Oregon Music News

Fifty-one years ago Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen album was released. It was and instant classic. You may not know a lot of backstory but by the time you finish listening to this you’ll know a bucketful because with me in the Artichoke Music Café is the percussionist from that band. You know him, he’s in the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. It’s Bobby Torres who also played with Joe Cocker at Woo...

Our guest today used to be a fixture in the music scene in Oregon…then he got married and moved to Victoria…that’s in Canada. Or maybe he moved first. I dunno. But whatever, that’s where David Vest lives now. And he’s won all kinds of national awards there. He is releasing his first recordings in three years. Two CDs, both live but very different from each other. One, recorded at a festival in Cal...

From the friendly confines of the Artichoke Café once again. It’s time to try to understand what the hell is going on with our ability to go hear live music in person and find out what club owners are dealing with. Without clubs and concert venues, we’re sunk and sunk is not a good way to enjoy a live band. Neil Leeborg who is a co-owner of the Goodfoot Lounge is here. They’re open, although not w...

This is a special episode of Coffeeshop Conversations @ Artichoke Music and one in a series of radio interviews I did thirty years ago. Still listening or reading? I’m grateful. I was doing a talk show for the American Radio Network when radio networks meant something. And it was before the internet too, in the days of newspapers and pay phones. I decided that I would interview people who I had al...

Back in masks at Artichoke Café because the governor said to. She knows more about it than I do. Thankfully someone is here with me. His name is Noah Kite, he’s a singer, composer and guitarist who has a new album out this week called Drunk Lil’ Guy. In case you’re wondering, he is not the drunk lil guy. We’ll get into that. He calls what he does Chamber Folk which is just as good a musical concep...

Composer/guitarist Ryan Meagher is in the Artichoke Café with me today at yet another turning point in the long sad saga of trying to make and listen to music during the pandemic. He’s one of the folks who plan and execute the Montavilla Jazz Festival around this time every year. OMN is happy to be a sponsor. It’s the festival home for what we used to call “avant-garde” music. I don’t know if anyo...

It’s lovely to be joined in the Artichoke Café today by singer, guitarist, composer and all-around great person, Mary Flower. She’ll be a part of a celebration here at Artichoke they’re calling Summerfest, Thursday through Sunday, August 26th through 29th with a full lineup of not only your Artichoke favorites but some folks you’d never expect like Coffeeshop Conversations favorites Darkswoon. Mar...

You may not know it but our opening music is a tune called Ghost Jazz. The composers have kindly let us use it all these years. It was written by Keith Schreiner also known as Auditory Sculpture and today’s guest trumpeter, composer and educator Derek Sims. They called themselves Jazztronica in the early 2000s. Derek holds the trumpet chair in Mel Brown’s famed Septet, previously held by Thara Mem...

A newish band has emerged in the past couple of years called Outer Orbit. It’s made up of members of some of Portland’s top Soul, Funk and Jazz bands,...including Tyrone Hendrix, Damien Erskine, Sarah Clarke, Peter Knudson and Michael Elson. That’s what it’s always been like in Oregon. You have to be versatile to make a living as a musician. Galen Clark of Outer Orbit, Trio Subtonic and lots of ot...

For a lot of people, the top musical experience of 2021 has been the new documentary by Questlove called Summer of Soul, built around a series of concerts in Harlem, New York City in 1969. I say built around because it adds political and cultural context to the music. The music is Soul, Funk R&B, Blues, Gospel, Latin and African, the panoply of Black music at the time. I say Black because the movi...

To round out our video series on couples who both play music, either separately or together (or both), it was always in our plans to have Stephanie Schneiderman, singer, songwriter and guitarist in multiple genres and her husband Tony Furtado, virtuoso on a variety of stringed instruments and also a singer. The pandemic got in the way, but we were able to start using video again a couple of weeks...

Occasional video episodes of Coffeeshop Conversations @ Artichoke Music are back! Before the pandemic we left our series with couples who are also working musicians, some together, some not.. Our last one was Reecca Sanborn and Ji Tanzer https://www.oregonmusicnews.com/sanborn-tanzer-coffeeshop-conversations222 At the time we had two more in the works and we finally recorded them a couple of weeks...

