Oregon Music News

This is the last, at least I hope it’s the last of our Skype Coffeeshop Conversations. Next week when we call it Coffeeshop Conversations @ Artichoke Music, it will really be from the Café at Artichoke. Our guest will be therapist Dino Paris and I’ll talk to him about the effects of the past year on creativity. I wish I could be sitting across from December Carson, Artistic Director for Siren Nati...

It might be hard to believe but it’s been four years since Jimmy Mak’s closed. It was Oregon’s top music club. It closed the day before owner Jimmy Makarounis passed away. Two key employees JD Stubenberg and Lisa Boyle took up the quest to make a new Jimmy Mak’s and they were poised to make that happen when the pandemic hit. I think most of us figured that if the existing music clubs were closed,...

We’ll be returning to the Café at Artichoke Music on Thursday April 8 for an interesting OMN Coffeeshop Conversation with therapist Dino Paris on how the pandemic has effected creativity. But today we’re Skyping with keyboardist Dave Fleschner who has been a big part of many Portland bands. Many people remember him from being on the road with Curtis Salgado for six years. He’s doing a lot of teach...

George Colligan is Skyping with me today. We’re looking to be back in the Café at Artichoke Music in about a month, once I’m fully vaccinated. You may know George Colligan as a Jazz pianist and composer, a teacher and valued member of several internationally known ensembles. On his new album Long Term Goals with his band Theoretical Planets, he’s a leader and a drummer. Most of the ensemble is mad...

This edition of OMN’s Coffeeshop Conversations at Artichoke Music is headed your way early this week because March Fourth is Thursday. It’s the 18th anniversary of Portland’s beloved March Fourth who used to be called March Fourth Marching Band. They’ll be streaming a special anniversary show featuring footage from the best of the last three anniversary shows at the Crystal Ballroom…and boy do we...

Curtis Salgado has a new album. That alone should warm your heart and make you get out your dancing shoes. More than that, it’s a satchel full of inspiration for the times in which we live. He didn’t plan it that way, but some people have a way of unconsciously knowing what we need. Curtis Salgado, seems like, has always known what we need, even if he didn’t know what was good for him at the time....

We’re getting closer to moving back from Skype to The Artichoke Music Café. This time next month I’ll be able to be back sitting across a table from a real live human being. But we have had a nice run of interesting people in the meantime. Next week I’ll be talking to Curtis Salgado who has a new album coming out. Today it’s singer/songwriter Carl Solomon, no stranger to the Artichoke Music Café....

I did this interview just before fhe world shut down in March of 2020 This is in lieu of having a real Mardi Gras Day. They’ve called Davell Crawford the “Piano Prince of New Orleans.” He has had long and diverse career playing all kinds of music, New Orleans R&B, Gospel, Rock n Roll, Blues, and Jazz but he was trained as a classical musician too. His grandfather, James “Sugar Boy” Crawford wrote...

It used to be more difficult to catch up in person with guitarist John Stowell. That’s because he used to spend so much of his life on the road, playing and teaching. Since we’re currently Skyping instead, it’s not so hard.. There’s not been a lot of travelling or live playing going on as you may have heard. Fortunately John had been teaching online for years before the current tribulation, so he...

If it matters to you…and it matters to me…in a few weeks we’ll be back in the Café at Artichoke Music. As soon as I get jabbed, to be honest with you. Doing it on Skype works fine but it’s not like being in the same room. Therefore…….Bassist Jeff Langston is on the Skype with me. After a great run with Antony and the Johnsons , touring the world and playing before tens of thousands, he decided to...

We’re Skyping again today. Hopefully just a few more weeks and I can get jabbed and we’ll be back in the Artichoke Music Café. Communicating online is a way of life now. So is playing music and streaming it. Moses Barrett who leads the band the Junebugs is also one of the founders of Left Door Streaming, one of Portland’s most active presenters of music online. How did it happen? What’s involved i...

It’s another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation, this time another Skyper. Hoping to be back at Artichoke Music soon. Very happy to have composer, singer, keyboardist and the only international star I ever heard of who grew up in Mollala. Jarrod Lawson has a new album with a lot of Oregon stars and also including the great percussionist Sammy Figueroa and Amber Navran and her Moonchild band. It’s called...

