Oregon Music News

And And And's Van Van Van. Photos by Ellen Rumel.

It is June 7, and it is the end of a perfect early summer day. It has been warm enough for shorts, and the sun has been peeping its head out even if it is a bit cloudy. In the loading area of a North Portland Tao of Tea warehouse building, Jared Mees and the Grown Children and My Autumn’s Done Come are duking it out. Tucked away on an easy-to-miss side street in the industrial area off Columbia and Interstate, a fierce game of Rigsketball is underway.

Rigsketball is the goofy, charming brainchild of And And And’s equally goofy and charming Bim Ditson. What started as a challenge between And And And and Archers to a game of basketball– on a homemade hoop attached to the former band’s van– morphed into a full-blown mobile tournament with 32 Portland bands. In true DIY style it has blossomed into three weeks of rigsketball complete with a Kickstarter campaign, screen printed posters and shirts, a compilation CD with limited edition tracks, a DVD of the tournament, and, of course, a PBR sponsorship.

Check out their Kickstarter page for information about the tournament (and to donate), and for an idea of what rigsketball looks like, watch the promo video from Into The Woods.

Rigsketball is like 3-on-3 street basketball, except that it is played on a regulation-sized hoop attached to And And And’s Van Van Van, and played by band members who (for the most part) don’t play basketball. The first round is nearly over, and as of Friday, June 10, there are only three first-round matches left. Check out our bracket or the rigsketball website for up to date scores and matchups.

Youthbitch vs. Hello Electric

There are 32 bands in a single-elimination bracket, and whoever wins the best of three games advances, while the loser is left to pine for their next shot a rigsketball glory. You play to 11 points, and have to win by two. If you make the shot, you get the ball back. Other than that, there aren’t much in the way of rules. Out-of-bounds is whoever can reach the ball first, and fouls are mostly taken for granted.

Sports and music seem so (artificially) diametrically opposed [see the jocks vs. nerds subplot of every high school movie ever made], that the concept of rigsketball seems like one big joke. But watching the June 7 match between Jared Mees and the Grown Children and My Autumn’s Done Come, you can tell that bands are showing up to win. Both Jared Mees and My Autumn’s Andrew Hanna left the court bloodied after the Grown Children’s win. Mees rolled his ankle in a scuffle, and accidentally kicked Hanna in the face attempting a dunk off the van. According to one participant, “the van is the X-factor; you gotta account for that.”

The game was gruelling, the only game of rigsketball’s first day that went past the allotted time. The Grown Children seemed outmatched by My Autumn’s height, but the Children out-scrapped them in the end. They won game one 11-6 and game two 12-10 (in OT).

There are some substitutions going on. The Grown Children had band manager Theo Craig subbed because, in Mees’ words, “there are seven people in our goddamn band, and only two of them could play.” There are grumblings that other bands are employing ringers (ahem… Laura Gibson), and that Rock n Roll Soldiers (who are rumored to have a member who played college ball) are playing despite being on hiatus for years. RnRS and Dirty Mittens are favorites to go all the way.

But all of this competitiveness is good-natured, and it is more about community building than taking home the trophy.

Bim Ditson, Right

For Bim Ditson, who put this whole crazy thing together, it is mostly about fun. With band members and friends sitting on cars drinking microbrews and tallboys of PBR, listening to old-timey jazz from someones car stereo, it feels like a backyard barbecue. And that is part of the point. “[It is] getting bands to hang out. Bands don’t hang out enough.” Bands in different scenes, or at different levels of popularity, “don’t kick it, and they should. [Because] we’re all in the same fucking boat.”

The rigsketball hoop has been around “just longer than we’ve been planning [the tournament],” says Ditson. He didn’t know most of these bands before putting this together, “maybe a third of them, the first ten or so bands” who were buddies. “Most of them I don’t really know. They’re names that I’ve heard…”

But for him, “that’s the sweetest part about it– getting to meet all the people that are down to do something like this [laughs].”

On that first Tuesday of rigsketball, Ditson had already shepherded four games, with one in progress and one more to go. “We’ve been on schedule but this one’s gonna put us late for the last one [between Typhoon and Supermonster]. It’s been totally amazing so far.”

Besides playing in And And And, recently crowned 2011’s Best New Band by Willamette Week, Ditson is an entrepreneur designing, making and selling jewelry. He works over 40 hours a week, and still found time to throw this whole thing together, and, for the course of this five round tournament, drive the Van Van Van to obscure locations from Troutdale, to Sellwood, to North Portland.

At the time of Tuesday’s match, the only spectators on hand were bands and close friends, but Ditson is relying on word of mouth to see it grow. For whatever may come of the final round, Ditson hopes to make it “as awesome as possible.” Judging from the excitement of the participants, that seems inevitable.

Patrick from Youthbitch, center

Patrick from Youthbitch, who won their first round match against Hello Electric, said “I’m obsessed with rigsketball. I’m going to every game.” He also asserted that “next game we’re wearing banana hammocks and Vaseline,” and band mate Stevie quipped that they were “gonna pull off some Harlem Globetrotters shit.”

What was immediately evident was that, as haphazard as all this seemed, these bands were preparing for this. There is strategy here. The Grown Children were running plays (of questionable effectiveness) and the bands mused with insider knowledge about who could win, who played ball in college, who plays on the weekends, and who would go all the way. The Grown Children’s Joe Bowden joked that mini-orchestra Typhoon had a good chance because “they’ve got a deep bench,” to which someone quipped “I don’t think they’ve got any ballers.” Whoever said that was right– Typhoon lost in two games to Supermonster.

From the first day you can see that Ditson’s vision of bringing bands together is working. Even with the fouls, the competition and the bloody knees, there is a playful energy and interaction that you don’t normally experience in the formality of a show setting. It is both jarring and liberating to watch faces that you normally only see in the darkness of bars smilingly sweating and bruising themselves beneath a makeshift basketball hoop. And seeing that, it is reassuring to know that community exists beyond the walls of Portland’s concert venues.

Follow the bands on our Rigsketball bracket and at the Rigsketball Tumblr page.