Oregon Music News

Renowned British blues guitarist Matt Schofield played a blistering set to lively crowd at the WOW Hall on Thursday night.

Schofield, who was ranked by Guitar & Bass Magazine as one of the ten greatest living British blues guitarists, toured in support of latest album Heads, Tails and Aces on a leg of his first American tour.

The band, a unique trio composed of Schofield on guitar, Hammond organist Jonny Henderson and drummer Kevin Hays, played a tight set that spanned the full gamut of blues sounds, merging hard-driving straight-forward blues rock,  southern-style shuffles and crooning ballads.

Schofield took center stage on all the tracks. His soloing bag of riffs never seemed to end as he fused screeching bends, repeating licks, and scorching runs. While his guitar dominated the set, Schofield played the spaces and built his solos upon solid melodic foundations. The end result were solos that climaxed in an epic fashion. Schofield dangled licks and bends in front of the dancing audience before unleashing his guitar might in a frenzy that merged perfectly with the other musicians.

His voice, which sounds distinctly American despite his noticeable British accent, quavered between high and low notes and hit the full spectrum of dynamic range. It was the perfect voice for the blues:  ragged, yet soulful.

The band clearly enjoyed themselves and the lively crowd. “You guys might be the loudest and grooviest (crowd) yet,” Schofield proclaimed.

It was a classic blues show. The blues is a fascinating musical style. It is steeped in tradition and rarely diverges from the formula created in the Southern delta decades ago. Its popularity stems from its unwavering adherence to form, structure and melody. And within these hallowed parameters, Schofield thrived.

Here’s a taste of his playing and an interview:

World-renowned blue guitarist Matt Schofield will bring his scintillating live blues performance to  Berbati’s Pan tonight and  WOW Hall on Thursday, June 10th.

Rated as one of the top ten British guitarists of all time by  Guitar & Bass Magazine, Schofield will tour in support of his third his third studio release Heads, Tails & Aces.

This most recent offering see Schofield, whose previous albums featured forays into funk and jazz instrumentalism, take a more traditional, blues-based approach to song writing. Nine of the 11 tracks were written or co-written by Schofield as the guitar phenom continues to mature.

During his short solo career, Schofield has burned his name into the annals of blues guitar. He has toured across 12 countries and gathering praise from high circles, such as the Penguin Book of Blues Recordings, which awarded him with a maximum four-star rating. There is only one other living British guitarist to achieve this distinction.

In Portland: Berbati’s Pan 503.248.4579, 9 p.m., $12

In Eugene: The doors open at 7 PM and show time is 7:30 PM. Popular Salem-based blues act the Ty Curtis Band is opening. Tickets are are $8 in advance and $10 at the door.

Here’s live performance and an interview:

WHY? brought a short but solid set to Eugene’s WOW Hall Sunday night. WHY?’s drummer, Josiah Wolf, opened with songs from his folk inspired debut, Jetlag. The Donkeys followed with a 40 minute set of rock tunes.

WHY? began their set with two songs from their latest studio LP, Eskimo Snow. They quickly followed with a slew of tracks from 2008’s critically acclaimed, Alopecia. An energetic rendition of “The Vowels” bled perfectly into “Good Friday” and then into a fantastically ambient version of  “The Fall of Mr. Fifths.”

The group worked quickly through new and old songs alike but leaned mostly on Alopecia. After the encore break front-man Yoni Wolf complemented the crowd’s energy and enthusiasm before the band launched into the often requested, “The Hollows.” WHY? concluded the night with a Hymie’s Basement song, “21st Century Pop Song”. Hymie’s Basement is a former side project of Yoni Wolf and current WHY? member Andrew Broder.

WHY? sounded great and brought a rawness to the songs that gave them an interesting dimension. Yoni Wolf is an excellent front-man and he commanded the crowd from the beginning.  However, their set was scarcely an hour, which was disappointing. All in all it was a solid night featuring three great artists.

Often times when describing a particularly loud band, music writers will use phrases such as “the band shook the rafters” or “vibrated the floor like a nitrous-powered Cuisinart.” Many times, this is merely for effect–it is actually rather difficult to gyrate any structural element of a music venue.

Unless it’s at WOW Hall. And unless the band is ISIS.

On Saturday, May 29th, the Boston-based band played Eugene on what will be their farewell tour. After 13 years of churning out sludge metal that sounds like it belongs in a tattoo parlor for Norse gods, the band is calling it quits.

The universally black-clad five-piece swayed before towering stacks of mega-amplification to a half-full, but enthusiastic crowd. Slow, chunky odd-time meters framed reverb-ridden, screeching guitar harmonies and tribal, off-kilter tom beats. Leading the fray, singer and guitarist Aaron Turner bellowed screams like a Siberian tiger taking issue with an intrusion on its territory.

Despite the coarse exterior, ISIS’ songs span the gamut from face-pummeling metal chug fests to beautiful melodic breakdowns that explore the sonic textures of each chord, before culminating again into a long-awaited crescendo of glorious, distorted chaos. Watching an ISIS show is like listening to a really ugly singer with a stunningly beautiful voice, who, afterwards, punches you in the face.

