We've got issues.
Will Kennedy is a freelance writer and a senior music writer with Eugene Weekly. He lives in Eugene with his wife, daughter and two cats. All of whom politely accommodate his obsessions with Doctor Who and The Smiths.
For Rafferty Swink of Brooklyn psych-soul outfit Evolfo, his band’s upcoming show at Hi-Fi Music Hall in Eugene is a homecoming of sorts. “I grew up in Ashland,” Swink explains to EW. “Oregon is my home.” Continue reading
Mick Dagger, vocalist and guitarist with Eugene band Dick Dägger, says one of the best places in town to hear live music is in the john at a house across the street from Taco Bell. The house in question is the Ant House, a longstanding and popular location for basement shows in Eugene. “There’s a vent behind the toilet,” Dagger says. “If you stuck an audio recorder right there, you could start doing live podcasts.” Continue reading
After five years in Brooklyn, Eugene-born musician Justin King has come home. “All my oldest friends and family are here,” King explains. “It’s really where my roots are,” he continues. “Brooklyn was getting even more overrun and expensive and crazier and crazier. I wanted to come back and focus on my own music.” Since being back in town, King’s band King Radio has released a four-song EP, Adaline, available now on SoundCloud. Continue reading
If you’re anything like me, and I know many of you are, you grew up on a lot of ’80s and ’90s-era British guitar pop. Why? In my case, Brit bands seemed allowed a larger breadth of sensitivity and intelligence than their constantly macho Yankee colleagues. And, of course, there are those accents: romantic, working class, exotic and endlessly cool. Has the sound aged? Certainly. But in the end, haven’t we all? Continue reading
Half a century ago this world, as well as worlds beyond our solar system, fell in love with the ’60s television series-turned-movie franchise known as Star Trek. Christina Allaback, creative director of Eugene’s Trek Theatre, says that along with the relationships among central characters like Kirk, Spock and McCoy, the show’s underlying message of hope helps Star Trek endure. “There are dystopic science fiction stories,” Allaback explains. “With Star Trek you have the opposite of that — the possibilities of where the human race can go.” Continue reading
Jerry Joseph has been called the Anthony Bourdain of music. “I finally realized I was never going to be a big fucking rock star,” Joseph says. “Nobody’s ever going to invite me to Saigon to come play a concert.” So the veteran Portland songwriter and longtime fixture on Eugene stages decided to take matters into his own hands and travel the world with his music. “I called people I knew, people that lived in Cambodia and Thailand," Joseph explains. "And I brought a camera guy with me.” Continue reading
Bonnie Bloomgarden of Los Angeles’ Death Valley Girls says her band’s latest release, Glow in the Dark (out now on Burger Records), was inspired by ancient Egypt. “We were asked to play a show for a mummy exhibit,” Bloomgarden tells EW. “These mummies had been in Chicago since 1890 until they came here to L.A. We realized this potentially could be the first time ever that they heard rock ‘n’ roll.” “What if we had the power to wake them?” Bloomgarden continues. “After we wrote the songs we thought, ‘Well, we’ve got to record them now.’” Continue reading
It’s such a good idea. Why didn’t someone think of it sooner? “I was out one day moseying around on Skinner’s Butte,” Robert Newcomer says. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is fairyland up here.’” Newcomer, a native Texan and theater arts educator who relocated to Eugene four years ago, is directing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the inaugural production of Bard on the Butte. Continue reading
Deftones sound like an urban California traffic jam — the band’s innovative blend of alt-rock, metal, hardcore and emo creates heat, tension and eventually release. Earlier this year, the Sacramento-born Deftones released the long-awaited and critically acclaimed Gore. Last spring, when Deftones’ only Oregon show was announced at Cuthbert Amphitheater, it was for many the crown jewel of Eugene’s summer concert season. Continue reading
Sometimes a band’s strength lies not in its particular sound but in each player’s ability to unite fully behind the sound, to present a single battlefront, to commit individual expression to one common purpose — to communicate, combust and even, at times, self-immolate as a whole. Continue reading