Tag: Oregon

BGS 5+5: Blitzen Trapper

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Artist: Blitzen Trapper
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Latest album: Holy Smokes Future Jokes
Release Date: September 25, 2020

Answers provided by Eric Earley

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Michael Stipe was my favorite songwriter as a kid, his lyrics were so strange and uncanny. I’m thinking of Reckoning and Murmur, some of the most anachronistic lyrical content ever. There were no lyric sheets or online lookups back then so I was always trying to figure out what he was saying. His songs always had the feeling of a riddle or a magical text, the imagery was dreamlike and over the years I’ve tried to emulate that in certain ways. Tom Waits was a large influence later in my twenties, his bizarre comical lyrical storytelling and character voices were inspiring, I’m thinking of Rain Dogs in particular.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

There isn’t any favorite, lots of weird amazing ones for sure, playing “Heard It Thru the Grapevine” with Stephen Malkmus trading weird, collapsing solos with Stephen as he made up the words because we were too lazy to learn the lyrics. I think we were in Cleveland, but I could be wrong. Playing Big Star’s “Feel” with Jody Stephens on drums and Mike Mills on backing vocals in Austin, Texas, that was surreal.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Most of my favorite songs have literary origins, whether it’s a particular Cormac McCarthy novel like Blood Meridian (“Black River Killer”) or a general religious text like the Bardo Thodol (the new record is based largely on this book). Biblical imagery has made its way into countless songs I’ve written as a result of childhood influences and pervasive cultural resonances. I’ve also started writing a lot of songs from reading specific poets, using their wordplay to inspire different turns of phrase. Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, to name a couple, I’ve also used Finnegan’s Wake and Gravity’s Rainbow to generate wordplay and imagery.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I’ve been playing music since I was a child, so being a musician was never really a choice. I didn’t think of it as a career for a long time. I went to college for physics and math, studied painting, learned classical fingerstyle, became a sous chef. Finally in my late twenties I decided to drop everything and play music, mostly because all the songs I was writing were keeping me up at night, but I didn’t have any vision for the business part of it. Spent seven years playing unattended shows in Portland. Got a record deal off a random song on Myspace and suddenly was touring and making money.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Experimentation is the only way to realize the vision of reality you want to hear, so never grow static in style or voice, always move forward, never sit still sonically. Don’t write angry, only from a place of emptiness without sentimentality, nostalgia without regret. Don’t try to please anyone, only follow your instincts.

Photo credit: Jason Quigley

WATCH: Full Cord Bluegrass, “Downtown”

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Artist: Full Cord Bluegrass
Hometown: Grand Haven, Michigan
Song: “Downtown”

In Their Words: “Most bluegrass songs are written with bucolic images, mountain hollers, and a country living context. I wanted to write a song about that same-minded person visiting a city. While the lyrics portray this, so can the music with its unconventional chords and rhythms. The rhythmic mandolin chordal riff for ‘Downtown’ was born out of an inspiration from the mandolin rhythm giant, Sam Bush, while the chords in the bridge are inspired by Steely Dan. … a blend of bluegrass and the city type chord progression. Portland, Oregon, where I lived for 13 years, is the ‘Downtown’ subject and declares my love-hate relationship with the city. That feeling of energy, sights and sounds of a vibrant environment come in to play with this one. This is something we can all understand…” — Brian Oberlin, Full Cord Bluegrass

Photo credit: Chantal Roeske

LISTEN: Siren Songs, “Edelweiss”

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Artist: Siren Songs
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Song: “Edelweiss”
Album: Siren Songs
Release Date: May 15, 2020 (single); May 29, 2020 (album)

In Their Words: “On Patreon, I have a group of patrons that get to pick songs for me to cover. In particular there’s one family, the Pak family, consisting of four sisters, who are all patrons. One of the sisters asked me to do an arrangement of ‘Edelweiss’ to honor their father who had recently passed away — ‘Edelweiss’ was his favorite song. The arrangement is a tribute to him, to honor his memory; it’s an arrangement with his life in mind. I changed the chord progression and the time signature, making the song a bit more emotional.

