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!
2nd Annual ARTS WEEK: To Reconvene
March 7-14, 2021 The Sou’wester will host 30-35 artists and art collectives for a week of residency work, music, performances and installations.
Once again, The Sou’wester will be given over to artists and art collectives for a week of residency work and a weekend of ‘open houses’ and ‘public performances’: re-imagined for our present world.
Decentralized, Staggered & Open Air, etc.
Over the past 6 years we have held an event around this time of year to highlight the creative process and the experiential nature of the Sou’wester Residency Program. Each year this event brings amazing artists to this neck of the woods and shines creative light into the darkest heart of winter. The focus of the 2nd Annual ARTS WEEK is reconvention, reunion, reflection and renewal.
The public will be invited to tour installations on the grounds and surrounding areas as well as participate in self-guided open studios and/or studio visits by appointment. This event will also be shared with the broader public through live links, streaming, broadcasts from the studios, social media, and online archive of the projects and participants.
Performances, Installations and Events Open to the Public*
Friday March 13th
5:00pm – 10:00pm
Saturday March 14th
12:00pm – 10:00pm
*The entirety of this event will be held in a manner that meets all state mandates and Covid-19 precautions. This event is free and open to the public within safety guidelines.
Visit the link below to view the full list of ARTS WEEK artists as well as photos and descriptions of their residency projects: 31 artist projects and 11 of those are artist teams/collectives with about 53 people participating.
2021 Participants
Thank you to our donors so far:
Cocktail For A Cause during the entire month of March – Pickled Fish Restaurant at
http://www.mamabirdrecordingco.com/nick-delffs
Nick Delffs is a seeker. He’d never identify himself that way. He’s unassuming and self-effacing, careful to discuss song meanings and biographical details without indulgence or melodrama. Delffs cut his teeth playing basement shows in Portland a dozen years ago, just before that city’s cover was irreversibly blown. It was a time when being musically ambitious meant impressing other local musicians. You were a joke, in that world, if you proclaimed yourself an artist or promoted your band with any zeal. So Delffs would probably find “seeker” a rather grandiose title.
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.”
Join us in welcoming our newest art installation. Elijah Jensen-Lindsey is a self-taught, multi-media artist who currently resides in Nampa, Idaho. His career as a carpenter and craftsman informs his esoteric methodology, and has afforded him distinct opportunities within the intersection of visual art and the built, living environment. Working alongside world-renowned artist Theaster Gates, Jensen-Lindsey played an active role in the renovation of an after-school arts program in St. Louis in 2013. A recipient of grants from The Idaho Commission on the Arts and Boise Weekly, he has shown his artwork in Boise; Reno, Nevada; Brooklyn, New York; and St. Louis, Missouri.
He was awarded top prize in the 2020 Idaho Triennial.
As a musician, Jensen-Lindsey engages with the traditions of folk, pop and noise music as a means of exploring the beautiful terrains of the written and spoken word.
He lives with a Siamese cat named Hummingbird, and a fox squirrel named Juniper.
His band, ‘With Child’ will perform @ 6pm.
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?’’