SOU’WESTER EVENTS!

Gerle Haggard Band brings the best of Merle Haggard’s timeless music to audiences who’ve been loving songs like Mama Tried, Misery and Gin and Working Man Blues for nearly five decades, as well as introducing these and many more classics to a whole new audience. This eight-piece, all-women band features a terrific line-up of musicians who weave beautiful instrumentation, tight harmonies and a big heap of showmanship into full throttled entertainment event.

Love Gigantic and band members Sarah King, Chet Lyster, Ryan Moore, David Langenes, Arthur Parker, and Lara Michel bring a bit of rock and roll to the Sou’wester! Let’s get spooky on this Halloween night with a dance party and Love Gigantic!

“Collectively, the six members of Love Gigantic have an impressive resume that covers considerable musical ground in the Portland scene and beyond.
Michel is a member of The Stolen Sweets, A Simple Colony and Swan Sovereign; Lyster moonlights with Eels, spent two years touring as a multi-instrumentalist with Lucinda Williams (and also played guitar on her Grammy-nominated Little Honey), and has played with locals Casey Neill, Fernando and Little Sue; Langenes is a member of Karaoke From Hell and The Stolen Sweets when he’s not painting Michel’s bathroom; Mengis, formerly of Climber, currently tours with Priory; and Parker has played with Chris Robley & the Fear of Heights, Moody Little Sister and Trashcan Joe.”

Love Gigantic, their debut full-length album was released in August 2014. “Full of rich harmonies, some wicked guitar solos and perfectly placed percussion, the whole thing feels like the complete package with more than a few earworms you’ll likely find yourself softly humming after you’ve shut off the stereo. It’s obvious that music is a lifestyle for Love Gigantic and something they do for the love of it. ‘What role doesn’t it play?’ they question. ‘Music makes everything else bearable. And it gives us a chance to wear fake leather pants.’”-Vortex Music Magazine

American-Roots-Music will swagger through the Sou’wester as we welcome musician Joe Fletcher coming to us from East Nashville, Tennessee.

“Joe Fletcher proves his versatility on White Lighter. His signature brand of dark and lyrically driven honky tonk is interspersed with a softer side that would make a Hagg or Jones proud.” – No Depression

Joe Fletcher is a midwestern born, New England raised singer-songwriter living in East Nashville, TN. He released his third independent record, You’ve Got the Wrong Man, in October of 2014. This intimate solo album is a departure from his previous efforts with his band The Wrong Reasons (White Lighter and Bury Your Problems).

Made up of his gritty original songs as well as covers by his peers Brown Bird and Toy Soldiers, it was recorded live over a few months on a mobile recording unit in Rhode Island, Georgia, and Tennessee in the spirit of some of Joe’s favorite records by Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Jimmie Rodgers, Bruce Springsteen, among others.

Now a three year veteran of the Newport Folk Festival, Joe has toured with The Devil Makes Three, Band of Heathens, Deer Tick and has opened for the likes Jason Isbell, Lucero, Robert Ellis, John Doe, The Low Anthem, and many more. Joe spends most of his time touring in what has truly been a grass roots operation thus far.

SPECIAL! Mention this band for 25% off your total stay at the Sou’wester.

Help us welcome the month of October in lo-mid-fi-pop style with the sounds of The Woolen Men from Portland, Oregon!

Born in the sun, raised in the wyrd mysts of Mossland, join us in gathering with Divine Discontents and their sounds of Electro-Acoustic Indie Rock.

Green Hills Alone is the songwriting moniker for Chris Miller. In 2014, Miller recorded a collection of songs with fellow bandmate Mark Robertson and the talents of Sleepy Volcano: a creative collective/record label. Robertson, who fronts the band Harlowe, and Miller perform live together in support of both their respective albums. Supporting the evening is Portland guitarist and songwriter, Scott Hampton. Hampton is a longtime collaborator of Mike Coykendall and the brilliant mind behind Hamptone recording gear.

The Sou’wester welcomes the band Little Wings on their Little Wings Explains Northwest Tour 2015. This band, formed in the late 1990’s in San Luis Obispo, California, released their first album in 1998 and EXPLAINS in 2015 on Woodsist Records.

Three years ago, Vikesh Kapoor performed at Howard Zinn’s memorial service in Boston, in front of Zinn’s family and colleagues (including Noam Chomsky). Inspired by Zinn’s lifelong battle against class/race injustice, Kapoor spent the next two years in Portland working on a concept record based on a related newspaper article. His debut album, The Ballad Of Willy Robbins, chronicles the brutal but hopeful story of a working class man who slowly loses everything: ambitions, health, family and shelter.

Best 100 Albums of the Year – ROUGH TRADE

“Kapoor’s cameos of blue-collar life are poignant and universal: wrecked home towns, insecure employment, busted dreams. An impressive debut.” ★★★★ THE GUARDIAN

“A series of sharply etched portraits of struggling Americans that points back along a road of socially conscious songs.” – THE NEW YORKER

“Sincere, husky ballads of the apathetic, recession-era (or Depression-era) working man.” – INTERVIEW MAGAZINE

“One of our favorite folk albums from 2013” – THE FRETBOARD JOURNAL

“Folk’s Newest Hero” – THE BLUEGRASS SITUATION

A wonderful treat to have Josephine Foster coming to the Sou’wester with special guest Michael Hurley!

“There are few of Foster’s contemporaries who are able to voice a song in such a striking and idiosyncratic manner, and it is borne out in the spate of enthralling albums that she has released in recent years. Her last record, Blood Rushing, offered a selection of recordings that showed Foster’s interest in both European and American folk traditions, indicative of her roots in Colorado and her time living in Spain.”

“Foster’s work touches on tradition in a way that seems both retrospective and reverent, without necessarily giving itself over to pure emulation. ‘Pretty Please’ is tinged with a country feel, its taut double bass and strumming guitar offset by a tinkling set of honkey-tonk ivories and the late inclusion of Victor Herrero’s slide guitar. Immediately following is ‘Magenta’, with Foster’s voice beautifully complemented by a cluster of piano chords and bowed bass, the results almost too tender for a listener caught off-guard. It is a precise example of the level of fine detail in the composition and execution of I’m A Dreamer; a demonstration of the gathering together of a musical knowledge and confidence in attempting things that would seem pat or dull in the hands of less confident musicians.” The Quietus Review by Andrew Spragg

“Michael Hurley is an American folk singer who was essential to the Greenwich folk music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. He is able to play a wide variety of instruments. Michael Hurley is also a cartoonist and a painter.” Wikipedia

Veteran songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Mike Coykendall has been amazingly prolific over the last three decades. 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.

photo credit: Michael Bordelon