Two shows

I meant to write more and sooner. Things came up that took me away from sharing my thoughts and adventures with all 5 of you, my regular readers. For some reason my stats jumped right about the time I last posted. I probably lost all 15 of those new readers.

Anyway, since I last wrote I submitted to the flu/cold for a few days. At least 3 of my friends came down with the same stuff. Being sick is pretty lame. It's especially lame when you are unemployed. I was feeling pretty good about how things have been going lately and then I get one little cold and all that positivity just washed away. I'm over the cold and starting to regain my morale.

The last few days have been a jumble. My roommates and I met with a bunch of really nice folks about our room for rent. We had a few favorites. None of them panned out. I think we all got pretty stressed out about the prospect of paying for the unoccupied room next week. Fortunately, we located a friend of a friend named Jacob, who works at a cool local bar and seems to be a good fit. Problem solved. On a sad note for us, another of our roomies has decided to move back east. So we are seeking yet another new roommate. This too is kind of bringing me down. It would be nice to have a stable household again ... and we will.

Well, a lot of fun and good times are in store for this weekend. I get to play two shows with my good friend Brittain Ashford in Seattle on Friday and Portland on Saturday. Brittain is a Seattle native who has been living in Brooklyn for the past couple of years making sweet folk songs with sparse instrumentation under her powerful, mature voice.

It'll be fun to play my hometowns with her and I'm really looking forward to spending the weekend with one of my favorite people who I rarely get to see.

Come see us in Seattle at Dearborn on Woodland (4131 Woodland Park N). It's only $5 and there will be free food (it's potluck style so bring a dish if you are so inclined) and we'll probably play just before 9pm. Doors are at 7pm if you want to come and hang. If you're in Portland, you should absolutely come out and join us with Matt Sheehy & Kele Goodwin, two of my favorite musicians and people in Portland, at the Funky Church (2456 SE Tamarack ... in Ladd's Addition), this show is essentially free, but if you can kick us $5 we'd appreciate it.

I need a haircut.

Special Guest at Mississippi Studios

So, my good friend Matt Sheehy played the first night of the David Karsten Daniels residency at Mississippi Studios a couple of weeks back. David appreciated Matt's songwriting and especially how he didn't let all of those effects pedals ruin his songs ... in the hand of a lesser musician these things can be used to create some pretty uninteresting and even awful stuff. DKD invited Matt to join him on some songs tomorrow for the 3rd residency night at Mississippi.

Bennie Morrison of the March Fourth Marching Band will also be joining DKD and Justin Ringle of Horse Feathers will be opening the show! With all this talent the show might sell out, so show up early.

The show is $8 at 8pm.

P.S. Matt has never owned a ZOOM pedal (like the one pictured above).

Infestation

Yesterday, our neighbors, the ants, found their way into Katrina's cache of sugar and flour, leftovers from a collaborative art project. I cordoned off the area with cinnamon. Ants don't like cinnamon for some reason. Here are some other non-toxic ways to get rid of your ants. The ants seem to be mostly gone today (I threw out the sugar), which is good, because we have some prospective roommates visiting the house later today.

Opening night

The Self-Projections opening night party was so much fun. I've come down with the second cold in the past 4 weeks and while it made much of the preparation for this event over the past few days kind of hellish, but it was worth it. There's so much to write about the event and the show, but I'm content to leave it at that for now.

You can visit Milepost 5 between 1-6pm everyday through April 26th to check out the installations and films. I know I'll be down there this week to see it ... I really didn't get to see many of the rooms last night.

2008 Collaborate

Yesterday, I met with Ben Pink & Chris Haberman, the curators for the upcoming 30 Rooms exhibit at Milepost 5 in May. They have brought me in as music and performance curator for the event. I'm thrilled to be a part of this event.

Chris and Ben are both active, energetic, working artists in Portland. Chris was recently featured in the Portland Tribune for his art and Ben runs Launch Pad Gallery in SE Portland.

They have huge plans for the exhibit and events. We're looking at three days, 30 artists, perhaps 6 DJs, comedians, performance artists and a dozen bands spread over both Milepost 5 buildings. We'll be using the old chapel (with pews) in the old brick building for the live performances. Though the ceilings seem kind of low and the stage is not very deep, I think the sound will be excellent.