At its heart, ISIS is a band all about the build up. Their songs rarely come in under the six-minute mark as the slow, deliberate chord structures seem to just elude predictability, culminating in an all-out musical frenzy.  The band, which consists of Turner, guitarist/keyboardist Bryant Clifford Meyer, drummer Aaron Harris, guitarist Michael Gallagher and bassist Jeff Caxide, constructs a riff, grabs it, picks it up, examines it from all sides, and throws it back together. The result is a show with an enormous dynamic range and tonal variety. The band breaks the boundary of traditional metal to emerge into the sonic do-what-you-want-osphere of progressive rock.

Drummer Harris tastefully avoided ordinary back beat-driven rhythms playing the spaces and enlivening the cadence of the song with punchy accents and machine gun fills. The impressive three guitar line-up allowed harmonic guitar counter melodies to blanket the off-time chunk riffs that were kept in line by the sledgehammer drones of the bass. The music swelled and fell, undulated and flat-lined. The band pushed the crowd to the edge of a musical precipice and mercilessly tossed them into the fray created when the four different structural components clashed into epic conclusion.

At times, when this type of instrumentation is at its exquisite peak, the singer seems like an unwelcome guest–the sheer density of ISIS’ musical arrangement rarely benefits from the accompaniment Turner’s vocals provide. The identity of the band is their meticulous arrangement of melody and counter melody, rhythmic tweaking and dynamic swells.

Perhaps it is merely a question of marketability. A singer certainly makes the complex, eight-minute compositions easier to digest. Either way, the enthusiastic response from the WOW Hall crowd proves that the 13-year-old formula of the band is as strong as ever.

And while the end is near, the band wrote on their official blog that they have “done everything we wanted to do, said everything we wanted to say.” The crowd on Saturday night enjoyed a fine hour and a half of a unique act in the strange annals of sludge metal.

Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf is the frontman of WHY?, a one-time American hip-hop now indie rock band, along with Andrew Broder and Mark Erickson (both also of the indie-electronica band Fog).  The trio strolls through the Northwest beginning with a show at the Wonder Ballroom on Friday, May 28th.

Fans have seen WHY? come quite a long way, beginning with early collaborations with Adam Drucker (Doseone) and David Madson (Odd Nosdam) as Greenthink and, most notably, cLOUDDEAD.  As part of the famed indie label, anticon. (a Los Angeles-by-way-of-Oakland based collective featuring “avant-garde hip-hop” or “avanthop”), WHY? has shared work with artists such as Slug from Atmosphere.  The band’s star to rose considerably with 2005’s Elephant Eyelash and then 2008’s Alopecia as WHY? gained a sizable following. They’re currently touring behind their 2009 release Eskimo Snow with Yoni’s older brother Josiah Wolf (who also plays with WHY?) opening.

Watch the combo video for the first two tracks off Eskimo Snow, “These Hands / January Twenty Something,” directed by Ben Barnes:

WHY? comes to the Northwest packing in three live shows starting with the Wonder Ballroom (May 28th), the Sasquatch Music Festival (29th), and, finally, at the WOW Hall in Eugene (30th).

Oregon Music News recently spoke with Wolf about his kind of music, his obsessions, and exactly what it took to get his driver’s license.

There’s been a few times that WHY? has been referred to as “avant-garde hip-hop” or “abstract hip-hop.”  How do you feel about terms like those?  How would you describe your music?

Yoni Wolf:  I don’t really think about it all too much.  People will call your music whatever they want to call it.  In the past, I’ve called my music “sober-psyche.”

You’ve gotten a whole lot of attention in recent years and your audiences have gotten bigger as well as more diverse.  How do you deal with all the new pressure and stress?

It’s not that stressful.  I’m really happy that people are interested.

Do you still live in Oakland?

I lived in Oakland for eight years, but now I’m living in this awesome cabin in Yellow Springs, Ohio, just a ways from Cincinnati where I grew up.  Right now I’m working on a project with another friend using an 8-track.  It’s very quiet and peaceful.

Which musicians do you currently have a lot of respect for?

I hate to say her name again because I’ve been talking a lot about her, but, Joanna Newsom.  Her album, Have One On Me, I didn’t like what I first heard but now I’ve listened to it a million times and I just love it.  As a whole album, it’s just amazing.

Any authors or current reads you’d like to share with your fans?

Last full novel I read was by Percival Everett and I loved it.  I got really into it.  I’ve also started the memoir, Dry, by Augusten Burroughs but it’s been three months and I haven’t finished it yet.  I’m not sure what that means.

How about just anything you’re really into that you think more people should know about?

Watch my brother Josiah’s travel show.  It’s called “Traveling with Josiah Wolf.”  It’s real stuff.  I also just bought a car.  I had been thinking about buying a car for a while but then I realized my license had been expired for quite some time.  The prospect of re-taking the test was not thrilling.  When I was a kid, the first time I took the written test I failed a bunch of times.  I was so nervous the book was shaking.  When I finally passed and took the physical driving test I got 100 percent.  You know, I was all flirting with the lady.  She was giggling.  We were having fun.

For the last year, this YACHT has been sailing around the world touching every continent possible.  One week ago they were playing Bogotá, Colombia.  Tomorrow they’ll be back in their home state rocking Eugene’s WOW Hall for University of Oregon student radio KWVA’s Birthday Bash.