We’re Skyping again this week. We’ll be back in the Artichoke Café soon. Ben Landsverk is with me today. He’s a composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist and one-half of Wonderly with Jim Brunberg. They make music for other people’s films and have begun releasing their own films with their own music. There’s one on DB Cooper on this page and a new song at the end of our conversation. Ben has also tr...

We’re not at Artichoke Music this week or next. The store is open and doing well, but since I have all the right things wrong with me, I’m going to wait for the vaccine to arrive before I start recording there again. This is a week I’ve been waiting for...literally, years. Composer Andrew Durkin and Mary-Sue Tobin are Skyping with me because after a four-year wait, Five Pointed Star, the collabora...

This is another OMN Coffeshop Conversation at Artichoke Music. The final one for 2020. The next two weeks you’ll find our best two conversations of what has been an awful year. I’d like to thank everyone who as been a guest on the podcast. It hasn’t been easy, but it sure has been worth it. January we will return with a couple of interesting episodes including Ben Landsverk and Andrew Durkin. But...

There are two more new episodes of Coffeeshop Conversations at Artichoke Music before we run our two best of the year. This is one of the new ones. Next week, we’ll wrap up the year with Artichoke store manager, guitarst and teacher Jason Alburger, someone who has made producing these things at Artichoke a lot easier given the times. Today, however I’m psyched to be able to meet and talk with Jana...

Given the givens looking forward to 2021 is a happy activity. One thing we can count on in 2021 is that there will be a Portland Jazz Festival in February. And as we always do, the executive director is here to tell us about all the performers, how they will perform and how PDX Jazz has been plowing through the muck of the past year. Chris Doss came on for 2020’s festival in his first year on the...

Hi there. Next week Chris Doss, Executive Director of PDX Jazz and the Portland Jazz Festival will be here to give us our annual rundown of the performers, virtual as they may be this time around. The last week of December and the first week of January we’ll have my two favorite Coffeeshop Conversations episodes of the year. That’s going to be fun. But today, this is one of those times when I get...

The holidays officially begin next week, so best wishes from all of us at OMN and Artichoke Music. I know some of youse guys are already engaged in finding gifts and that is why, sitting across from me, at a safe distance, and masked, is Oregon’s premiere music poster artist, Gary Houston of Voodoo Catbox. I know you’ve seen his work. Twenty years of Waterfront Blues Festival posters for instance....

Happy to be back with you again in the Artichoke Music Café. And after several years, Amy Maxwell is back on the podcast. She runs Ticket Tomato, the Oregon-based concert and venue ticketing company, trying to keep their head above water, like the rest of us. What does the present look like? And what does the future hold? The first part we know, but the second is speculation, at best an educated g...

Because OMN just turned eleven last week. I thought I’d take a break on Coffeeshop Conversations from talking to folks in the music industry and talk to myself….and you. I helped found OMN in 2009, Later, I’ll tell you why in case you’ve never heard that story before. What else are we going to talk about besides of course the future? I dunno. Let’s just find out. Oh, and by the way, next week we’l...

In Café Artichoke with another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. Upcoming episodes? Amy Maxwell from Ticket Tomato on the future of concerts, immediate and otherwise. Also percussionist, actor and all around interesting guy Caton Lyles, and next week, since we just had OMN’s eleventh anniversary….I’ll be doing the podcast solo. Something for you to either look forward to or run from screaming. Today on...

Welcome to the Café at Artichoke Music for another…267th, to be exact, OMN Coffeeshop Conversations at Artichoke Music podcast. Next week, the virtuoso guitarist and Master of Mastering Jon Neufeld. The week after that my guest will be me. The election will be over, I hope, and I’m going to take center stage. Anything might happen. But today a unique individual, a pianist who can play anything. Ja...

Welcome back to the Café at Artichoke Music for Coffeeshop Conversation number two hundred and sixty six. Can you believe it? Portland has a world famous choral ensemble. Its name is Cappella Romana. They’ve been around since 1991 giving the world early and contemporary sacred classical music in the Christian traditions of East and West. These days, the replication of sounds from an ancient Byzant...

You know It’s one of those times when we say that there’s a musician who has stepped up and been recognized as that one young cat who is what? I’m not handing out trophies here, but for me, I’d like to think of Charlie Brown III as someone who deserves to be known as the top young keyboard player around here. I know that might sound archaic but at least it’s not a list for us to harvest clicks. An...