“His daughter Suzy also told me that she believes the song may have resonated with him so deeply because when he was young his family was forced to flee what is now North Korea, and they never had the opportunity to return to their homeland — it no longer existed. And his first name was Song — so beautiful. Shortly after I finished the arrangement, Song’s wife Mary passed away as well. It just breaks my heart every time we perform this song, so much so that I can’t talk about it until after we’ve finished singing it. When we decided to make ‘Edelweiss’ a part of Siren Songs we added a beautiful vocal harmony and adjusted the guitar arrangement to support those harmonies.” — Jenn Grinels

“The song is from The Sound of Music, a musical which we both love. Deep down we are both musical theatre geeks! Fun fact: Jenn and I both made our stage debuts as Gretl, the youngest Von Trapp, when we were little kids. We both love the musical theatre canon and find so much inspiration in theatre music.” — Merideth Kaye Clark

Photo credit: Chelsea Donoho

WATCH: The Harmed Brothers, “All the Same”

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Artist: The Harmed Brothers
Hometown: Ludlow, Kentucky via Portland, Oregon
Song: “All the Same”
Album: Across the Waves
Release Date: June 5, 2020
Label: Fluff and Gravy Records

In Their Words: : “‘All the Same’ is a traveling song. It’s about life from inside the tour van. It’s about chasing a dream, even when you lose sight of it from being strung out on the road and missing home. It’s about our daily lives as an American touring band. Something I’m sure a lot of musicians can relate to.” — Ray Vietti, The Harmed Brothers

“The Ludlow-Bromley Swim Club in Ludlow, Kentucky is a cherished and beloved summer hangout spot, a classic American neighborhood pool — and our good friend and neighbor Matt ‘Catfish’ Williams presented us with the idea of shooting a video there. With his help, along with the pool owner and our fantastic community, we got to do something really fun and special. When initially presented with this opportunity, we felt ‘All the Same’ has this undeniably beachy, summertime vibe that perfectly fit that idea.” — Alex Salcido, The Harmed Brothers

Photo credit: Michael Wilson

LISTEN: Alicia Viani, “Tomten Farm”

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Artist: Alicia Viani
Hometown: Bend, Oregon
Song: “Tomten Farm”
Album: Alicia Viani
Release Date: April 3, 2020

In Their Words: “I was sitting in my living room on a cold winter morning in Bend with the barely-warm sunlight shining through the windows. It was a home I would soon lose following the breakup with a partner. I didn’t know it at the time but I had a strong intuitive despairing sense about our future as a couple. My partner, a close friend, and I were sitting there in the sunlight and it was a happy peaceful morning, which was becoming rarer.

“I was noodling in the background on my guitar and my friend was talking to my partner about memories from a summer on a farm in Telluride. Her descriptions and imagery were beautiful to me and I just started writing this song live based on the words coming out of her mouth about her time there. Threading the imagery together ‘North of Telluride,’ ‘sunflower mesa,’ ‘the well ran dry.’ I’ve never been to Tomten Farm. I’ve spent a lot of time in Telluride, so I already had a connection to the place. I think the song was sort of an escape fantasy during a difficult, dark time. I took artistic ownership over her story!

“When we did separate, losing him, the home, and my sense of family left me reeling from abrupt changes in day-to-day reality but also reeling from the gut punch of realizing my dreams we worked together on were gone too. What did I believe in building now? Navigating these losses put me at a crossroads. Do I let this devour me? Or do I attempt to stay open to changes and get rocked and hopefully find new solid ground and direction? This song came from my attempt to do the latter. I wrote it over time as I found my way again, found joy in a relationship again with a new lover, and pieced my dreams back together again based on my own desires and beliefs about how I wanted to live. — Alicia Viani

Photo credit: Laura Schneider

LISTEN: The Hackles, “The Show Goes On”

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Artist: The Hackles
Hometown: Astoria, Oregon
Song: “The Show Goes On”
Album: A Dobritch Did as a Dobritch Should
Release Date: November 8, 2019
Label: Jealous Butcher Records