Another one week and one day, YACHT will set sail north through the Pacific Northwest to the Gorge to devastate the second day of Sasquatch on Sunday, May 30th.

Less than a week later they’ll be in Corvallis on Saturday, June 5th hanging at OSU for the Flat Tail Music Festival on campus playing a free gig with Neon Indian, Minus The Bear, I Will Be King, and Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band.

Bam!  In July, it’s back to the Eurozone for some dates in Deutschland and elsewhere before rocking the Hollywood Bowl in California opening for the Chemical Brothers and Chromeo on August 29th.

Hot shit!  Can you even wrap your mind around this?

They’ve been spreading their individualist ideologies around like wildflowers–sometimes in the form of scripture (like the interview below), but more frequently in the form of jump and bump dance music–all while staying “fascinated with the common ground of underground spirituality and underground music,” blogged Team YACHT just two days ago.  “After all, both are motivated by the desire to create something more real, special, and rare than what is being presented by the mainstream cultural machine.”

Which YACHT offers to us as free release of their mixtape Disco Worship: Music for Meditative Dancing, a digital version of the sold-out tape edition that was released on the PDX tape-label Gnar Tapes and Shit.

“The music concert is a series of rituals just as the religious service is; we come together in the dark club, following a sequence of understood rules (hand-stamp, coat check, merch table, posture), and we hope to experience transcendence, to have synergistic and communal experience worth remembering.”

Traveling to spread their message, it’s just the lifestyle when you’re involved in YACHT.

Back in 2007, YACHT played more than 200 shows in 17 countries.  December 2009 saw YACHT return from the Far East (China, Korea) and Down Under (Australia, New Zealand) while hitting Europe, USA, Brazil, and some others in between before embarking on their current, aforementioned, jaunt in February, kicking it off with a goodbye gig at Holocene.

Over these venturesome years, YACHT has grown from the solo project of Jona Bechtolt, first adding Claire L. Evans, and most recently accumulating its first-ever backing band, The Straight Gaze, which features musician friends Bobby Birdman and Jeffrey Jerusalem on their New Mystery Moods world trek.  (They even thoroughly hit up Canada!)

Adding a live band to their laptops and dramatic antics makes YACHT feel a little more traditional, but the audience interaction and projected presentations are always at hand–even as they’ve been opening for dance masters and DFA label mates LCD Soundsystem in Europe as well as stomping around on their own, keeping us updated on their Twitter HI’s and LOW’s, and spreading their crowd smashing, egalitarian dance love.

Listen to “Psychic City (Voodoo City)” from YACHT’s 2009 release See Mystery Lights :

YACHT is constantly growing. From one, then two, and now up to four. When can we expect choral accompaniment and a brass section? Strings and go-go dancers… those kinda go together, don’t they?

We have an axiom: YACHT is what YACHT is when YACHT is standing before you. That means that yes, Jona and Claire, we’re YACHT. But so are the Straight Gaze, our band, and so are the kids who jump onstage to dance during a show. If you’re looking at it, it’s YACHT. For that matter, if you’re interfacing with it in any way, you’re YACHT. Right now, you, the interviewer, are YACHT, because we’re temporarily taking part in a symbiotic communicative relationship. It’s an ephemeral thing, but it’s inclusive.

Seriously, your life is one continuous tour and now you’ve added two friends to the mix. How are YACHT and The Straight Gaze doing?

We’re fine, thank you.

Was it a smooth transition to tour with a four-piece band? What’s been the most enjoyable perk?

For us, it was never about “upgrading” to a “real” band. We feel there’s a latent supposition with most people that a movement to add more people to a band somehow legitimizes it, presumably because it brings the band closer to the Western rock n’ roll ideal of drums, guitar, bass, and vocals–the nuclear musical family. When YACHT was a one-piece band, it was as full an experience as when it was a two-piece, and now a four-piece. That’s because YACHT is a thing of the spirit, a feeling; the parts that make up its whole are only subdivisions of a greater “vibe” that is incorporeal. That said, it’s a great and enjoyable novelty for us to play live shows with instrumentation, despite the fact that it’s the oldest trick in the book. We’ve been doing live multimedia electronic performance for years, so guitars are exotic to us–and that’s how we use them, like alien tools.

Jona and Claire live at The Vera in Groningen, The Netherlands

How many shows are you aiming for in 2010?

Hundreds, if not thousands. Wait, define “show.”

Is The Straight Gaze a permanent YACHT fixture now? Or at least for the rest of 2010’s scheduled gigs?

The future is always uncertain to us. Every time we take small steps along the long and tenebrous path that has been set before us: we can’t see where we’re going, or what kinds of briar patches and weird chasms we will have to surmount on our journey to its end. All we know is that one day, perhaps on our death beds, we’ll be looking down from a great height, and we will finally see the larger pattern of our lives laid down beneath us. I can’t say that it won’t be a bitter moment.

Last time Oregon saw you was at your “goodbye show” to kick this behemoth off. You’ve traversed North America hitting SXSW and Canada. Any notes? Areas for improvement?

