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!
Portland songwriter, Matthew Zeltzer (of The American West), emerged from a year of exile- living on an organic farm in Half Moon Bay, Ca raising chickens, writing songs about the apocalypse as a relationship slowly fell apart. He then puttered around Half Moon Bay, finishing the songs, before returning to Portland and forming his new project, The American West. It is these songs that fill his new release, “The Soot Will Bring Us Back Again,” which Frank Gutch Jr. (No Depression), calls, “Words to the wise. A warning. Beautifully done.” The Soot Will Bring Us Back Again is flecked with pedal steel and longing harmonies as the album drifts between finger-picked folk songs and raucous country-rockers, all while the focus remains on Zeltzer’s ragged poetry.
Workshop Series at The Sou’wester
Writing Through the Cracks: Self-Forgiveness & Compassion in Memoir Writing with Cooper Lee Bombardier & Gina Senarighi
‘Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen
To write about pivotal events from our own lives requires a reckoning with our pasts. How do we interrogate ourselves to get at the truth of our stories when the details do not always shine a glamourous light upon us? Writing Through the Cracks will give you tools to get vulnerable in your writing, scrutinize the past from a place of compassion, and help you to discover the story beneath your stories. Join educator, coach, consultant, and professional shame slayer Gina Senarighi and nonfiction writer and educator Cooper Lee Bombardier for an engaging, accessible, and intensive day-long writing workshop at the beautiful and historic Sou’wester Lodge. Writers of all levels are welcome!
Cooper Lee Bombardier is a writer and visual artist based in Portland, Oregon. His work appears in many publications and anthologies, most recently in The Kenyon Review, CutBank, Nailed Magazine, Original Plumbing, as well as the anthology The Remedy–Essays on Queer Health Issues, (ed. Zena Sharman) from Arsenal Pulp Press. Cooper’s visual art was recently curated in an exhibition called “Intersectionality” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. He teaches writing at the University of Portland, Clark College, Portland State University, and at various Portland-area high schools as a writer-in-residence through Literary Art’s program Writers in The Schools.
Gina Senarighi, MS, MA, CPC is a communication consultant, sexuality counselor and certified relationship coach specializing in queer love polyamory, open relationships, jealousy, and infidelity. She’s been leading retreats to build courage and slay shame in LGBTQ community across Washington and Oregon since 2003.
COST: $30 ($50 for both classes)
(This workshop will run on Tuesday August 15th and also on Wednesday August 16th. The cost for each workshop is $30, but if students wish to take both classes, the returning students on Wednesday would receive guided writing time. and both classes together would cost only $50.)
BRING: an open mind, a couple of pens and a notebook or paper to write in/on. A legal pad with a cardboard back is ideal! Please bring a sack lunch and/or snack. Hot tea and coffee provided.
All workshops are open to the public.
Workshop for students age 18 and older.
All Skill Levels Welcome.
RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542
Workshop Series at The Sou’wester
Writing Through the Cracks: Self-Forgiveness & Compassion in Memoir Writing with Cooper Lee Bombardier & Gina Senarighi
‘Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen
To write about pivotal events from our own lives requires a reckoning with our pasts. How do we interrogate ourselves to get at the truth of our stories when the details do not always shine a glamourous light upon us? Writing Through the Cracks will give you tools to get vulnerable in your writing, scrutinize the past from a place of compassion, and help you to discover the story beneath your stories. Join educator, coach, consultant, and professional shame slayer Gina Senarighi and nonfiction writer and educator Cooper Lee Bombardier for an engaging, accessible, and intensive day-long writing workshop at the beautiful and historic Sou’wester Lodge. Writers of all levels are welcome!
Cooper Lee Bombardier is a writer and visual artist based in Portland, Oregon. His work appears in many publications and anthologies, most recently in The Kenyon Review, CutBank, Nailed Magazine, Original Plumbing, as well as the anthology The Remedy–Essays on Queer Health Issues, (ed. Zena Sharman) from Arsenal Pulp Press. Cooper’s visual art was recently curated in an exhibition called “Intersectionality” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. He teaches writing at the University of Portland, Clark College, Portland State University, and at various Portland-area high schools as a writer-in-residence through Literary Art’s program Writers in The Schools.
Gina Senarighi, MS, MA, CPC is a communication consultant, sexuality counselor and certified relationship coach specializing in queer love polyamory, open relationships, jealousy, and infidelity. She’s been leading retreats to build courage and slay shame in LGBTQ community across Washington and Oregon since 2003.
COST: $30 ($50 for both classes)
(This workshop will run on Tuesday August 15th and also on Wednesday August 16th. The cost for each workshop is $30, but if students wish to take both classes, the returning students on Wednesday would receive guided writing time. and both classes together would cost only $50.)
BRING: an open mind, a couple of pens and a notebook or paper to write in/on. A legal pad with a cardboard back is ideal! Please bring a sack lunch and/or snack. Hot tea and coffee provided.
All workshops are open to the public.
Workshop for students age 18 and older.
All Skill Levels Welcome.
RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542
Come experience the therapeutic workings of a Finnish sauna in combination with a full body mask of wild foraged mineral clay. These natural therapies joined together, act as powerful means of detoxification, stress relief, muscle relaxant, skin cleanser, and more. Bring your bathing suit and a friend, be prepared to sweat it out with like minded folks, brave a cold plunge, and paint each other with some Skagit river valley clay.
$20 for Sou’wester guests $25 for general public.
