Eugene Weekly

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →