SOU’WESTER EVENTS!

(Live Stream) Matt Dorrien at The Sou’wester

The essential elements to Matt Dorrien’s rollicking, Tin Pan Alley-inspired new record are as follows: piano, Nilsson, whiskey, heartbreak, a little more whiskey, Randy Newman, old phonographs, and New Orleans brass bands. A big, swinging pean to loneliness and the golden age of pop songwriting, In the Key of Grey is the sound of East Village piano bars long past closing, when the house musician has had a few too many, and the regulars are gathering ‘round to drown out their sorrows in song.

For all the heartache in its songs, the album was born in optimism: When Dorrien moved from San Francisco to Portland with his girlfriend, it was supposed to be the beginning of a new chapter. After two folky, ethereal, guitar-based records under the name Snowblind Traveler, Dorrien was looking forward to experimenting with writing songs on piano, the first instrument he ever learned to play. As luck would have it, his girlfriend owned a keyboard and that very practical fact, coupled with the promise of a tranquil domestic life in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, seemed like the perfect ingredients for a healthy creative life.

As is often the case, though, fate had other plans. Dorrien and his girlfriend broke up, and she soon returned to San Francisco; the breakup was amicable, and she left him the keyboard as a parting gift, thus providing, as Dorrien puts it, “both the melancholy and the medium that became the building blocks of these songs.”

Loneliness is hardly a new topic for Dorrien; it’s been present in his songwriting since his first record. “A common theme in my writing has always been loss and displacement, and that probably has a lot to do with the fact that my parents moved us around most of our childhood,” Dorrien says. “For better or worse, this sense of displacement has informed my idea of home, and has left me hopping from city to city in search of God knows what.” But rather than take the predictable route and filter that sadness into a stack of slow-moving ballads, Dorrien instead drew inspiration from songwriters like Carole King, John Lennon during his New York era, and Harry Nilsson’s acclaimed 1970 album Nilsson Sings Newman. The result is a record that swings and sways, even while its heart is breaking. “Underwear Blues” is a loping, piano-driven salute to a one-night stand, Dorrien’s limber voice somersaulting over two-stepping piano and woozy clarinet. “‘Underwear Blues’ mainly started as a piano-writing exercise,” Dorrien says. “I was trying to write something maybe Leon Russell, or Paul McCartney in the late ‘60s or early ‘70s, would’ve been into. I like the syncopation of the melody against the halftime rhythm of the chorus.” “I Can’t Remember,” the first song Dorrien wrote for the record, feels like a subtle melodic nod to “Without You,” Dorrien singing “Baby things are falling apart/ Since you went and broke my heart,” before the song glides into an airy falsetto chorus. “It’s really just a simple breakup song, but it came from a very honest place. I wanted the chorus to really convey the deep sadness I was feeling.”

If those two songs are documents of both the pain that accompanies a breakup and the fumbling, semi-comic attempts to move on, “All I Wanted to Say” goes for something more difficult: the desire to remain friends. Gently-drifting ‘70s FM rock balladry at its finest, the song is essentially a transcript of a phone conversation Dorrien had with his ex-girlfriend after they split. “I was really trying to channel Brian Wilson and Carole King with this one—a marriage of ‘God Only Knows,’ the saddest and most beautiful pop song ever written and recorded, and ‘So Far Away,’ one of my favorite Carole King tunes on Tapestry.”  “Pretty Little Thing” tips its hat toward country music, with its tale of barroom misfortune and its swinging, player-piano-style keyboard line, and “Maybe this Time” is a sauntering jazz number with a vocal line that swoops and dips. Each song is shot through with an easy, sure-handed melodic sensibility, driven by Dorrien’s graceful voice and his knack for artfully-constructed harmonies that never feel precious or overworked. Dorrien is joined on the record by bassist and lap steel player Matt Dawson (of Montreal), multi-instrumentalist Mitchell Gonzales, drummer Graeme Gibson (Fruit Bats; Michael Nau) who also recorded and engineered the record, and Ben Nugent (Delorean), who mixed it. Together, they tell the story of a man working to put his heart back together, one blue note at a time.