I'll post more information about this show as it comes together. Until then, I hope to see some of you at my first curated event this Friday (8pm to midnight on April 18th) at Milepost 5 for the opening night of Self Projections with installations, films, performances and art by 18 Portland artists plus live music by Sabertooth, Matt Sheehy, Kele Goodwin and Double Dragon. It is a free all ages show with a bar!

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122 miles from home

Spokane was a wonderful experience. We had the good pleasure of getting to know a lot of new people. We are exceptionally grateful to Richard, Dana, Nick and, of course, little Sammie for welcoming us to their beautiful home. You guys were the best and we look forward to seeing you again!

We rolled into town around 5pm just in time to have a nice dinner with Richard, Dana & Nick and drop off a few of our things before the show. We rolled down to Caterina Winery a little before 7pm to load in. Troy, the bartender, greeted us warmly, but explained that we may just be on our own to set up the sound for the evening. Fortunately, Matt has a pretty good background with smaller PA systems and I'm a techie at heart so we managed fine.

Matt and I still hadn't had a proper rehearsal ... well we kind of figured out what parts I would play a few days earlier, but we hadn't practiced playing together. So, we found a nice set of deck chairs outside of the winery and ran through a few tunes and built the setlist. Things sounded pretty good, so we went with that. The show was so much fun for me .. this was my first live show in about 3 years and my very first outing on banjo (I've only had the banjo for about a year and I really only started seriously learning to play it in the past few months) and we had a great time. The Triumphant Returns, an excellent band from Spokane, closed out the night with some energetic and well-constructed songs.

We really look forward to getting back up that way again.

Unfortunately, this trip may have killed Matt's trusty old Chevy. The ol' girl started to rumble and shake about 200 miles into our trip back home. Fortunately she got us safely home. Well, now I'm going to go catch Shelley Short at the Someday Lounge.

Dick's in Spokane

It's too bad that Drew wasn't here. He loves some fresh, hot Dick's in his mouth after a good show.

Free Bbq

The weather was so great this weekend. Matt and I came to Spokane today to play a show at Caterina Winery. On the way to our new friend's house we found a free BBQ. We decided to leave of for the next person.

It's OK to use your Powerful Power

This is Kaz. Kaz is PWRFL Power. You may have heard of him, but if you haven't you will. In fact, your mother will soon know about Kaz. Kaz is on the brink of noteriety, fame and everything that comes with it.

I ran into Kaz at the Fresh Pot on Mississippi today. While he officially lives in Seattle and New York (yes, Kaz is bicoastal) he has been living the nomadic existence of a working musician. So it was only a small surprise to run into him at my neighborhood cafe.

Kaz just found out that he's going to featured in an upcoming episode of American Idol as part of a nationwide eSurance commercial featuring a PWRFL Power song in May. Until then Kaz will be our little secret.

You can find PWRfL Power online, on stage and, perhaps, hanging out at a cafe near you.

Promotion

I'm making my mark on society today. All city.

The Roxy Show - A Blog Review

Thanks to everyone who came out to last nights show at Mississippi Studios. It is nice to have a mellow, sit-down type show, but it is pretty exhilarating to play a sold out room with Drew Shoals on drums like we did just a couple weeks ago in Los Angeles.

I just came across a review of the LA show over here. Thanks to Emily for posting the review on her blog. We'll be back down in California in the next couple of months and we hope to see you. Shoot me an email (bonjourtheo at gmail will work) and I'll make sure we put you on the guest list when we are back in LA.

David Karsten Daniels & Matt Sheehy 4/8

Matt is playing a show at Mississippi Studios tomorrow at 8pm in support of David Karsten Daniels. David, as I understand it, is a North Carolina native who recently moved out to the west coast (Seattle). He has two albums available via Fat Cat Records and he's doing a month-long residency in both Seattle & Portland, playing Mondays at the Nectar Lounge and Tuesdays at Mississippi Studios. I encourage Seattle friends to catch DKD tonight with PWRFL Power at the Nectar to kick off the project properly. PDX friends should come down to Mississippi Studios for the special treat of DKD with Corrina Repp and Matt doing his solo thing.

