SOU’WESTER EVENTS!

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.

Born in Austin and splitting his down time between Oregon and Ecuador, twenty years exploring music from around the world finally led Michael Shay back to his artistic home deep in the North American vocal and songwriting traditions. With the nuance of a classically-trained musician, the twang of a born-and-bred Texan, and a career spent collaborating with musicians in a dozen countries, Shay’s vision exists comfortably outside any “Americana” box while still evoking his earliest influences:   Featuring original acoustic country-folk and roots-Americana with touches of bluegrass, world music and more, Shay’s songs are as likely to touch down in the bars and backroads of cow towns as in the graveyards and parlours of old Europe, dancing with the ghosts of William Blake, Hank Williams, or Sappho – sometimes while you dance too.  Shay’s lush baritone voice and guitar plus mandolin, upright bass and 3 part vocal harmonies in the Michael Shay Trio combine for a powerfully elegant sound in the tradition of Townes Van Zandt, Gillian Welch, Neil Young and Bob Dylan.

This event is free and open to the public

Workshop Series at The Sou’wester

Custom Mosaics with Damon Ayers and Christy Wiesenhahn

10am – 4pm Sat July 15 (w/ hour lunch walk on the beach)

     11am – 12:30pm July 16 (short day to grout, finish & admire work)

Participants will complete a paneled mosaic using tiles and found objects. You can come prepared with an idea or sketch of a design that you would like to execute OR take an experimental approach to the materials. Either way you will come away with a wonderful, finished mosaic panel that is specifically emblematic of the particular time and place in which it was made. One of the great things about mosaic is its durability and timeless nature. There will be some discussion of the history of mosaics and possible materials and we will also host an extended “beach walk lunch hour” during which we will look at different kinds of local materials (shells, rocks, etc.) that we might incorporate into our works.

Damon and Christy are two artists who have been good friends for decades. Christy is primarily a tile/ mosaic artist whose expanded practice includes designing theater sets and working on skateboard parks. Damon mostly works in video but his practice often includes actors and extensive set building. They got the chance to work on a skateboard park together a few years ago and have been looking for a chance to work together again ever since.

Cat Hoch is a multi-instrumentalist out of Portland, Or creating psychedelic dream pop samba mama jazz music and performing it with her band. Willamette Week’s Best New Bands of 2016: “Sounds like: A summer daydream where Tame Impala and St. Vincent go swimming in a moonlit Technicolor lagoon below a sky of shooting stars….Released last October, Cat Hoch’s Look What You Found EP contains four tracks of dreamy, slow-burn psych rock, full of driving, fuzzed-out guitars that fade in and out of celestial synths.” She is currently working on a full length album that will release in 2017.

Photo by Raina Stintson Photography

Jeff was born August 14, 1954. There are probably official documents somewhere that will attest to that.

With a musical sound born in 1970s Los Angeles and the American roots revival. In the early 80s, he formed the band The Lonesome Strangers with Randy Weeks. They recorded three full-length albums, each of which received enthusiastic critical acclaim: “Lonesome Pine” (1985),”The Lonesome Strangers”(1989), and “Land Of Opportunity”(1997).

In 1998, the band went their separate ways and Jeff focused on starting a family in Georgia. Following a divorce in 2006, he turned back to songwriting to help ease his mind and find his way forward.

Jeff showed some of his new songs to his old California musician buddy, Taras Prodaniuk, who has spent the last thirty years in world class bands, laying it down for artists like Dwight Yoakam, Lucinda Williams, Merle Haggard and Richard Thompson, and he brought his excellence to bear on every aspect of the project. The result is the 11-song “Even If The Sun Don’t Shine”.

While trying to drum up some interest and figure out how to best release his music, Jeff took the suggestion of a friend and started recording stripped-down acoustic versions of some of the “Sun Don’t Shine” songs. These, plus some more original material, some demos, and one Lennon-McCartney cover, have turned into the homespun “companion” CD, “Lonesome Pine Rides Again”. With these two recordings, Jeff hopes to reach an audience that will enjoy and appreciate what he has to offer.

Check it out – it’s goin’ down! This event is free and open to the public.

Jenn Rawling composes highly melodic songs from fascinating scraps of images and phrases, singing them with a vibrant, immediately engaging yodel-edged alto. Rawling’s poetic lyrics are enhanced by her sophisticated sense of phrasing and pace. Her work binds people back to the web of life, reconnects us to the land, and celebrates the continuance of human, animal, plant, and elemental relationships.  She is celebrating the release of her new record ‘Golden Colors’. 

This event is free and open to the public

Grasshopper.  Seasoned Roadhouse Americana with a dose of dance-inducing psychedelic hop

This event is free and open to the public