Bring Out Your Dead

Eugene reflects on its Grateful Dead legacy on the band’s 50th anniversary

In 1994, I was one year old, sitting in the grass wearing a blue floral dress and eating a Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia Peace Pop. This made sense: Like many children of Deadheads, my parents had brought me to the Grateful Dead show at Autzen Stadium on June 17, 1994.  My parents met in the summer of ’88 on their way to a Dead show at Autzen. My mom had never been to Oregon and needed a ride from Los Angeles; my dad gave her one.  Five years later, I was born and they were taking me to Grateful Dead concerts.   Continue reading 

Seattle Folk Fusion

Motopony

Motopony

Daniel Blue — who once made love in the bathroom at Eugene’s Ninkasi Brewery — grew up in a highly religious family where he wasn’t allowed to listen to secular music. Now, he’s the frontman of Motopony, the Seattle sextet that fuses Northwest indie folk with the current electronic craze.  Continue reading 

Deep-fried and delicious

Superior Donuts shines a bright, comic light on generational differences

Steve Wehmeier and Dawaun Lawler

The Very Little Theatre’s current main stage production Superior Donuts, directed by Stanley Coleman, is a work of both comedic and dramatic realism, like a buddy film with a twist of gut-wrenching social commentary.  The interwoven genres at work here are not too surprising, as it comes from playwright Tracy Letts, who’s most famous work August: Osage County deals with the dark underbelly of Americana as a dramedy. Continue reading 

Viva la Diva

Damsels, Divas & Dames — one of Eugene’s biggest annual LGBTQ events — celebrates its sweet 16

Bill Sullivan as daphne storm

In the early ’90s, drag star RuPaul was dazzling the club scenes in Atlanta and New York City and Jennie Livingston released her award-winning documentary Paris Is Burning, which captured the culture of New York drag balls.  In Eugene, the first Damsels, Divas & Dames drag show was performed at the Hult in 1992. In 2000, Imperial Sovereign Court of the Emerald Empire — one of Eugene’s oldest LGBTQ organizations — revived the show and it has continued to be an annual event benefitting HIV Alliance.  Continue reading 

This Mural’s Got Potential

The Cannery teams up with local artist Erik Roggeveen to create an innovative mounted mural

Erik Roggeveen's new mural ‘Potential’

Local artist Erik Roggeveen picked up a paintbrush for the first time only two-and-a-half years ago.  Today, you can see his 112-square-foot hand-painted mural — his first ever — on the east-facing wall of The Cannery at 11th and Mill Alley. The Cannery pub unveiled the mural March 6 and it’s hard to miss: The vividly colored, forced-perspective painting evinces a comic book-style and depicts a woman holding a jar of alien-looking pickled foods, like garlic, carrots and purple broccoli. Continue reading 

Eugene’s Sexiest Bartenders: Jonna Threlkeld, Starlight Lounge

Freaky sexy, quirky and original

Jonna Threlkeld, Starlight Lounge

Jonna Threlkeld, 28, first came to Eugene from Red Bluff, California, to play sax in the UO marching band. She has since ditched green and yellow for black, keeping bar at the Starlight Lounge for the past three and a half years. Threlkeld is honored to win “Sexiest Bartender,” especially because she has a “crush” on all the “beautiful and talented” women who bartend downtown. Continue reading 

Southern Gothic

Adia Victoria

Adia Victoria

Adia Victoria has only released two songs, but the Nashville-based singer is already on the rise as a Southern Gothic queen. Rolling Stone recently named her as one of “10 New Artists You Need To Know,” and Roger Moutenot (Yo La Tengo, Sleater-Kinney) is producing her debut with bandmates Ruby Rogers, Tiffany Minton and Mason Hickman.  Although often categorized as country, Victoria is actually a Southern cynic. On her Facebook page, she describes her music genre as “back-porch-blues-swamp-cat-lady-howlin’-at-the-moon.” Continue reading