In Their Words: “‘The Show Goes On’ is an homage to and a reflection on the life of Bulgarian-born circus impresario Al Dobritch. The song arose from a circus-themed song challenge that sent me down a ‘Circus Circus’ research rabbit hole. Deep in that hole I discovered Al Dobritch, whose byzantine life got me thinking about the interaction between self-determination and outside, decisive forces in all our lives. It was recorded by us and Adam Selzer at The Rope Room studio in our hometown of Astoria, Oregon. Luke’s guitar & James Owen Greenan’s pedal steel converse, Cory Gray’s organ elevates, Gabrielle Macrae’s vocals elaborate, Olaf Ydstie’s drums are the train that goes off the cliff, and Adam Selzer’s percussion and mixing cause everything to make sense.” — Kati and Luke, The Hackles

Photo credit: Courtesy of HearthPR/Lauren Jacobsonᐧ

LISTEN: The Gossamer Strings, “Due to the Darkness”

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Artist: The Gossamer Strings
Hometown: Eugene, Oregon
Song: “Due to the Darkness”
Album: Due to the Darkness
Release Date: September 27, 2019

In Their Words: “Near the Black Hills of South Dakota lie the Badlands, a desolate and harsh landscape filled with steep canyons and towering spires of layered rock. The rain beats down and the wind howls, shaping and changing the land with each passing season. For ‘Due to the Darkness’ we took our inspiration from this stark place to craft a song about finding and appreciating the beauty in the dark and inhospitable places we find ourselves sometimes. Those places can remind us of our vulnerability and, hopefully, of our strength.” — Liat Lis and Kyle McGonegle, The Gossamer Strings

Photo credit: Bill Holderfield

LISTEN: Mary Flower, “Crooked Rag”

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Artist: Mary Flower
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Song: “Crooked Rag”
Album: Livin’ with the Blues Again
Release Date: August 17, 2019
Label: Little Village Foundation

In Their Words: “Most of my instrumentals start with finding a groove that piques my interest. ‘Crooked Rag’ was developed around a 12 bar form in G, but with a ragtime feel. It is basically variations in the key of G. While writing, I kept after it, working my way up the neck until I ran out of musical ideas! As is the case for many of my tunes, I don’t sit down to write something. I fool around with new ideas much like a puzzle that needs solving. I work on it until I feel it’s complete and decide if it’s worth saving!” — Mary Flower

LISTEN: Erisy Watt, “Treasure Maps”

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Artist: Erisy Watt
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Song: “Treasure Maps”
Album: Paints in the Sky
Release Date: July 26, 2019

In Their Words: “I wrote this song when I was attending school in Santa Barbara, California. Moving there when I was 18 after growing up in Nashville, Tennessee felt like a dream and a lot of my earlier songs were inspired by that change. I’ve since happily put down new roots in Portland, Oregon, but every time I sing this song, a golden-state nostalgia settles in and carries me back to those seemingly simpler times. While this song may be lighthearted, it archives an important coming-of-age chapter of my life and serves to remind me to hang on to my youth and curiosity and not take things too seriously.

“I love the way this song comes to life with a full band. I feel very fortunate to have such great players on it — Anna Tivel on violin, Jeremy Ferrara on guitar, Hanna Haas singing harmonies, Matt Fabi on bass, and Michael Mitchell on drums. ‘Treasure Maps’ is the second track on my debut full-length album, Paints in the Sky. I’m really looking forward to the full album release show at the Old Church Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday, July 25, where I’ll be accompanied by seven other musicians to bring these songs to life. I’ll be taking off on tour for much of August and September around the western US and then to Europe later in the fall. Many of those shows will be with a full band as well. You can find more details at my website.” — Erisy Watt

Photo credit: Bradley Cox

LISTEN: Philippe Bronchtein, “Oregon Air”

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Artist: Philippe Bronchtein
Hometown: Portland, Oregon / Montclair, New Jersey (now based in Nashville, Tennessee)
Song: “Oregon Air”
Album: Oregon Air EP
Release Date: July 23, 2019

In Their Words: “I remember finishing the song ‘Oregon Air’ at my friend Martin’s kitchen table in Seattle. The song had sat half-finished for a few years as a patchwork of imagery about my hometown in New Jersey. Over the course of the afternoon it morphed into an introspective saga about what home means, contrasting landmarks of my adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon, with the childhood familiarity of New Jersey. The song asks more questions than it answers, but the immediacy of time and place within the track hopefully leaves the listener with a silhouette of what home means to them.” — Philippe Bronchtein

Photo Credit: Laura Partain