Oregon Music News

photo by Mirifoto@comcast.net

Turns out your neighbor’s claim that his right knee acts up right before a cloudburst or your aunt’s insistence that her parakeet goes dead silent just prior to a rainsquall isn’t all hooey. Meteorologists confirm that there is, indeed, a measurable barometric shift in air pressure preceding a storm and it can bring on all kinds of weird phenomena. But you didn’t need a weatherman to tell you that, did you? You can feel it. It’s hard to put your finger on but it’s there all right.

Listen to Woman On the Hill:

Spend a few days with twenty-eight-year-old roots musician Colin Lake and you begin to feel there’s some of that elusive pre-storm Ju Ju in the air.

First, it was the waitress. On a quintessentially Portland late December day (drip, drop, drizzle, drizzle), Colin Lake and I jockey for a table at a uber-hip breakfast cafe on Division. Despite it being a weekday, the place is humming. The weather, I guess. With a hint of pre-occupation and the vague irritation that comes with being “in the weeds,” our server chucks a couple of menus on the table with a hasty promise to return soon.

I’m here to catch up with the singer/song-writer/lap-slide guitarist to discuss his spare and sometimes spooky new solo release, In On Time, and inquire about recent musical and cultural adventures in New Orleans, where Lake has been spending much of his time over the last year. Word is that his set opening for idol Kelly Joe Phelps at Seattle’s Tractor Tavern several nights prior was a stone knock-out and Lake is obviously still buzzed and slightly giddy over the gig. “Amazing,” he says with a big dreamy smile when asked about the show. “I was excited to open for Kelly Joe but pretty freaked out that his audience might not know me at all and just see me as a tedious opening act. But, from the first song, it was magic. Total bonding. One of those supernatural nights a musician dreams about.” Apparently, post-show CD sales were exceptionally strong at the set break as well.

When our waitress arrives, she hurriedly takes my fruit bowl order. But when she turns to look Lake in the face her eyes suddenly unglaze: “Colin! Oh my God–how are you?!” she enthuses as all tension drains from her shoulders, neck, and face. The two embrace. “Are you still doing music and the band and all?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Lake returns with humble Zen satisfaction. “With the slide guitar thing?” she inquires enthusiastically. “Yep,” he smiles. “Awesome!” she retorts.

And then, for a moment, she appears to have forgotten the matter at hand. “Oh, what will you have?” she sputters finally, cheeks flushed. Breakfast is back on.

Despite having no permanent address, living out of duffel bags, and driving punishing stretches in his truck (alone), Lake emanates the vibe of a surfer who has been blessed with gobs of sun and pipeline lately—utterly oblivious to the Northwest drool outside.

Over the following few days, a pattern seems to emerge. Next, it’s the sports bar on Greeley. While taking in some football, Colin comments on the New Orleans Saints knit cap worn by the fella on the next bar stool: obviously home-made, but meticulously executed. What’s up with the hat? Turns out it was made by the wearer’s friend—while he was in the joint. As the conversation ensues, it’s revealed that the Saints fan grew up (with his incarcerated bud) in the same neighborhood (St. Bernard Parish) where Lake has been camped much of his time in NOLA. When Lake mentions the guitarist Don Williams who has been accompanying him on dates in Louisiana, the cap guy is dumbfounded: “He was my brother’s roommate for four years! My brother buried his cat!”

Moments later, the brother arrives and the three spend the afternoon drinking to the (as yet) undefeated Saints and trading stories about second- line shuffle beats, po-boy sandwiches and pigskin.

It’s as if some new variation of the “Six Degrees of Separation” game is cropping up here; as though Colin Lake’s musical hoo doo has begun to mysteriously seep into the water table and make its way, just below the surface, through the cultural soil. Maybe that’s a bit too X-Files. But it’s hard to deny there is something  happening here.

A couple of listens to In On Time and it’s apparent why these episodes may be more than the stuff of coincidence. While last year’s excellent Bullet, recorded with Lake’s crackin’ band, Wellbottom, was a greasy throw-down of tasty 21st century blues-infused rock, the new record is another dish entirely. In On Time finds Lake stripped bare: a man and his guitar. And while the production is elegant and simple and devoid of noticeable adornment, there’s discernible vibe right from the go. On the opening track, Ain’t Gonna Worry, the influence of early Kelly Joe Phelps is evident with its hybrid of finger-picking/slide guitar and naturally soulful vocals. But this is no ditto job. While the origins of the style and atmosphere are evident, the song never smacks of mediocre emulation. Penned by Lake himself (as are all the tracks on this release ) the song and its performance stand firmly on solid ground with a quality of assertive, unassuming confidence.

