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!
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Luke Borsten: Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Luke Borsten is a songwriter/saxophone man in Portland. After opening for Amanda Palmer, touring nationally, releasing an album at the Wonder Ballroom, and performing on cruise ships for two years, he’s now looking forward to his first live show of 2021. His energetic, front-porch folk performance style keeps crowds singing and clapping along, and he frequently invites special guests up to perform, making for an eclectic and memorable experience.
Luke’s band, Ghost Towns, recorded part of their album at the Sou’Wester, as part of a week-long artist residency in 2014. When not performing live Luke can be found shooting/editing live videos for bands around Portland, and is currently directing his first music video.
The Hackles: Presented by Sou’wester Arts
“We’re processing a lot of things going on in our world right now,” reflects Kati Claborn during a respite from touring. Along with her partner Luke Ydstie, Claborn is striving to make sense of the present by looking to the past in The Hackles’ upcoming album, A Dobtrich Did As A Dobritch Should, out on Jealous Butcher Records on November 8, 2019. “We’re looking at the big picture through individual lives,” says Claborn. In an era rife with discord, The Hackles are using melodic, shimmering indie folk to chronicle means of control and autonomy through idiosyncratic narratives.
Ydstie and Claborn first met in Portland in the mid-2000s after Israel Nebeker and Ryan Dobrowski of Blind Pilot recruited additional band members to flesh out the band. Still members of Blind Pilot today, Ydstie and Claborn first met at these initial band practices, and now live in Astoria, Oregon with their five-year-old daughter. After discovering how well each of their creative processes’ enrich one another’s, Ydstie and Claborn decided to form their own musical project. “I think one of the reasons why it’s so successful when Luke and I write together is that we feel very safe and open,” says Claborn. “Both of us feel like we can throw out any idea and it’s okay. We can try anything.” Co-producer Adam Selzer expands this environment of experimentation. “Going into the mixing process, we gave Adam free reign to do whatever he wanted, and he made a lot of interesting mixing choices and added effects that had a huge effect on how the album turned out.”
Though The Hackles’ upcoming record title might at first seem imbued in mystery, the eccentric name is a nod to the life and death of 20th century Bulgarian circus impresario, Al Dobritch, who appears most markedly in “And The Show Goes On.” The chief producer of famed Circus Circus Casino in Las Vegas, Dobritch made a name for himself after escaping World War II and settling in America, eventually rubbing elbows with celebrities and marrying film star Rusty Allen. His gilded life came to a dark end when he was charged with kidnapping and, soon after, jumped to his death on the Las Vegas strip. “Dobritch went through so many crazy things in his life,” says Claborn, “And though he was able to persevere and create this incredible life, it goes to show that at the end, there are sometimes things you can’t control.”
The interwoven notions of predestined fate, as well as the hopeful antithesis of regaining power over one’s personal circumstances, stream throughout The Hackles’ upcoming release, complemented by the album’s serene sound. The duo’s propensity for glowing chords shines, though it soon becomes apparent that the expert delicacy of the couple’s guitar work only barely contains the graceful, mounting power prevalent in the meeting of Claborn and Ydstie’s voices. Similar to the tug-of-war stories that Claborn and Ydstie portray, the dynamism of the duo’s vocals never overpowers the tranquility of the chords below. Instead, both strengths support and enhance one another. “There’s a thread going through the album about the things that control us in our lives and the things that we’re able to take back,” surmises Claborn, “It’s about the impact of inevitability, the webs you can weave, and the webs that weave you.”
Johnny Franco + Mike Coykendall : Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Johnny Franco is a Brazilian rock n’ roll marauder who now resides in Portland, and who crafts inventive spaghetti western/folk-rock stompers. Armed with propulsive, spindly guitars, Dylanesque vocals, and adventurous vibes, Franco recently signed to label Blanket Fort.