There’s always room for improvement. Artists who believe in their own perfection are destined to repeat themselves indefinitely, becoming poor shadows of themselves in the process. In our opinion, we’re terrible. We struggle in the dirt with bloody elbows and knees, sand in our teeth, in the daily Sisyphean task of betterment. This is the process that audiences sometimes enjoy watching.

Then it was Mexico and Columbia and Europe with LCD Soundsystem plus you got to bring the whole band along as well. Regale us…

We had a very productive tour. We worked out some demons, personally. We strengthened friendships within and without our band, and we worked ourselves lean and hard in the process. Every day we get to tour, to perform in front of people who are there because they were moved by their personal tastes and desires to be there, is profoundly sacred to us. And surreal. We live to please those who have made the personal commitment to like us.

You’ve been giving us some daily highlights and lowlights on Twitter. What’s been the ultimate, soaring HI… and the deepest, dirtiest LOW so far…

Honestly, the truth is that it’s one big long MID.

Where are you going in 2010 that you missed in 2009? Where are you missing in 2010 that you loved in 2009?

We don’t really believe in linear time.

You just released the single for “The Afterlife” on 4/20 with a load of remixes from famous folks and one sweet lil’ May Ling. Can you gush about this release for a moment?

“The Afterlife” single has been a labor of love. We’re moved beyond expression at the willingness of people to participate in it. As for how we got them involved, we just asked very sincerely. Andrew WK, who is a huge inspiration for us, a fucking behemoth–his incredibly difficult club mix is a total work of art. The xx, Dat Politics, Joy Electric, May Ling: they all contributed fantastic work to the release. We love it, and we appreciate that nobody took the easy path with their piece. All the remixes and covers are singularly weird, expressing the spirit of the song in their own ways.

Watch the video for the original single of “The Afterlife”:

Are you finding time to work on new material while on the road? What’s inspiring you?

We still run on the fumes of the massive nuclear burst of inspiration that struck us to the ground when we were living and recording music in Marfa, Texas, in 2008. As our album See Mystery Lights implies, Marfa is the seat of a unique paranormal optical phenomenon called the “Mystery Lights,” which were a huge influence on us personally as well as creatively. They represented to us the persistence of mystery and magic in our hyper-connected, information-saturated media world. That this is an important proof is something we can’t stress enough.

Have any new songs or recordings you’ve been testing out on this tour?

All the shows on our most recent tours have been rich with newness, largely because of our involvement with the Straight Gaze, our band. We have never played shows with live instrumentation ever before in the nine-year history of YACHT. This, on its own, has brought us to a new level of keenness, of awareness, of vulnerability, and has brought us deeper within our own songs. We’ve found moments in time inside our music we didn’t know existed before. We live inside them. To quote the great American composer LaMonte Young, “When I told Richard Brautigan that I liked to get inside of sounds, he said that he didn’t really understand what I meant because he didn’t visualize a shape when he heard a sound, and he imagined that one must conceive of a shape if he is to speak of getting inside of something. Then he asked, ‘Is it like being alone?’ I said, ‘Yes.’” This as true a sentiment as we can express about live performance.

Next stops in the NW are Eugene and Sasquatch in the end of May. Got any surprises planned? A special multimedia show?

We can only promise this: there will be a computer, some invisible digital instruments, some real instruments, some flesh-and-blood people, some without, some spirit, some body, some erratic movement, some grace, something to look at that is complex and a little bit difficult, some props, and lots and lots of direct communication.

What are you summer plans? Will you be playing any gigs around PDX or just hanging and relaxing?

The summer is cordoned off, ostensibly, for us to record a new album. We have some concerts here and there, but nothing that should significantly impede us from this particularly important task.

What kind of culture are you gobbling up right now? Learn any new phrases abroad? Foods? Philosophies? Haircuts?

We bring our own Temporary Autonomous Zone with us wherever we go; although we love to travel and learn about the philosophies and lifestyles of those around us, we welcome them all into our own anarchic circle, where new ideas are disseminated collectively.

How do you manage to keep up with your diets while on the road?

Nothing is more important than food, when it comes down to it. We feed ourselves with as close as we can to pure, unfettered natural light by ingesting energy made by plants via the magic of photosynthesis. When you consider the sheer wonder and madness of the biological kingdom’s ability to do such a thing, finding a vegetarian restaurant really isn’t so hard in comparison.

Here’s some more YACHT philosophy on consumption and diet from SXSW:

YACHT

In celebration of its 17th year of operation, University of Oregon student radio KWVA is throwing an all-out music hoopla at the WOW Hall, featuring Portland staple YACHT and the national act Music For Animals on Saturday, May 22nd.

For students and the community, this annual event has developed a reputation as a rager of epic proportions. According to student worker Sheila Zigler, the event drew close to 300 supporters last year. It has become a must-see on the calendar of most local music-lovers, students or not.

KWVA radio is a non-profit, student run organization with a professional general manager. The station is an outlet designed to keep students and the community informed while allowing aspiring broadcasters to cut their teeth in the real world of broadcast radio.

Their manifesto declares: “We are a campus and community outlet for… music that you cannot find anywhere else, what we do is strive to keep up that goal, to represent the underrepresented, to be a voice that does not go silent when all else do.”

