Oregon Music News

Reggie Fats intro At World Cup Coffee and Tea for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. When Fats Domino died at the end of October, I first heard about it from New Orleans’ Reggie Houston, now a Portlander but for twenty years, the baritone sax player in Fats’ band. It hit him hard. It still does. I waited a few months before I finally asked a couple of weeks ago if he was ready to talk about it....

Hello 2018 and welcome back to a new OMN Coffeeshop Conversation, as always from World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan. With me today is (and now he will always be known as) Grammy nominated Randy Porter, pianist, composer, teacher and Nancy King wrangler. His album with Nancy King, “Porter Plays Porter” on which they do songs by America’s greatest songwriter, Cole Porter is nominated alo...

Welcome to World Cup Coffee & Tea at NW 18th and Glisan, and to the last new OMN Coffeeshop Conversation of 2017. We’ll be running a couple of our best podcasts of the year for the next two weeks. A great year of Coffeeshop Conversations winds up with Don Lucoff, Executive Artistic Director of the Portland Jazz Festival which will be happening all over Portland from Thursday, February 15 through S...

Hi there, back in World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. Today we’re talking to Blues singer Rae Gordon who has had a fabulous 2017. She and her band recently won two Cascade Blues Association Muddy Awards and earlier this year she placed third in the prestigious International Blues Challenge competition in Memphis. She and her band also released an a...

We're back in World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. We like to have some of the people who run and/or own music venues in here from time to time. We’ve had Nicholas Harris from Jack London, Jim Brunberg from Mississippi Studios and Revolution Hall…and a few other folks. Today we have Michael Gibbons who owns Jo Bar and Papa Haydn. Jo Bar has music...

Welcome back to World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. With me today is Rebecca Sanborn who was first here in January of 2016. She’s a composer, keyboardist and singer in the Blue Cranes, Loch Lomand, Swansea and a few others. Swansea has a new album called "Flaws." Last time she was here we talked about how she was able to combine band mate and sou...

Happy to be back in the coffeeshop at World Cup Coffee and Tea, NW 18th and Glisan. I’m especially happy to have Liv Warfield back in Portland for at least a few days. She did two intimate concerts at Jack London this week, and is in town to see friends, and remind herself of rain. After Prince passed, her solo career continued. Liv has faced bad breaks before and has always come out on top. Why d...

Hello there. Another Coffeeshop Conversation coming to you from OMN via World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan. In the coffeeshop today is Robin Jackson who you may know from March Fourth, Vagabond Opera, the Joy Now Arts Program (a musical circus for kids) and/or his Songwriter Soiree from which his new album, Dark Stars is most connected. It is dropping on Saturday, November 11 with a re...

Welcome back to OMN’s Coffeeshop Conversations, as always, at World Cup Coffee and Tea, NW 18th and Glisan in Portland. In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault charges came a flood of responses to a call for women to tell their own stories with the hashtag Me Too. Tens of thousands of women and some men told stories they hadn’t told to anyone or nearly anyone. We’re doing two Coffeeshop...

Hey, welcome back to OMN’s Coffeeshop Conversations at World Cup Coffee and Tea, NW 18th and Glisan. Today we’ve got Marti Mendenhall with is. She’s a singer, composer and proprietor of a new radio show slash podcast called Sound Tasting which combines food and music, a novel approach for sure. It airs on the second Friday of each month on Portland Radio Project. We’ll find out all about that conc...

Thanks for coming back for another Coffeeshop Conversation at World Cup Coffee and Tea, NW 18th and Glisan in Portland. We’ve got a special episode today. With me is Oregon Music Hall of Fame Member, percussionist, composer and band leader, Bobby Torres. Now most of us know Bobby from his many years here in Portland, but not everybody is aware that he had a long and thriving career first with Joe...

Well I see you’re paying another visit to World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan, at least digitally, for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. We’re coming up on our third anniversary at World Cup. That’s a lot of talking friends. We’re going to be expanding our horizons in the months to come. We’ll still be here, but we’re going to be expanding our range of guests. Gotta keep it fresh, yo...

