Portland’s Audios Amigos is a band made up of grizzled DIY music veterans that clearly bucks many of the trends of modern music. A four piece instrumental muscle car that jumps between genres like surf, country, funk and oddball movie soundtracks, the Amigos make it all look effortless. They started turning heads about a year or so ago here in Portland and caused music seeking bar patrons to actually remove hands from pockets and commence to dancing. The new 6 song ep simply entitled “The Reacharound” after their most popular soul tinged original number, was recorded in two bouts with Bellingham’s (a favorite road destination for the band) Patrick Gay at Sleng Teng studios. Artwork was then contracted from Chris Cilla a rising star in the Portland underground comics scene, and this brings us to this fine event! Audios Amigos will share the stage to celebrate this wonderful documant at The World Famous Kenton Club with one of their favorite group of comrades Don and the Quixotes. Making the trip down from Seattle to round out this undoubtably sweaty and odorous evening is legendary roots/swing/weird DJ, tattoo/pinstripe artist Hubba Hubba.

Here is a video for “Giardino Delle Delizie” shot and edited by Wetcoastproductions.

What is Water in the Ditch you say? Well it is a somewhat magical thing that happens every year in Idaho…I’m not going to tell you where, because you’re not invited…if you are invited, well then, you fucking know where it is and you’re special. The Ditch is a small shindig of a music festival that usually lasts a few days in the summer, and features 8 or 9 bands or however many Ditchmaster Damon decides are worthy. It’s family and friends, there are children everywhere, and this year was the first year of the Ditch Olympics…yes, someone took home an award for cornhole.

So anyways I got to the Ditch a day late so this is a somewhat lame review…but that’s your problem, I’ve got 99 problems and the Ditch ain’t one. After the 6.5 hour drive we were pretty excited to roll out of the car and see some smiling faces bearing magical chocolates (and less excited to see JT’s dong already taking up residence inside my tent).

(Read the full post…)

“This is a four oscillator synth with each oscillator controlled by a position on the joystick.”

How cool was Suzanne Ciani back in the 70s! I just love the fat analog sound of the synths in this tune.

Paris 1971

Here she is demonstrating some synth patch cords to a young enthusiast. She took a turn for the worse down New Age lane, and is responsible for some rather awful new age music oh and uh cough cough Disco Star Wars (ok that MIGHT fall under awsome, hard to tell really)…but pre 1980 I pledge my love and allegiance to you nerdy synth Goddess.

http://youtu.be/0n4IUQp7E0k

Well where to begin…I’d never been to Estacada, it’s a small town southeast of Portland. A quick look online at The Legendary Safari Club website confirmed it would probably be worth the drive down to see our good buds The Bad Assetts charm the locals with their pure country goodness. Seriously, those guys all have the requisite chops, great songwriting and are well seasoned vets here in the Portland scene. We arrived at the start of their second set and it was obvious things were not going well when an inebriated damsel pushed violently past us on her way out proclaiming this was the “worst country band EVER”. Upon entering we walked past a row of scowling patrons over to the stage area where we saw some friendlier faces. The BA’s ripped through their second set which had a few of us who made the long drive out and dancing. I heard later there was much disappointment among the Estacadians *NOT ALL ESTACADIANS ONLY THE ONES AT THE SAFARI CLUB THIS PARTICULAR EVENING* at this band for “playing their own songs”…apparently that kind of thing is unheard of, and now the Assetts are banned from The Safari Club. Ah well, the club itself is a damn interesting place founded by some sick fuck game hunter slightly misguided individual who felt it would be cool to share his love for the sport of killing animals with large weapons. Honestly if you’re looking for a fair fight and want to prove yourself in the wild against animals I am not totally against you…hell if you want to hunt a bear armed with a pocket knife I might even tune in to watch that reality tv show (not really I’m just posturing). So, that was a long time ago and the bar has changed hands a number of times, it’s been restored nicely and if you can put aside your general disgust for big game hunting it is really kind of impressive to see. If you are going to play there be sure to brush up on your Godsmack covers, maybe if a few more good original bands play there the locals will warm up to the concept that original music played by people who care can be fun. Here are a few shots from the club.

*EDIT Cindy from the Safari Club responded with a list of bands who played original music at The Safari Club (see comments)…so to the Bad Assetts, sorry guys I guess Estacada (THE REGULARS THAT HANG OUT AT THE SAFARI CLUB) just hate you in particular. I still love ya though.”

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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. (Read the full post…)

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. (Read the full post…)

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.