“I guess I would say this album is a homage to a bygone era of songwriting,” Dorrien says. “A lot of the songs are about a certain period in my life, with themes of love and loss abounding. But at its core, I believe I wrote this record as a tribute to my favorite songwriters.” With In the Key of Grey, Dorrien isn’t just paying respect to his heroes—he’s making a convincing bid to join their ranks.    – J. Edward Keyes

** Currently, this is scheduled not as a public event, but a live stream from the outdoor stage at The Sou’wester (weather permitting). If you are a guest staying with us, the show may be audible. *

(Live Stream) MAITA + Margo Cilker at The Sou’wester

Kill Rock Stars signed the Portland band MAITA, led by Maria Maita-Keppeler, in 2019. This year has seen a massive shift for Kill Rock Stars. After a thirteen year hiatus, Slim Moon has returned to run the label he founded. The signing of MAITA is both previous label head Portia Sabin’s last act and the first initiative of Slim Moon in his second tenure as guiding light of KRS.

Of this inaugural signing, Moon offers the following statement. “Put simply, my love of MAITA and my belief in Maria’s genius pulled me back into the record business. When I quit running KRS in 2006 it was super important to me that it become 100% Portia’s baby. I never did any back seat driving and I never made any unsolicited suggestions about what artists I thought she should or shouldn’t work with. But earlier this year Portia played MAITA’s music for me and asked me what I thought. I immediately thought it was really special and suddenly found myself breaking my own 13 year old rule – “you are right Portia, you just really have to work with this band.” One thing led to another and before I knew it, we had agreed not only to sign them but that I would return to a limited role at KRS in order to be the label’s liaison with them and to shepherd the whole project. It was months later that we learned Portia would be leaving to take over as CEO of The Music Business Association and that I’d be returning as president of the label as well.”

MAITA has released their debut album, Best Wishes. 

Best Wishes balances ethereal musicality with visceral expressiveness. This juxtaposition is mirrored in the arrangements through potent use of loud and soft dynamics and in Maita-Keppeler’s lyrics, which manage to be layered, literate, but also impactfully concise.

MARGO CILKER’s got a farewell song for every place she’s lived. Margo Cilker has lived a lot of places: she “used to be Montana, wild and free,” she’s “a California dogwood, not sure where I belong,” “the worst crime [she] commits is hesitation- waitin’ on that Bilbao precipitation.” Since “finishing her studies” in Clemson, South Carolina in 2015 and releasing her debut EP Boots and Spain and Boots Again, the native Californian apprenticed herself to the songwriter’s trade in true vagabond style: move to Spain and busk all over Europe a la Ramblin’ Jack, sing a duet on a Spanish Honky-Tonk band’s recording of an Ernest Tubb classic (“Nails in my Coffin,” with Dead Bronco), front a Lucinda Williams tribute band in Bilbao, make a record in England (2017’s Field Heat EP) and tour Europe with a band of Flatt-and-Scruggs-obsessed Englishmen, then come home and milk cows on an organic farm in Petaluma – and make another record.

2018’s California Dogwood EP is Cilker weighing the cost of a life spent honing a craft and carving out a space to call home. There’s the rambling, meditative title track’s offer to “come back with me if you want to, we can start our country life – I’ve got the will and I’ve got the tractor, I wanna be your singing country wife,” and Bilbao Precipitation’s brutally honest look at the dark corners of making a life in art: “Sometimes having songs to sing feels like a torture, calling out to other poets: tell me your secrets, I’ll trade you all of my bad habits for your diseases- maybe we’ll write songs then.” Cilker writes songs that philosophize hard work, heartbreak, and wanderlust with the reverence of a country music obsessive and the sharp-eyed clarity of one who was not born into country music but had to find it (and live it) for herself. She picks an acoustic like Woody Guthrie at his most fervently righteous and sings with the control and focus of a voice that has earned its edges in dive bars and busking pitches. Cilker hasn’t slouched on stateside touring, either: she played over 100 shows in 2017, and is on track for as many in 2018 including Red Ants Pants Music Festival (MT), Offbeat Festival (NV), and Oregon Country Fair. Last we heard, Cilker was calling her native California home again and her band The Cargo Milkers was playing shows with Barna Howard, Elijah Ocean, and Caleb Caudle… But don’t expect her to stick around long. She is, after all, “an uneasy woman”.