Matt has maybe a half dozen CDs left over from the tour, so come to the show and pick up a copy. I've listened to this CD probably 80 times since we returned from California and it just gets better. The show starts at 8pm with doors at 7pm. $8.

Otherwise, I'm hard at work learning Matt & Brittain's songs for a couple of shows I'm doing with them in the coming weeks. I love their music and I feel very honored to be invited to play with each of them. Be sure to catch me with Matt in Spokane (it's only a 6 hour drive) at Caterina Winery. I'll be playing two dates with Brittain: Fri. May 2nd at Dearborn on Woodland (SEA) & Sat. May 3rd at the Funky Church (PDX).

We are nerds

Apparently Alea thinks that all it takes to look like a nerd is to borrow my glasses. We lined up early for a "secret screening" of the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica. I'm new to the series, but I caught up in the past couple of months and I feel like it was an excellent use of my unemployed time. It is such a great series and I'm not saying that just because I have an affinity for spacecraft or faster-than-light travel.

Anyhow, I scoured the internet today looking for a place to watch the premiere, since none of my closest friends has cable (in fact, most don't have a decent television set), and I found out that the Baghdad Theatre was playing it on the big screen. It was epic and it was fun to see the show with a roomful (or mostly full of) BSG fans (it turns out that the midnight viewing of Anchorman was delayed by our show).

Chin up little fella

"Don't let it bring you down." Neil Young said that.

No one belongs here more than you

A room is available in my beautifully renovated NE Portland house. The house is centrally located (7 minute bike ride to downtown, 5 minutes to Mississippi) and we are all friendly, courteous, and relatively neat roommates (3 of us - 1 artist, 1 computer tech & 1 musician).

The room is available May 1st, but we could arrange for earlier if necessary. Rent is $380 plus utilities.

We'd like a female tenant to maintain the house's gender balance. No pets please.

E-mail me at heytheo at gmail dot com if you are interested in seeing the place and feel free to repost this to your friends.

Water Fowl

View from the Eastbank Esplanade. I'm riding my bike across every
bridge in the city core today!

Project(ion)s

OK, I just typed this post and lost it in cyberspace. Do we call it cyberspace anymore? Well, experience tells me that this post will be better for getting 2nd draft treatment ... more personal, yet more concise.

So yeah, I decided to do a semi-texty real post. I don't do these too often as I needn't encourage my stalkers and writing about your life on the internet is kind of like writing about your life on a public restroom wall. Regardless, I'm busy, busy, busy ... though I'm not getting paid, paid, paid ... and that is fine for now, but I just got word from the state that I only have one more installment of my unemployment benefits before they cut me off. I had a good run, but it is kind of disturbing to not find a new job in the past 6 months.

I'm still in the running for a sweet job at a start-up radio station (great eclectic music going on the air January 2009) and Amazon just got in touch with me about a gig up in Seattle ... so we'll see. If none of that pans out, well I'll lower my standards a bit to find a flexible job that pays the bills. Don't worry about me though, I have enough cheddar set aside to carry me through the summer.

So, in absence of paying work, I've been pursuing personal/professional interests. Mainly, booking Matt Sheehy, working on a couple of video projects, learning to play banjo, tour management, and most recently curating concerts.

I have two ... well technically three shows coming up. The first two are at Milepost 5 as part of the SELF PROJECTIONS exhibition. My friend Gary Wiseman asked me to curate an opening night and closing night concert. I was more than happy to take on the project and I lined up an eclectic and talented pool of artists for the events, including: Sabertooth, Double Dragon, Celilo, Matt Sheehy, Kele Goodwin, Meyercord, and more. I'm finalizing the lineups today. Opening night is Friday, April 18th and closing night is Saturday, April 26th. The exhibition will be taking place throughout the MP5 complex and music will be on the 4th floor in unit 408 (which has a beautiful deck!!!).

Next, the kind folks at The Funky Church have graciously offered to host Matt Sheehy, Brittain Ashford (from Brooklyn) & Kele Goodwin on Saturday, May 3. I'll be playing bass with Brittain, so be sure to be there ... I don't play out that often.

Well, I need to go out and enjoy a long bike ride on this beautiful spring afternoon.