Thanks for coming back to OMN’s Coffeeshop Conversations. As always, we’re at World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan in Portland. We were all scared to some degree when the Columbia Gorge was set on fire. Some to a larger degree than others. In the coffeeshop with me is Billy Oskay who lives in Corbett. His famed recording studio, Big Red Studio, as well as his home were within a few miles...

Thanks for joining us again at World Cup Coffee and Tea, NW 18th & Glisan for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. Joining me today is Douglas Detrick, the Executive Director of Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble which I have been covering since before it was a real organization about ten years ago, and before there was an OMN. Since he became Executive Director he along with Ryan Meagher and Mieke...

Welcome back to OMN’s Coffeeshop Conversations. Big thank you to our Managing Director Scott Cunningham for a terrific conversation with Rich Layton. Hope Scott will come back and do some more of these. As usual, we’re at World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan and with me is KMHD’s Program Director Matt Fleeger…also the guy I report to at KMHD, so there’s that. In the eight years since he...

Our guest is Rich Layton, one of the area's finest harmonica players and one stand-up cat if there ever was one. Take a listen as we trace his musical career, his influences, gear, and continuing efforts to swampify the Portland music scene.

Alan Jones, drummer, teacher and founder of the Alan Jones Academy of Music is here. He’s been one of our finest drummers for decades. His Academy has sent some of our best young musicians to some of the finest music schools on earth. Saying that someone is a force of nature is overused but in Alan’s case it’s the truth…in his drumming and how he lives his life. He’s an interesting mixture of humb...

Welcome back to World Cup Coffee & Tea at NW 18th and Glisan for another Oregon Music News Coffeeshop Conversation. With me today is a singular gentleman, Oregon Music Hall of Fame member Calvin Walker. He was one of our most favorite bringers of the funk. As a singer and a drummer in a vibrant Soul and Funk scene, he used to work six nights a week. Later he was the head of the Musicians Union. I...

Another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation as always we’re in World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan in smoky Portland. With me today is Pablo, who, with Ricardo make up the Ojeda brothers, leaders of Sabrosa, the heir to their legendary Funk-Latin Band of yore…Rubberneck who tore it up in the late 90s and first part of this century. They were neo-Soul before there was neo-Soul and the new band fit...

In World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. With me today is Alex Krebs, Tango teacher, Tango dancer and proprietor of Tango Berretin, his own Tango studio since 2001. He’s pretty much been Mr. Tango in Portland for a long time. And that’s Argentine Tango only. No other type of Tangos need apply. What’s the difference. That’s something we’re going to...

Thanks for finding us again. Live on tape from World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan in Portland, it’s another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. Wth me today is Jay Bozich, one of the unsung heroes of the music scene in Portland. You may know him as King Fader from his DJ work in clubs. He also has added magic from the board that even the musicians can’t match in his work with live bands. Someti...

Welcome back to World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. Let’s go back to the first week of December in 2014, the premiere of Coffeeshop Conversations. This is number 109 of them, but number one was with saxophonist Mary-Sue Tobin, she of the Quadraphonnes and many many other bands and every kind of saxophone imaginable. When we passed number 100 a co...

We took off last week because of the Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival. Hope you enjoyed our coverage. In the coffeeshop with me today is Scott Cunningham, OMN’s Managing Director, writer, fixer of IT problems and all around good guy. Every once in a while I like to bring one of our OMN family in and let you get acquainted. Scott is multi-talented and had a whole other career before he got involve...

Welcome back to another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation at World Cup Coffee and Tea, NW 18th & Glisan in Portland. Today is special. It’s the return of Curtis Salgado, what with his return to performing this weekend, on the Fourth of July at the Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival. He’s returning after a heart attack and multiple bypass surgery while he was on the road on the east coast. That’s a story....

Welcome back to another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation at World Cup Coffee and Tea, NW 18th & Glisan in Portland. Today is special. It’s the return of Curtis Salgado, what with his return to performing this weekend, on the Fourth of July at the Safeway Waterfront Blues Festival. He’s returning after a heart attack and multiple bypass surgery while he was on the road on the east coast. That’s a story....