The downsized but still mighty Waterfront Blues Festival begins on Thursday, July 1 and ends Monday July 5 “Upriver” at the Lot at Zidell Yards. Details here. On Monday, July 5 drummer Tony Coleman’s Tribute to the Three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie with an all-star band. T.C. played with B.B. and Albert’s bands and on the same bill with Freddie. Listen to him tell us what we have in store.

We have missed all of the live music in our lives over the length of the pandemic but one thing we should recognize is the efforts by broadcasters to keep sending the music our way. It hasn’t been easy, as I can attest from my own show on KMHD but we do it because we love it and we know you need the music. With me today in the Artichoke Café is Suzanne Nance, CEO of All Classical Portland, also an...

As you may have noticed, we’ve been checking in with musicians, organizations and venues as things begin to open up, to see what they’re up to and how they’ve been. This time it’s Sarah Tiedemann, Third Angle New Music’s Artistic Director and a flutist. They’re presenting the “Fresh Air Fest” which they call “an outdoor new music mini-festival located at the idyllic Topaz Farm, on Sauvie Island.”...

With me in the Café at Artichoke Music is child psychiatrist, poet and artist Dr. Diane Kaufman. She’s here to talk about the release of her suicide prevention song 'Don't Give Up' which is designed to give support to those who are struggling with mental health issues and thinking about suicide. In case you were not aware suicide is the leading cause of death among youth 10-24 in Oregon. So here’s...

Want to do something that makes you feel like we’re getting back to normal? One thing you can do is listen to this episode of Coffeeshop Conversations at Artichoke Music because unlike last summer when there wasn’t one, Peter Dammann is here to tell us all about the 2021 Waterfront Blues Festival. You heard me! It’s back. It’s smaller and down the street from where it usually is but there are peop...

Just when we were thinking that tons of music was right around the corner we find out that there’s a ton of Federal money that could help venues….big and small…that isn’t being spent. Enter a new organization called Oregon Arts Recovery, OAR, that has arrived to help matters. Jim Brunberg, one of the leaders in our music industry, both as a musician himself and as a venue owner (Mississippi Studio...

Can you feel it? Can you feel the music returning? Feels good. Karen Lovely is in the Artichoke Music Café with me today. She has not been doing a whole lot of music in the past year but she has been very busy with her other work as an advocate and first responder for domestic violence. We’ll hear about both, that and her return to music. And as important as the music is to all of us, her work wit...

Slowly, in frustratingly small increments, live music is returning to our lives. People are being hired in anticipation of venues re-opening and people like our guest singer/guitarist Kris Deelane are trying to fill that gap we’re all still feeling. Her outdoor Alchemy Shed opens this weekend and has a bookings through the next couple of months. Why? How? She’s here in the Artichoke Café to fill u...

A year ago, as we slipped into quarantine I decided we all needed to hear from someone who would brighten things up for us…well for me. I called upon composer, singer and songwriter Andrew Paul Woodworth for that. No woo-woo, no sappy advice…and not even a friend who I hung out with, just someone I could count on to take our minds off of things and make us laugh even though he was not a profession...

Here’s some good Coffeeshop Conversation news…in June we’ll be shooting two new video episodes of the podcast…first since the pandemic! Stay tuned for details. Today one of my favorite people is in the Artichoke Music Cafe. We met when we were both doing shows at KMHD when it was out at Mt. Hood Community College. I’m still at KMHD and she’s at KBOO. She is Marcia Hocker. She’s also a singer and j...

This makes three times back in the Café at Artichoke and feeling better all the time. Especially today because I get to geek out about obscure records. As you may know, the only Portland representation in the winner’s circle at the Grammys this year was when Omnivore Recordings won for It’s Such A Good Feeling: The Best of Mister Rogers. Omnivore isn’t totally based in Portland but one of the foun...

It sure is nice being back in the Artichoke Music Café and sitting across from our podcast guests again, believe me. Especially when you’re sitting across from The Boogie Cat, the always splendidly dressed, Portland icon Norman Sylvester who has been bringing us Blues and Soul music for generations. He’s working with the Bravo Youth Orchestras organization which has a virtual event on Sunday, Apri...

December 14 of last year was the last time we recorded one of these from the Artichoke Music Café. I told you I would wait until I could get vaccinated and two weeks ago I got my second shot. That’s why we’re back at Artichoke today, and very happy to be here. We don’t plan to be anywhere else. Dino Paris is with me. He’s a therapist…what we used to call a shrink, but we’re too polite to anymore....