The annual birthday bash is a way of upholding that philosophy, plus a way to give back to students and supporters with a night of musical mayhem. Students who have signed up for membership (an easy, free process available here) and subscribing members don’t pay any cover and patrons that arrive before 8 PM will receive a free t-shirt. There is also free cake for all from Sweet Life. The supply is limited, so come early.

In addition to the free swag, there will be a raffle with winners receiving gift certificates to local restaurants.

The music kicks off at 9 PM with Bobby Birdman who combines a voice like a crystal chandelier with quirky, up-beat melodies flavored with a tinge of indie rock. It’s college music that doesn’t spend time wallowing in self-loathing, which means it’s pretty damn good.

Dirty Mittens

Dirty Mittens follow Birdman. The name itself is a wondrous irony for the band’s crisp pop sensibility, cheery percussion, and peppery horn parts that conjure only pretty, sanitary images. Front woman Chelsea Morrisey’s breathy voice flutters around melodies like a hummingbird darting about a cactus.

Music For Animals comes up next. The self-described cult plays catchy, bouncy, guitar-chord-chopped pop melodies augmented by punctuated, ’80s-esque vocal lines. Haunting harmonies poke through the music, playing the little devil on the band’s otherwise angelic shoulder.  They’ll also be hitting Luckey’s in Eugene on Friday night and spending Sunday at Rontoms in Portland.

The Portland band YACHT closes out the show. The arty band is composed of Jona Bechtolt, whose primary interests include persisting in the eternal search for oblivion, achieving total self-consciousness, and penetrating light years in a fraction of a second, and British-native Claire L. Evans, who graduated Cum Laude from Occidental College in Los Angeles. The band takes its name from the The Young Americans Challenging High Technology center in Portland, an institution that the band continues to honor with their beliefs and lifestyles.

All in all, it promises to be a night of hedonistic pop music that will make you dance, and most importantly, will not remind you of Justin Bieber. Come out and support a student-run organization that gives a voice to the voiceless and free cake to its supporters.

Shooter Jennings

Despite critics’ accusations describing Shooter Jennings’ newest development, a band titled Hierophant, as strictly alternative country-rock, the March release of Black Ribbons displays a band that not only delves into psychedelia but also hints at the possibilities of mixing the Allman Brothers with Grateful Dead and Nine Inch Nails. Sounds too abstruse? Then perhaps you may need to see it yourself on Wednesday, May 19^th at Eugene’s WOW Hall as Ike Reilly joins Shooter and Hierophant on their only Oregon stop to deliver their latest southern sounds to the Northwest.

Truth be told, Jennings (son of Waylon Jennings) has always put on a good show. In September 2006, Jennings  visited Eugene’s WOW Hall and demonstrated his brilliant style of mixing nostalgic country with a rock n’ roll twang, an act that reveals his ambiguous and eccentric style and the difficulties of being unique in today’s modern music. Shooter’s Electric Rodeo, which was released in 2006, helped establish the Tennessee-based artist as the premier act for fusing hard rock, country, blues and alternative metal into one sound. And now he’s coming to Eugene.

Black Ribbons opens up with the eerie, drone-like “Wake Up,” a song that combines reverberated piano mash-ups to Hierophant’s vicious onslaught of hard rock-influenced guitar and bass riffs to Jenning’s awesome vocals, reminiscent to Pink Floyds Roger Waters rampant yet savage voice found on 1979’s The Wall.

On “Don’t Feed the Animals,” Hierophant emulates a sound that would appeal to fans from Nine Inch Nails to Queens of the Stone Age and further encompasses a sound that wouldn’t be described as Shooter’s “original style.”

“I think I felt really beat down by my whole experience in Nashville […] and went and did something that I was really excited musically about,” says Shooter in an interview. “The whole album [Black Ribbons] is kind of this big concept record about truth, and what the importance of love and two people connecting. It’s masqueraded as this kind of futuristic story that goes on with this guy. I believe it is something that is a really cool piece of art; we’re really excited about it.”

Watch “Summer of Rage” from Black Ribbons

Black Ribbons hit #16 on U.S. Billboard’s Top Independent Albums in March 2009 and carried on Shooter’s legacy of creating original, exciting music that appeals to fans from numerous rock genres. On Black Ribbon’s “Everything Else is Illusion,” Hierophant’s style ranges from an alt-metal version of The Beatle’s “Come Together” to mixing desert-scorching Kyuss inflicted guitar licks that are meant to inflict damage upon your eardrums. On “All This Could Have Been Yours,” Hierophant displays Shooter’s softer display of vocals that have been found on his past numerous records, including The Wolf’s luminous “Walk of Life,” a gorgeous song ballad which include the help of Dire Strait’s Mark Knopfler.

The legendary Shooter Jennings will accompany Hierophant on Wednesday, May 19^th at their only Oregon stop at Eugene’s WOW Hall along with alt-country rocker Ike Reilly Assassination. Tickets $15 advance or $18 at the door. Doors open at 7:30 PM with the show beginning at 8:00.

Oregonians rejoice! Wiz Khalifa and crew are prepared to entertain the masses with their fun and sometimes quirky styles of Hip-Hop. And the artists couldn’t come at a better time, especially with summer weather in the air.  It’s a perfect occasion to drive to Eugene’s WOW Hall or Portland’s Roseland Theater with windows rolled down and music blasting.

