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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.
Like a lot of people, Corvallis-based theater director and educator Elizabeth Helman watched Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos series on Netflix. “I just happened to see a tiny little biography,” Helman tells EW, “a 10-minute segment of the Cosmos series and it had this mini-biography about Henrietta Leavitt.” Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer at the turn of the 20th century. Continue reading
San Francisco band The Shanghais have never been to Eugene. Lead vocalist Natalie Sweet is wondering if we have any good vegan food here. “I’m always on the hunt,” Sweet tells EW via email. Based on that question alone, the quartet should feel right at home in our fair city with its verdant veggie foodie scene. The Shanghais will release their latest EP, Fall in Love with the Shanghais, this spring on Philadelphia-based label Endless Daze Records. Continue reading
Songwriter Vanessa Carlton’s 2015 release Liberman is partially inspired by her grandfather. “He was a painter,” Carlton tells EW. Carlton’s family changed its surname from Liberman to Lee after World War II “because of anti-Semitism,” she says. Carlton hangs her grandfather’s work near the piano where she writes her music. “The swirling, beautiful, crazy colors ended up being the inspiration for the type of music I was writing. I wanted to honor his work as a painter,” she recalls. Continue reading
David Bowie; Memorial I don’t like this one bit, not one bit Mr Bowie. I don’t like this one bit, Mr Bowie, one bit. A father a teacher a sister A brother a lover But death like life like art aren’t about me Unless the me is a you and the you were a we If I had a cathedral I’d carve your face in it. I don’t like this one bit, Mr Bowie, one bit. Continue reading
CHarles Wilson is founder and CEO of Portland-based Cricket Flours, a platform food ingredient and consumer food product company. Wilson says his mother’s gluten-intolerance inspired the business. He founded the enterprise during his last year of law school at the University of Oregon. “Ten or 15 years ago my mom got diagnosed,” Wilson tells EW, “and she couldn’t have gluten anymore.” Continue reading
London, England, 1622; William Shakespeare has been dead for seven years. Six years prior, in 1616, Shakespeare’s rival, playwright Ben Jonson, had published a collection of his own plays. Emboldened by this publication’s success, the former business partners of Shakespeare, John Heminges and Henry Condell, follow Jonson’s lead and set about anthologizing Shakespeare’s work. Continue reading
The year 2015 is when pure pop scored serious artistic cred: Ryan covered Taylor, Adele smashed all kinds of sales records and even Justin Bieber garnered some pretty decent critical notices. Continue reading
Angela Webber, one-half of Portland nerd-folk duo The Doubleclicks, says we’re living in a golden age of geek culture. “The creation of the internet definitely helped nerds find each other,” Webber tells EW. “If you’re the only person at your high school who loves Doctor Who,” Webber says, “you can find a robust community on the internet that shares that with you.” Continue reading
Most of us have grown up with the tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge rediscovering his Christmas spirit and, while the story doesn’t change, our relationship to the story does. Sometimes life makes Scrooges of us all with its litany of heartbreak, missed opportunities and too much time wasted stressing about careers and money. That’s what makes Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol so immortal. Continue reading
When unimaginable horrors are in the headlines — as they are far too often these days — it’s easy to feel helpless and to wonder what one person can do about so much pain in the world. Continue reading