Likewise the title track conjures thoughts of Mississippi John Hurt and like-minded “songster/blues” artists with a sure-footed balance of infectious groove and sunny-yet-wistful disposition. Woman On the Hill truly showcases Lake’s emerging songwriting chops. It’s a nearly flawless song; swampy and low-down and yet somehow entirely contemporary. It’s the kind of track that could find itself on an iPod playlist comfortably alongside a Chris Whitley song or a cut from neo indie-folksters of the Devendra Banhart/Iron and Wine tribe. Amazingly, Lake delivers the goods again on The Same Sun You See—a loping, jazzy chord, white boy funk piece. This is the stuff that usually has me running for the door or fumbling panicked for pause button. But in the hands of the right artist (say Jeff Buckley, Martin Sexton or, apparently, Colin Lake) all the clichés it suggests initially quickly and mysteriously evaporate. Stop at the Bottom comes off a bit like a Wellbottom demo, but there’s a pregnant tension in the solo setting that keeps one’s head nodding involuntarily. The closing track, How Far it is to Fall may elicit some initial “been here before?” skepticism: the bare, seductive riff, spooky groove; the hormonal groaning. Surely, this is from the soundtrack to some infidelity-themed straight-to-video flick. But, once again, voice, performance, natural feel and fresh writing steers it out of the territory of midnight bottomland cliché and into the terrain of Blind Willie Johnson for the SexyBack generation. Somehow, all questions of “authenticity” are rendered moot. It’s deeply-grounded in tradition yet entirely accessible stuff—a rare combination.

Just as Lake and I are settling into our booth at yet one more dining establishment, another slightly eerie moment occurs. The music spilling out of the pub’s house sound system is a track from Doug Martsch’s Now You Know album—a record, it turns out, that was pivotal in Lake’s musical trajectory.

Built to Spill (Martsch’s legendary indie-rock band) was huge when I was in high school in Seattle. They were played on all the college and public radio stations along with Nirvana and Soundgarden and the other big indie/grunge bands of the day. I enjoyed that stuff and I wore my flannel shirt, but it didn’t really feel like ‘my music.’ It didn’t grab me on a ‘soul’ level. I kept wondering ‘Whats’s all the yelling about ?’ When Martsch took a break from the band and put out this acoustic blues-type record, it got a bunch of local airplay. “I liked it,” recalls Lake. “It was melodic and had the kind of instrumentation and vibe I was experimenting with and listening to a lot at the time. Yet… there was something a little square about it—the way the notes and vocals fell right on the beat. And I thought, ‘Well shit, I could do better than that.’ So it gave me the nudge I needed to really dig in and commit myself to developing my own voice.”

In addition to digesting the legendary masters of yore (Son House, Bukka White, etc.), Lake was imbibing incessantly the strange brews of Kelly Joe Phelps and Chris Whitley.

“When I discovered those guys I got into them real heavy. These were two musicians who were obviously steeped in the deep traditional stuff yet were modern in an odd way and totally natural sounding. It was just a beautiful, joyful, sorrowful, soulful form of expression. It was great craft and yet totally intuitive. It was as if the guitar had never been invented, they would still have found a way to express those feelings. You realize their playing, their instrument becomes an extension of their subconscious personality. Every little idiosyncrasy is theirs alone.”

This statement reminds me of the first time I heard Colin Lake perform. As the co-host of a blues show featuring regular live music spots, I’d had the great privilege and excitement of working with much of Portland’s finest blues talent. So when this kid showed up clutching a Weissenborn lap-style guitar, I was leery. But, as soon as Lake began to play, I had one of those “Shazam” moments. The music seemed to flow in a way that was unmistakably “right.” The spare playing, the natural rhythmic feel and the effortlessly soulful vocals blew through the room like a warm gale. Indeed, all thirty or so in attendance felt it: the air pressure in the room had changed.

Also, it was apparent that Lake was genuinely hungry for the music and had put in his time. He’d ingested the form and out was coming one of the rarest of attributes—a singular voice.

It strikes me that Lake’s hunger has not waned. His adventures in New Orleans are part of a quest to continue to expand his artistic range and absorb new sounds, new language, new methods. It’s obvious that the city, its culture, and its music has completely captivated Lake. At a recent Portland gig at Duff’s garage, second-line beats and NOLA-style horns, alongside snakey slide guitar and lip-smacking rock, made their way into the gumbo of the show.  And now Lake’s getting ready to head back down south to take another bite from the moveable feast of music.

“It’s been completely amazing—the food, the people, the music. The bar for musicianship is pretty high down there. But from the first day I played on the street, I felt like part of the fold. And even when I was crashing at what had recently been a junkie “shooting gallery” and found a used needle behind the tub, even when I was bedding down for the night on my air mattress, exhausted from an all-day jam, with the stink of the nasty carpet punishing my nostrils, I’d fall asleep with a smile on my face thinking “Damn, I’m livin’ the life, the real thing.”

As we’re packing up lights and guitars from the photo shoot, a guy sitting at the bar recognizes Lake. “Dude, my friend’s girlfriend took us to one of your shows. You rock.” Once again, we find ourselves in the vortex of the Colin Lake funnel cloud.

They say you can’t control the weather but, with a burgeoning artist like Lake, you can’t help but think that a hard rain’s about to fall any moment.