Deal or No Deal Tour headliner Wiz Khalifa will showcase his own brand of Hip-Hop, which fuses techno and East Coast rap gaining appreciation throughout the U.S. since his first single “Say Yeah” in 2007.

After the Pittsburgh-based MC’s first mix tape, Prince of the City: Welcome to Pistolvania, the MC quickly released his second album, Deal or No Deal in 2009, featuring “This Plane” and “Red Carpet (Like A Movie).” The album pricked ears, reaching number one on the iTunes Store Hip-Hop charts and was included on their top ten overall album chart in November.

The album, which also features guest collaborations by Josh Everette and Kev tha Hustla, showcases Wiz’s ability to encompass several styles of rap while mixing electronic and techno beats into his mixes. After his mix tape Kush and Orange Juice was distributed for free on his website, Wiz’s music gained recognition worldwide, and his tracks have accumulated tens of millions of listens on his MySpace page.

Fashawn’s debut album, Boy Meets World, just couldn’t have gotten any better. Although the Californian-based rapper had already caught the ears of Hip-Hop lovers everywhere via mixtape The Antidote, which was produced by the acclaimed Alchemist, 2009’s Boy Meets World introduced his brilliant rapping coupled with fun, sunny beats that reminded many listeners of ‘90s West Coast rap.

With Wiz and Fashawn showcasing their revitalized Hip-Hop to music lovers across the U.S. for the last several years, Oregonians will finally get the chance to see the talented MCs in all of their glory when they travels to Eugene’s WOW Hall on Thursday, May 13th and Portland’s Roseland Theater on Friday, May 14th.

After his first mix tape, Grizzly City 1, was released in 2006, the young Fashawn (then 17 years old) immediately left school in order to pursue a lengthy tour with fellow Fresno rapper Planet Asia while releasing underground mix tapes. Nine mix tapes later, he’s collaborated with producers The Alchemist, Mick Boogie and Terry Urban. Fashawn earned more fans after appearing as a guest on other artists’ tracks including Evidence’s “Recognize” and “The Far Left” and The Grouch’s “Allready.” In 2009, Fashawn toured America extensively with artists such as Ghostface Killah, Blu & Exile and Brother Ali.

“It was more challenging than anything,” said Fashawn about his debut album in a 2009 interview with DJ Booth. “Cause [with] everything else I had done, there were multiple styles of production but, workin’ with [producer] Exile, he really makes you step your game up; […] his beats are cinematic, they’re almost like movies.”

Choosing Exile as his producer was only natural for Fashawn. After Blu and Exile’s celebrated Below the Heavens (2007), Hip-Hop found a new guise through Jazz, piano and Blues-inspired sounds. Boy Meets World’s “Hey Young World” combines smooth, gentle piano riffs with laid back beats that would certainly fit on Below the Heavens.

With Exile providing the backbone, Fashawn’s clever and often wistful songs such as “Why” and “Father” fill the album. However, it is through the album’s final two songs–the raw, guitar-laced “Breathe” and the murky, reverberated “The Outer City”–that Fashawn and Exile really shine through.

Fashawn’s Boy Meets World not only shocked the entire Hip-Hop community but was highly praised by prominent websites XXLMag.com, HipHopDx.com, and The Smoking Section upon its release. While featuring songs with numerous artists such as Evidence, Mistah Fab, Blu & Exile and Aloe Blacc, Boy Meets World remains a worthy statement of golden-era style Hip-Hop–a time when Rakim, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan ruled the charts. Although often drawing comparisons with the infamous Kanye West, Fashawn demonstrates that he has his own, unique style while providing crowds with his energetic and amusing live shows.

Wiz Khalifa and Fashawn come to Eugene’s WOW Hall accompanied by Brooklyn-based femcee Jasmine Solano, and Eugene’s own NO I.D., Yung If and DJ Crown on Thursday, May 15th with tickets starting at $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Doors open at 8 PM with showtime at 9 PM.

Wiz and Fashawn will continue the Deal or No Deal Tour with a stop at Portland’s Roseland Theater along with Jasmine Solano and Double OO. The Roseland performance is sold out. Doors open at 7 PM with the show beginning at 8 PM.

by Neil Beschle

The air was thick with excitement and pot smoke as Devin The Dude took to the stage with his entourage. Greeted by a lively crowd, The Dude proceeded to perform a slew of his old tracks as well as plenty from his new album, Suite 420 released this year. Well known for his unique rap style and love for the party life, Devin did not disappoint fans at the WOW Hall throughout his two-hour set.

Devin The Dude’s newest creations are full of comedic anecdotes and expressive vocals. The Dude has once again created an album of new songs that perfectly combine funky beats, cunning rhymes, and melodic vocals. The Houston rapper’s solid performance in Eugene brings into question why this Hip-Hop original has remained in the underground scene for so long.

by Neil Beschle

A master of his own original flow, Houston rapper Devin The Dude will bring his Suite 420 tour to the WOW Hall in Eugene on Wednesday, May 5 with special guests Coughee Brothaz. Born Devin Copeland, Devin The Dude is has made notable guest appearances on well-known Hip-Hop albums such as Dr. Dre’s 2001 and De La Soul’s AOI: Bionix. Copeland has also collaborated in rap projects alongside Andre 3000, Lil Wayne, and Snoop Dogg.