** Currently, this is scheduled to not as a public event, but a live stream from the outdoor stage at The Sou’wester (weather permitting). If you are a guest staying with us, the show may be audible. *

Tommy Alexander is the Portland mystic who may have made the best album of 2020. WAVES has become an essential part of our quarantine kit for it’s easy pace, Tommy’s calming baritone, and it’s shockingly prescient lyrics. For the past few years Tommy has been putting sweat equity into his independent booking agency Pilot Light, amassing an incredible roster of live acts, and helping them get out on tour. Booking at venues all over the northwest Tommy is one of those industry lynchpins who rarely get to stand in the spotlight, as they are busy helping others. In his enlarged, kind heart, though, Tommy Alexander is also a folk singer who deserves some shine.

Life is a trudge through a world we did not create, or ask to be born into. Humans are freaky arrangements of stardust shot out from the big bang, commingling as chance collections of atoms, nurtured by conditions impossible anywhere else in this ever expanding, empty universe; we are flesh bags animated by electricity that flows in such excess from our brains that the leftover electrons buzz around our skulls, swarming into a steady stream of stray signals known as the mind. For all our scientific advances, psychology tells us that the mind is completely separate from the brain, and it’s exact purpose is still not known. For most people the mind attempts to catalog and organize and impose some will on the passing of time, a sort of app for accessing the filing system of the brain. Because of it’s indeterminable nature, and it’s internal existence, though, most people simply compartmentalize or internalize what happens in their mind. But what if everything you go through personally is meant to be shared?

WAVES opens on the line “I been sittin’ alone with a troubled mind, thinkin’ bout better times / I’m pretty sure it’s too late to start this over…” loping along on backfire snare and an amplified acoustic riff, bemoaning stagnation. In early December 2019Tommy traveled to Enterprise, Oregon with various other Portland luminaries (TK & The Holy Know Nothings, to be exact) to record at OK Theater with Bart Budwig. He couldn’t have possibly known when he cut this, or the jam “End Of The World” that it, or something close to it — was right around the bend. That particular country-folk song is a presentiment to several points of view for what to do when…well, what seems like the end of the world nears.

But back to the mind: What if the refuse of failed relationships, decaying social contracts, and our own, crumbling, corporeal, carapaces are the compost fuel for the continuum –or betterment–of human life? What if lashing waves of guilt, anxiety, and depression are normal human experiences like happiness, togetherness, and success? What if we mistakenly imposed a value on success? What if failure holds the same secrets, and the same weight? What if you could offload it, organize it, source it, exchange it, craft it –all of it– into meaningful works of art? What the value of lived experience was the fact that it came and went in waves at all?

It seems like Tommy’s own hard working nature, musical contributions, and constant crafting have done just that. “Stone Fox” and “Whatever You Say” “WAVES” sit right in the middle of his album like the thesis statement I’ve been trying to write about his work. A brawler, a bawler, and a ballad about different levels of relationships — admiration and rock’n’roll, lived-in love and country-folk, and the title track: a woozy folk ballad for the worn. Where most artists catch a snag on trying to achieve a sound, Tommy lets the sound represent the song. Helped along here by Taylor Kingman (backup vocals, guitar), Adam Witowski (guitar, piano), Mike Coykendall (synth, bass, drums) Ian Wade (bass), Buddy Weeks (drums), Bart Budwig  (trumpet, engineering), and Jon Neufeld (mastering), the album shapes up as the work of other talented, if unheralded, utility players from the Northwest.

So much of WAVES will continue to accompany you after just one listen. “Tears” plays like a jukebox jingle, ready to spring on you when –inevitably– things get worse, and you find new ways to cry. “I Blame Myself” will be there when you lie down, and when you wake, encouraging you to take responsibility for what comes with the new day. As Tommy Alexander ends WAVES, it’s mystifying how he could’ve presaged the current collective mood with the short “Doing Things Together”, singing “Doing things together sure beats doing things away from you,  yes it’s true I’m missin you tonight…”

I’m not much for prophecy, but my mind surely wants to categorize this as an album to help us through hard times. Lately it seems everyone is experiencing loneliness, and despair, but they’re also finding ways to create opportunities for their community. Tommy Alexander’s WAVES comes from the few important things we’re left with when illusions crumble: a chance at self reflection, the opportunity to be of service to others, and lived experiences that make good art.