Dress to accommodate the maximum amount of clay. Towels, clay, information hand-outs, tea and filtered water provided. There will also be an opportunity to purchase wild harvested mineral clay for future personal use.
Space is limited to 8 folks
Please RSVP. Any questions? Email mamookwellness@icloud.com
“Sweetheart of The Rodeo” – Willamette Week
Lindsie Feathers is a rabble rousing honky-tonk woman that’s spreading her wings and trusting in the flight. Her latest album, Neon Renaissance, was engineered and mixed by Adam Selzer at Type Foundry (Sallie Ford, Laura Gibson, Scout Niblet). Her songs are about love, the life journey, our planet and it’s dwindling resources, connecting to our ancestors, and honoring our heroes.
In the words of the Neon Renaissance creed, written to define the album: “Let us follow our dream, teach the earth, serve humanity. We seek to love; not hate. To heal; not hurt. Let love prevail.”
WEEKLY EVENT
A unique ambient sound experience, blending tiny ambient concert and harmonic healing in which participants are enveloped in the vibrational drones of various traditional healing instruments.
COST: Suggested donation $5-10. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
RSVP: souwesterwellness@gmail.com
WHERE: Wellness Trailer
Space limited to 8 people
Three For Silver is post-collapse, post-apocalyptic, post-rock, post-everything. A freewheeling collective in which the only rule is to survive and perform, an elastic conglomeration of musical freaks as likely to be found in a grand theater performing for foreign dignitaries as busking on your street corner for spare change.
Lucas Warford (vocals, basses) is the thumping heart of the band, a chugging diesel engine of bass and growl. “The acid baby of Tom Waits and Les Claypool,” as NW legend Baby Gramps once called him. His one-of-a-kind basses are the platform upon which he yowls and raps his end-time visions of the world. Willo Sertain (vocals, accordion) hails from the woods of North Carolina, her distinctively pure tones and haunting melodies act as a natural foil to the madness of Warford. Greg Allison (strings, mandolin, arrangement) is the master of pure sound, beating the ungainly ideas of Warford and Sertain into something resembling songs. He writes string quartet arrangements like he’s writing his own name, and generally classes up the joint.
Three For Silver has hit the road since 2013, unleashing their idiosyncratic sound on over 200 audiences a year, blind to anything but the next stage, the next audience, the next night. With nary a manager or booker in sight, their monomaniacal devotion has already led them all over the country and the world, performing in clubs, bars, theaters, boats, festivals, farmer’s markets, living rooms, and most recently partnering with the US State Department for ongoing cultural exchange tours to other countries thirsty for truly original American music.
Whether live or on their new record, Three For Silver is a band for this moment, when it is hard to imagine the future and all too easy to focus on the past, when the rules no longer seem to apply, and when what you never thought possible is the only choice you’ve got.
Workshop Series at The Sou’wester
Fermented Vegetables 101 with Sash Sunday
OlyKraut owner, Sash Sunday, will present the basics of vegetable ferments. You will each make a batch of sauerkraut and a batch of brined pickles before the day is done. We will go through the basic sauerkraut and pickle making process, take a little dive into the science of fermentation, and discuss why probiotics are so awesome. Sash will also answer questions and go over some troubleshooting for your home ferments. Come with some jars and lots of questions! Sash will bring the veggies and some know-how.
Sash Sunday grew up in the PNW and, in 2008, founded OlyKraut to put her fermentation fanaticism to work building a food system that supports healthy people and farms. OlyKraut makes delicious, raw fermented vegetables with mountains of local produce while sharing the wonders of probiotic foods with the community. She has a BA from The Evergreen State College, and an MBA in Sustainable Systems and Certificate in Sustainable Food and Agriculture from Pinchot University.
COST: $30 plus $10 material fee (Please pay material fee directly to the instructor.)
BRING: 2 Quart Jars – Wide mouth. If you have a nice sharp chopping knife please bring one. Please bring a sack lunch and/or snack. Hot tea and coffee provided.
All workshops are open to the public.
Workshop geared for adults.
All Skill Levels Welcome.
RSVP via souwesterfrontdesk@gmail.com or 360-642-2542
WEEKLY EVENT
A unique ambient sound experience, blending tiny ambient concert and harmonic healing in which participants are enveloped in the vibrational drones of various traditional healing instruments.
COST: Suggested donation $5-10. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
RSVP: souwesterwellness@gmail.com
WHERE: Wellness Trailer
Space limited to 8 people
Matty Charles songs are often called “instant classics”. They take the stark simplicity of Johnny Cash, mix in Townes Van Zandt’s poetic sensibility and hold you to your seat with vocal harmonies worthy of the Louvin Brothers.
The Matty Charles & Katie Rose sound is deeply rooted in American country and folk traditions, evidenced by their close singing and Matty’s “church-lick-boom-chuck” guitar playing. Their songs speak of love and loss in such a timeless way that it’s hard not to relate if you have ever experienced either.
Their debut album, Catching Arrows combines the duo with an all-star band of americana/roots music luminaries and has been called, “a sublime listening experience.” and “a must have album.” (bealestreet.be) as well as, “the kind of album that can break out and surprise even the most jaded music critics.”
The admiration of fellow musicians and fans caused this duo to tour Europe in 2016 where they played to full houses and received glowing reviews for their performances.
this event is free and open to the public
Catch them live and hear how, “Charles and Rose prove that they may be among the best duos in the genre.” (Lambert Smits, keysandchords.com)
They also sing about Time Machines, birds and helicopters.