Copeland’s signature rap style is filled with story-like lyrics, highlighting a lifestyle of smoking blunts and using women. Copeland has maintained his reputation over the years as a very influential and unique underground rap artist. Among Copeland’s most recognized tracks include “Lacille ‘79” (below and “Doobie Ashtray,” both off of his 2002 album Just Tryin Ta Live.

The veteran artist features relaxed, funky beats and cunning lyrics in his raps. The Suite 420 tour will continue its West Coast visit Thursday night to Peter’s Room at the Roseland in Portland on May 6th.

It’s 4/20 in Eugene, Oregon. A tight, funky, danceable Afrobeat band is playing at WOW Hall, with its expansive, antiquated wooden dance floor. This place should be packed, right?

Wrong. Barely forty people emerged from their smoke-filled apartments to support the A talented, touring Chicago Afrobeat Project, an exciting mix of Afrobeat, Jazz and Funk.

The band, for their part, turned in admirably lengthy show that showcased their traditional African grooves and blistering soloing chops on guitar, keyboards and saxophone.

They barely spoke a word to the crowd as they soldiered through their set. It’s nights like these that test a touring band’s mettle.

For the people who paid to get in, they were treated with an excellent representation of Afrobeat music. Saxophone and bass laid a solid foundation for the drummer’s Latin-infused grooves.

Overall, in spite of the bands best efforts, it was a lackluster show. Without an energetic crowd, the band was unable to muster the passion to truly do justice to their music.

The crowd support was obviously disappointing. True, it was a Tuesday night during midterms, but if Eugene wants venues such as WOW Hall to continue bringing quality music acts to the area, people have to come see the music.

Hopefully, the  Chicago Afrobeat Project was merely an unfortunate victim of being in the wrong place at the time.

Portugal. The Man's John Baldwin Gourley

Forget James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar: 3D; if spectators truly want their eyes to be tested to the extremes, try watching a Portugal. The Man show. Although the band just released their sixth studio album American Ghetto in March, they were quick to announce a Pacific Northwest tour that included a performance at the Coachella Festival in Indio, California.

Hello Electric, who often plays at numerous venues located in Portland, began Tuesday’s night show with an electrifying set that included songs from their soon-to-be release, Sky Chief. Throughout their set, the band skillfully blended Led Zeppelin style riffs with various alt-metal and punk resonances that would certainly appeal to fans of Queens of the Stone Age, The Pixies and Wolfmother. The trio, which includes Kirk Ohnstad, Zach Bendt and Henry Gibson, occasionally switched instruments and made use of an electronic drum kit in several of their songs.

Following their debut album Soundwaves, Hello Electric started attracting attention by combining grunge, metal and punk with rock influences; a mixture that can be best explained after listening to the album’s hit songs, “Cities Sound,” “My Mind and Me” and “The Wiseman’s Game.”In 2009, the band released The Bear King Ep; an album that further incorporates their indie insanity tracks such as “Forest Green” and “North On the Moss.”

By the end of the set, Hello Electric had WOW Hall’s crowd amped up, enough for them to return with a one song encore. “I guess we can give you one more,” said vocalist Kirk Ohnstad. “It may be a little anti-climatic, but fuck it.”

Before Portugal. The Man’s arrival, the WOW Hall’s stage was quickly adorned with strange painted murals of Vikings and half-man/half-unicorns while songs from Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails softly played over the house speakers. A looming fog slowly covered the dark stage within minutes and created an eerie setting that could be mistaken for a cemetery with no possible life existing on its surface. That’s when Portugal stepped in.

Immediately after guitarist/lead singer John Baldwin Gourley struck his guitar chords, a display of intense neon blue and red lights swarmed over the WOW Hall’s packed crowd and made the venue seem like a Fourth of July fireworks show. Portugal, which consists of drummer Jason Sechrist, bassist Zachary Scott Carothers and keyboardist Ryan Neighbors, opened their set with a rendition of “The Dead Dog,” the band’s first single from their new release American Ghetto.

The band utilized the stage lighting effects to the crowd’s advantage, often syncing up different light combinations to the beat of Sechrist’s awesome drum beats. Midway through Portugal’s second song, “People Say” from 2009’s The Satanic Satanist, hundreds of green laser lights splayed over the hall’s attendees, instantly causing the crowd to raise their hands in appreciation.

Although the multitude of lights may have distracted even the most dedicated Portugal followers, the band was sure to include several hit songs in their repertoire that had the crowd singing along throughout the show. “To climb down to Earth and down to things like time / Because we are all, we are all just lovers, born of Earth and light like all these others,” crooned Gourley on Satanic Satanists’s “The Sun.”

While songs from past albums Church Mouth and Censored Colors saw the band explore different avant-garde and indie-rock compositions, American Ghetto finds Portugal mixing soulful, electronic pop mixes with hits of acid rock and trippy psychedelic beats. The band also had a knack for improvising during the entire show by means of Sechrist’s pounding drums and Carothers’s groovy bass lines, a feat which allowed Gourley and Neighbors to display their solo talents on the electric guitar and keyboard, respectively. On the thunderous presentation of “Everyone Is Golden,” Portugal exercised their instruments to the max in perfect rhythm with the constantly shifting strobe lights that illuminated the audience.

