The World Famous Kenton Club hosts a wide variety of music in North Portland. It’s about as DIY as it get’s, you contact booking set up a show via email and you are on your own. The advantages of this are they book a wide variety of music all the time, and allow up and coming bands a decent venue with a small scene built in. The shows are free and they pay you a percentage from the bar, which is the perfect formula really for this type of venue. This bill on Jan 12th was designed to bring together some of my favorite local heavyweights, and well…turn up the volume a bit on the bass. (more…)

Slim’s is a dive bar, and I mean that in the best possible way. It has character, and is usually filled with characters…and well they are St. Johns characters, which adds another layer to the overall funkiness. The stage is simply too narrow for a normal rock band to fit on in any sort of traditional drummer in the back set up. You arrange yourself in a row, and the “frontman” if you have one wil be playing out on the floor. (more…)

I really need to lay off the acid man…

I spent 20 years in the desert of Tucson Arizona. When I first moved there in 1987 it was a really exciting little music scene filled with a mixture of the local thriving punk scene, art kids from the college, and various ship-wrecked castaways like myself. There was an actual music scene…or a number of them even. Bands supporting each other, people supporting bands, house parties every weekend – all weekend. Yes, it actually was, in retrospect, really great and a lot of good music happened. Quite a bit of this music was actually archived thanks to the mighty cassette tape and the 4-track recorder. One of the great collectors (and of course guitarist in numerous bands at the time) Jason Willis has started digitalizing the cassette demos from that warm and fuzzy era. These demo tapes really capture the raw music and ingenuity of the Tucson music scene and should give you a good taste of what I’m talking about.

Demo Ape!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any updates on my personal music projects. We’ve been working on a new band with Lana Rebel called the Love Lasers. The spark for this project came about when Lana needed a stand-in band for a Laurelthirst gig because some of the Broken Promises were out of town. We enlisted the drum talent of Andy Bacon (long time Portland drummer who has played with just about everyone). We were just going to do a three piece, but then in walked the one and only Dan Lowenger who just happened to have his gear in the trunk of his car…you’re hired Lowenger! We had fun that night and Lana and Dan thought it would be fun to put together a more uptempo band as a side project. Well, a year later we are still rolling, picking up speed with 2nd and 4th Monday gigs at the Kenton Club. We play a list of old timey classic country, rockabilly and odd instrumentals. here is a link to a sort of website I set up with a current list of songs and upcoming gigs. We also have an offcial Facebook page with some video clips.

Wow this is a perfect combination of audio and visual…haunting and beautiful.

I just finished developing a website for a band Barely Bipedal (best band name ever right?) I was in many years ago in Tucson AZ. The band was a rather amazing conglomeration of misfits that resulted in some very interesting psychedelic, folk, whatever music. I have spent a month or so digitalizing the old 4-track recordings we made and have been posting them to the site. Check it out if you like creative somewhat low-fi music featuring some great songwriting. These recordings really capture that interesting time in Tucson AZ, an isolated island filled with post punk angst and a purifying heat that really tests one’s resolve.

The Official Barely Bipedal website (site is back up). Here is a BBP song if you’re too lazy to click on the link.

Barely Bipedal- Desert of Love

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The kids of the Lana Rebel band are off to Utah for a hopefully fun weekend of partying and music….unfortunately the winds of work are blowing here at the chicken farm and I have to miss out. I was doing a bit of late night punk rock reminiscing when i came across this 1984 performance of Slip It In by Black Flag (duh). The band is pretty much firing all cylinders with Henry flying around all sweaty and macho, while Kira and Bill hold steady and solid to keep the ship afloat. The real show stopper is Ginn though, holy crap he is tearing shit up! His guitar is good and up front here and you really can hear every insane rampage through the fret board as he just cuts loose. Fucking brilliant…

It was great to see so many younger people at the Shellac all ages show last night here at Berbati’s Pan in Portland. Steve Albini and company definitely didn’t disappoint, ripping through a good set of new and old with all the bile, humor and sonic abrasiveness that they are famous for. For me though I felt the show was kind of stolen by Minneapolis post punkers Arc Welder.
I can’t believe I had never heard of or seen these guys in my 20+ years as an aging indie punk musician. Arc Welder were formed in 1987 and can definitely be viewed as an evolution of the Minn punk scene. You can clearly hear the influence of Husker Du at work, although I don’t want to take anything away from them, it’s only a noticeable influence, and they clearly are headed down their own path. It was a treat to watch this energetic trio, especially bassist Bill Graber as he stalked the stage with a perpetual snarl of focused glee on his face. It’s always cool to see a competent bass player unafraid to fill out the sonic realm in a trio by playing chords. Apparently they have not released an album since 1999, but they seem to be an apple in Albini’s eye, so hopefully that will change and we will get to hear some new tunes sometime soon.
In case you were wondering, as I often have, how Steve gets that unique grinding tone, here is a map of his guitar rig, cleverly hidden in that custom aluminum box. Both Steve and Shellac bassist Bob Weston play aluminum necked Travis Bean guitars.

Shellac- Website
Arc Welder- Website

Last Sunday we played a show with The Obits (former Drive like Jehu) over at the Doug Fir. The DF is one of the nicer clubs here in Portland, and I can safely say it has the best sound I’ve experienced in a club hands down. That said it is not our usual preferred venue, as we blend in more naturally in a smokey dive bar (Kenton Club is probably my favorite local indie music venue to play with Lana). It was a bit of a weird show, and a new experience for the band as a whole…having stage monitors, lots of room to actually turn around and adjust your amp if necessary! Not that any of us are rookies, or unfamiliar with playing these venues, it’s just that we have not done it as this particular band much. All in all it was a fun show, people seemed to enjoy seeing a seasoned authentic country band, and by the end I think even a few of those steadfast arms crossed hipsters uncrossed their arms and clapped a bit. Here is a video of the show I edited together with some footage from a gig we played at The East End last year. The song is called Blue, and it is a pretty slow burner that sort of reminds me of the theme to some David Lynch scene.

Lana Rebel- Blue from Eric on Vimeo.

Myspace- Lana Rebel
Website- Lana Rebel