songs capture the tenderness, loneliness, and vulnerability of that time.
 
After taking a 2 year break, Jonah Sissoyev is releasing his fifth studio album, “Me, Myself, God.” This album is a collection of contemplative songs recorded in a historic lodge in the Waloowa mountains of eastern Oregon.
Jan
21
Sat
This is Me: Mixed Media Collaging about Identity with Angie Ebba @ Sou'wester Lodge
Jan 21 @ 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

In this workshop we’ll explore the idea of personal identity through mixed media. Learn how to do packing tape image transfers, create your own collage papers, and then make a grungy mixed media piece of artwork.

Angie Ebba is a queer disabled writer, artist, educator, activist, and performer. She is a published poet and essayist, who teaches and performs across the US. She believes strongly in the power of words and art to help better understand ourselves, build connections and community, and make personal and social change. 

Register

Andrew Victor: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jan 21 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Andrew Victor: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Throughout his career Andrew Victor has shared bills in the U.S. and Europe with Sharon Van Etten, Alela Diane, Marissa Nadler, Tomo Nakayama, and Damien Jurado. He has been a core part of local scenes in Brooklyn, Seattle, Joshua Tree, and Rhode Island. His new studio album Recovery arrives 11/4/22. 

Jan
28
Sat
Not-Knowing: Experiments in Writing with Quinn Gancedo and Katie Savastano @ Sou'wester Lodge
Jan 28 @ 10:00 am – 2:00 pm

 

 

 

 

 

 


We often think of the poem, essay, or story as a device that delivers great knowledge, wisdom, or emotional insight, and the writer as an expert craftsman, who, with great skill and complete intention, willfully inscribes those messages onto the page. In contrast, the late (great) author Donald Barthelme defines the writer as “one who, embarking on a task, does not know what to do”.  This workshop takes Barthelme’s definition as its starting point, and is designed to give students hands-on experience in writing without any predetermined outcome in mind–in writing with an eye towards uncertainty, chance, experiment, play, and discovery.  This will be a playful, exercise based workshop and seasoned writers as well as students with little to no experience are equally welcome to participate.

Quinn Gancedo is a writer and educator based in Portland, Oregon.  He is the author of The Nouns (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2022) and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, Diagram, Tammy, New Delta Review, and elsewhere.  He has taught creative writing, literature, and DIY bookmaking at the California Institute of the Arts and in various community and youth education settings.  He is a co-founder of Elbow Room, a non-profit arts organization focused on providing material support, mentorship, representation, and space to work, collaborate, and experiment for artists experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities in Portland.  

Katie Savastano is an artist, educator, and designer out of Portland, Oregon.  From 2011 to 2015 she booked and promoted countless DIY shows in Portland and Eugene under the moniker Small Howl.  Since then she has done design work making merch, album art, and promotional materials for Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, Mississippi Studios, Revolution Hall, Antiquated Future, Black Belt Eagle Scout, and others.  In 2020, she co-founded Elbow Room, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to providing material resources, mentorship, representation, and space to work, collaborate, and experiment for artists experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities in Portland.

Register

Zoe Winter: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Jan 28 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Zoe Winter: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

After years of playing alongside bands like The California Honeydrops, Rainbow Girls and Handmade Moments, Zoe Winter is recording her first full length studio album.

 
A bay-area local who’s been compared to Laura Marling and called the Joni Mitchell of Sonoma County, Zoe discovered her perfect pitch and ability to play music by ear at the age of 7. Her career began playing keys in the graffitied classrooms of SF’s School of Rock and performing as a vocalist in her father’s band. As her influences shifted from rock and roll and R&B to jazz pianists like Bill Evans and Robert Glasper and vocalists like Eryka Badu and Thom Yorke, she moved to acoustic guitar and removed all unnecessary sounds. “To stand on a stage alone and sing clearly through a microphone with no effects, playing a guitar with no effects, is the most punk rock thing to me.”
 
Then her relationship with a folk singer abruptly ended.  
 
“I had to drive from New Mexico back home to Sonoma County and that 3 day drive was the most excruciating but empowering time of my life. One day I just pulled over, walked out into the side of the desert, and laid down. I went back to grab my guitar and that was when I started writing my own songs.”
 
Attending a Zoe Winter concert feels a bit like lying down beside her in the desert after that breakup. Whether she’s alone on a dark stage with her guitar or singing with a full band, her voice gives you an excuse to crack open and confront whatever it is you’ve been running from. That said, she likes adding comic relief between songs so you have plenty of laughter to go with your tears.  
 
Unlike her stripped-back solo EP, New Mexico, her upcoming album will act like a Best-of-the-Bay featuring the many musicians she’s played with over the years. “One of my favorite parts about music is having all your best friends be your biggest inspirations.”
 
You can catch her playing at Lost Church, Freight and Salvage, the Oregon Country Fair, Bodega Day, Lucidity Festival, and on the side your local highway.
Feb
4
Sat
Arran Fagan: Presented by Sou’wester Arts @ The Sou'wester
Feb 4 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Arran Fagan: Presented by Sou’wester Arts

Praised for his introspective lyrics and vivid storytelling, Portland-based folk artist Arran Fagan has garnered a following in his native Oregon with his uncanny ability to weave the personal and universal. After getting his start in the grassroots music scene of Southern Oregon, Arran has spent the greater part of his life pursuing music, creating wistful and evocative songs that explore themes that connect us all—loss, addiction, change, and the endless passage of time.

With heartfelt lyrics and rich instrumentation that has garnered comparisons to Josh Ritter and Nathaniel Rateliff, Arran has spent years in the NW folk music scene, getting his start playing coffee shops and house shows for college classmates and eventually going on to open for Northwest favorites like Leif Vollebekk, HorseFeathers, Kris Orlowski, Matthew Fowler, and Jeffrey Martin.

In 2015, Arran recruited fellow University of Portland students Jack Pfeffer and Jonathan Wiley, and the three worked to perfect a sparse, melodic sound influenced by their individual backgrounds. Arran’s 2018 album “Weight of Time” debuted to a sold-out release show and was followed by a West Coast tour. Praised by outlets like half&half and Elsewhere for its powerful stories, cathartic songwriting, and ability to “[weave] concrete images and abstract feelings,” “Weight of Time” saw Arran establish himself as a surefooted and exciting fixture in the Portland folk scene.

After releasing an EP titled “Warmth / Death,” Arran took a year-long hiatus while pursuing a Fulbright Grant working as a secondary English teacher in Sarawak, Malaysia. During the pandemic, Arran began recording a new record, “There is More Light,” which was released on November 4th, 2022.