Bay Area rap artist Andre Nickatina is returning to Oregon this week.  His first stop will be the WOW Hall in Eugene on Friday followed by a performance in Bend Saturday at the Domino Room.

Nickatina hails from San Francisco where SF Weekly named him “Best Local Hip Hop Legend” in 2005.  Almost two decades into a prolific music career, the rapper shows no signs of slowing down, releasing his fourteenth solo album next week on 4/20, an appropriate date for a rapper who goes very few songs without mentioning his beloved marijuana.

A night with Andre Nickatina is a night to indulge your inner pimp.  His music often falls under the controversial genre of gansta rap revealing tales of violence, drugs and crime.  It’s like Scarface for the ears.  Women are depicted in his songs and music videos almost exclusively as sexual objects (usually as hoes and strippers).

Watch “1-Flight” from Andre Nickatina’s new album:

Nickatina is an incredibly original and seductive story-teller, making it difficult to resist the lure of his rap world.  By taking on the personas of drug dealers and pimps, Nickatina does more to expose the hardships and reality of inner-city life than to glorify it.  In the song “Fears of a Coke Lord,” Nickatina raps “…my mama looks at me like I’m not her pearl / I go to sleep every night with a body on my mind / …slugs from the nine, you shoulda seen how he died / Fears for years….”

“Ayo for Yayo” describes a girl being corrupted by early exposure to cocaine while “Train with No Love” narrates the story of a gangster living the high life before being set up by a friend and sent to jail.

Nickatina is now half way through his current tour.  Every show he has performed thus far has completely sold out.  Every time he has come to Eugene, his concerts have sold out.  His last Oregon show was in Portland last month and it also sold out.  Andre Nickatina is a hot commodity here, so buy your tickets now or come out extra early to ensure your entry to one of his shows this weekend.

—
Friday, April 14th in Eugene at the WOW Hall
Doors at 8 pm, show at 9
$25 in advance, $30 door
All ages

Saturday, April 15th in Bend at the Domino Room
Doors at 8 pm, show at 9
$23 in advance, $27 door
All Ages

As Oregonians, we must continuously admit our love for foreign, alternative bands that grace us with their presence and continue to step on our cities’ stages. On Thursday, April 15th, Eugene will be treated with the sounds of Love Is All, a group which fuses the guitar licks of the Arctic Monkeys with the pulsating drums and steady bass grooves of Franz Ferdinand. Lead vocalist Josephine Olausson’s sweet and sometimes harsh lyrics float above her fellow band mate’s indie/punk and pop-influenced haze.

Love Is All, which also utilizes the talents of guitarist Nicholaus Sparding, saxophonist and keyboardist James Ausfahrt, drummer Johan Lindwall and bass guitarist Johan Lindwall, first started attracting appreciators worldwide when one of their early songs was dubbed single of the week in NME’s charts. The band quickly decided to release their debut album, Nine Times That Same Song, in 2005 on the New York indie label What’s Your Rupture? The album continued to gain popularity after Pitchfork Media named it the 16th best release of 2005 and it finished at number 139 in their top 200 albums of the 2000s.

After months of relentless touring in 2006 and 2007, the band’s original saxophonist player Fredrik Eriksson left the outfit and was replaced with Åke Strömer, who also played the keyboards and helped the band conceive their second album, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night, and a remix album called Love Is All Mixed Up; both albums were released in 2008.

In 2010, the band treated their fans to the release of their anticipated third album, Two Thousand and Ten Injuries which builds upon sounds similar to their earliest songs. Lead singer Olausson, whom Spin Magazine describes as “a crafty performer whose outbursts provide vividly specific snapshots of a full-throttle life,” sets the stage early with Karen O style yelps on the album’s first song “Bigger Bolder.”

Sparding’s lush guitar fills the album’s twelve songs bringing a variety of sounds including delicate, humble finger-picking on “Less Than Thrilled” and “The Birds Were Singing With All Their Might.” Fans who crave music with no limits will be in for a treat as Ausfahrt’s and Olausson’s combined keyboard improvisation construct layer upon layer of symphony-influenced textures, a move that may remind listeners of several ’80s pop artists and groups like the Talking Heads, David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Ausfahrt’s excellent saxophone playing skills are heard in several of the album’s songs including a short yet entertaining solo on “Early Warnings.”

In the end, it’s quite difficult to place Love Is All in a specific category considering that the band’s sound can encompass bubblegum pop, punk, electronic, and alternative rock within a few songs. Music lovers who are prepared to give their ears a little treat will not be disappointed over the group’s fun, quirky compositions that span their four albums and will certainly be on display on Thursday.

Love Is All headlines Eugene’s WOW Hall on April 15th, joined by Princeton, who released their debut album Cocoon of Love in 2009 after stints with Vampire Weekend, The Ruby Suns and Ra Ra Riot, and Greenlander, whose four members are pursing musical majors at the University of Oregon.  They bring a mixture of grunge, metal, funk and ska to open for the two acts.

Tickets for the event can be purchased in advance for $8 at the U of O Box Office or at the door on the day of the show. Doors open at 7:30 PM and the showtime is set for 8:30 PM.