** Currently, this is scheduled not as a public event, but a live stream from the outdoor stage at The Sou’wester (weather permitting). If you are a guest staying with us, the show may be audible. **

Portland’s Yaara Valey (formerly Indira Valey). No Me Tengas Miedo is an EP of textural surprises and casual wizardry. Four soundscape pieces that exist in the realm of artists like Julianna Barwick, Juana Molina, and Grouper.

Released on Antiquated Future Records and Spirit House. Limited edition second printing. Listen on Bandcamp.

“No Me Tengas Miedo feels in many ways like an exercise in surrender. It lulls us into an uncertain serenity, not tranquilized but clear-headed, before pulling us into a strange world with unfamiliar boundaries. It’s a transportive work, and one that you’ll find calling you back when you least expect it.” – Thrdcoast

** Currently, this is scheduled not as a public event, but a live stream from the outdoor stage at The Sou’wester (weather permitting). If you are a guest staying with us, the show may be audible. **

Nina Yates: Live Stream presented by Sou’wester Arts

Nina Yates is a Portland, Oregon based singer songwriter who pulls you into her stories with thoughtful and distinctive songs. A slow, tender and delicate drag, yet fierce with lived emotion, the wisdom of a mother, the comfort of a sister and the heartbreak of a daughter.

It didn’t occur to Yates to start writing songs until the day she first met her mother, when she was twenty-three years old. Since then she has been using songwriting to redeem hard times by turning them into beautiful artifacts.

Mama’s Heart, Yates debut LP, features ten beautifully crafted folk songs, of which eight were written for a weekly open mic song prompt hosted by Taylor Kingman (of TK & The Holy Know-Nothings) at the Laurelthirst Public House in Portland. 

As someone who has always been drawn to the sound of something older, folky and rural, Nina feels that songwriting is about connection and community.

The two remaining songs on ‘Mama’s Heart’ were collaborations with legendary Portland based producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Mike Coykendall. Last year Coykendall generously offered his old songwriting notebooks and tapes to members of his songwriting community to salvage and recycle aspects and parts of songs to build new, finished songs. A project called Coykendall called ‘Seeds and Stems’.  

For lovers of songcraft, Nina Yates delivers a dose of much needed medicine on her debut record. Heartfelt and true, Nina’s voice and songs are genuine and unique, yet evocative of important songwriting heroes like Joni Mitchell and Gillian Welch.   

Faustina Masigat : Live Stream presented by Sou’wester Arts

Frustrated by academia and emotionally raw from a breakup, Faustina Masigat stepped away from her peers in her mid-twenties. She had come to realize that her personal and artistic maturation had been stifled by her relationships and her overly angular traditional musical schooling. She knew she needed to spend more time alone, committed to a process of unlearning, before she could move forward. As she peeled back the rigid layers of her youth, she began to write the songs that, a few years later, would make up her debut record. Seeking honesty over perfection, her approach to composition became much more intuitive; seated in the natural expression of not only her emotional life, but also that of a spiritual life, an expression of her own femininity, and a means of self improvement through self reflection. She became obsessed with the old, forgotten, second-hand guitars she would find in the “As Is” section of local music shops, believing that magic and songs still lived in the beat-up wood. One album track, “Willie Nelson”, manifested, fully formed, from one of these guitars – an ancient, labeless individual that she called “Red”. 

The songwriting on her self-titled debut is all at once heartbreaking, intelligent, meditative and elegant – centered around a voice that is difficult to attach genre to. There is a quiet intensity running through the world that Faustina creates: sweet and heavy, a touch of angst, brutally honest, smoldering. The album is understated, arranged as to allow Faustina’s effortless rapport with pedal steel player Tucker Jackson (The Minus 5, The Delines) to shine clearest. It’s a spacious and lush debut, with all of her vulnerabilities laid bare in songs hemmed together with fragile intimacy. 

Faustina Masigat is out now on Mama Bird Recording Co. It was recorded by Rian Lewis, mixed by Ben Nugent and mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk, all in Portland, Oregon.

Tommy Alexander : Live Stream presented by Sou’wester Arts

“Tommy Alexander’s WAVES comes from the few important things we’re left with when illusions crumble: a chance at self reflection, the opportunity to be of service to others, and lived experiences that make good art.” – Sean Jewell at American Standard Time

** Currently, this is scheduled not as a public event, but a live stream from the outdoor stage at The Sou’wester (weather permitting).