“A sly blender of old-school country & western and modern Americana, “Treated Like Grass” thrives on its rollicking rhythms and catchy, twangy melodies” – Impose Magazine
Veteran songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Coykendall has been amazingly prolific over the last three decades or so. Currently most well known for his duties as a sideman, producer, and recordist via his work with M Ward, Blitzen Trapper, She & Him, Annalisa Tornfelt, & Tin Hat Trio, to name a few, Coykendall has been making his own unique outsider records since the mid ’80s.
Sallie Ford:Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Sallie Ford grew up in Asheville, North Carolina before moving to Oregon.According to singer Seth Avett of The Avett Brothers, Ford’s songs have that “rare quality of somehow combining fun with emotional and artistic integrity” and she “fills the room with it” and reminds him of the “energy of early rock ‘n’ roll.”
Laith:Presented by Sou’wester Arts
Laith, known by some as Hutch, hails from the suburban hurricane of Houston, Texas. Laith’s music is soaked with memories of Grandma and Grandpa’s bayou house, rides on a red vintage lawn mower packed with cousins, and smoky, music filled bars that a 16 year old has no place being. Which is exactly where Laith found himself as a youngling. Torn between playing music on Sunday’s at church (where he learned to play guitar and sing) and performing in grimy dives, creates a tension in his songwriting that sits somewhere between the altar and the barstool. Ain’t no religion here anymore, just songs. Worth noting: “A song is a room, no matter how happy or sad”. – John H. Laith now resides in the Pacific Northwest lugging used up notebooks and loose scraps of paper scratched with the lyrics of new songs, not yet learned. You can always look forward to hearing something new and something honest when you’re listening to Laith.
– Dusty Atticus author of “The Wasp: Foe or Misunderstood Friend?’’
Jake William Capistran:Presented by Sou’wester Arts
“Jake William Capistran is a Portland-based singer and multi-instrumentalist whose unique blend of folk, rock, and soul can be heard up and down the west coast. Featuring the simple accompaniment of an acoustic guitar or piano, or the support of his [up to] eight-piece backing band, Capistran’s live-performances are as dynamic as his records, spanning the distance from bombastic pop to intimate singer-songwriter.
His first release under his own name, 2016’s GONERS EP, racked up over 100,000 plays in the year of its release. His newest record, 2019’sfull-length ALL THINGS HUMAN, was featured in Portland’s VORTEX magazine as a best new album of 2019 and saw a nearly sold-out release show at Portland’s famed Doug Fir Lounge.”
https://www.pilotlightbooking.com/#/bob-sumner/
“I’m kind of a junkie for sad songs and ballads,” says Bob Sumner, the younger half of Vancouver-based Americana outfit The Sumner Brothers. “As a teenager most of my friends were into hip-hop, but I felt pretty out of place rolling around suburban White Rock, British Columbia, pumping gangster rap.” Sitting in his room with his headphones on, Sumner compiled downhearted mixtapes pulling together the more introspective songs of CCR, The Band, Led Zeppelin, Emmylou Harris. As he began writing his own songs, this innate attentiveness to songcraft and emotional understanding became a hallmark of Sumner’s songwriting and aesthetic. In the years since, he’s released five albums with The Sumner Brothers, blending sounds as disparate as Neil Young and The Dead Kennedys, but Bob Sumner’s Wasted Love Songs (out January 25) presents Sumner back in the bedroom, attentive to the quieter recordings of his formative years. Helmed by the gentle intentionality of Sumner’s voice and lyricism, this rare debut from a songwriting veteran expresses the timeless quality found in the melancholy of Townes Van Zandt, the atmospheric momentum of Tom Petty, and the prophetic restlessness of Bruce Springsteen.
The culmination of Sumner’s creative intention and sensitivity, Wasted Love Songs is born out of an entwining of musical influences spanning decades. With his brother Brian, he’s written and played finely tuned songs erected at the borders of country and rock and roll for nearly 15 years, making the Sumner family name synonymous with the alternative folk and country music scenes throughout the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. In the midst of The Sumner Brothers’ growing orientation toward rock and roll in recent years, Bob Sumner felt the draw toward his balladic roots. “I had all these ballads and folk songs that worked really well together,” he says. “I wanted to make an album someone could just put on and unfold into.”