Eugene Weekly

When a sleek, curvy, dark figure entered her life, Melissa Ruth knew her future would look different. She was writing songs for her second album, 2011’s Aint No Whiskey, when it came to her.  “I accidentally bought a guitar that blew my mind and changed my songwriting forever,” Ruth tells me over whiskey at The Barn Light. The guitar is a small-bodied black and brown 1958 Guild electric with a whole lotta mojo, Ruth says. “That guitar changed my life.”  Continue reading →

Rearrange some Steel Cranes songs, add a little fiddle and steel guitar, and you’d have some no-nonsense, woman-done-wrong country music.  “I write a lot of our songs on my acoustic and they often initially have a country feel to them,” says Steel Cranes vocalist and guitarist Tracy Shapiro. “We usually butcher things once Amanda [Shukle] is on drums and I switch to my electric,” she jokes. Continue reading →

K Records recording artists The Shivas nod toward vintage psyche and garage rock, but Jared Molyneux says his band isn’t merely a nostalgia act.  “We sound like a band that listens to a lot of garage music from the ’60s,” Molyneux says. “The sound and feeling of that style of music must have had a profound effect on us, as our music obviously resembles it,” he adds, referencing The Velvet Underground and The 13th Floor Elevators as well as artists like Sam Cooke, James Brown and Leadbelly.   Continue reading →

Among guitarists, if not across the wide world, Dave Rawlings is recognized as a stylist of the highest order, a folk traditionalist who is also a supreme innovator. For evidence of what this man can do with his 1935 arch-top Epiphone, witness “Revelator,” the first track on 2001’s Time (The Revelator) by singer and songwriter Gillian Welch, with whom Rawlings frequently collaborates. Continue reading →

When it comes to indie rap, few MCs boast the candid storytelling of Brother Ali. Continue reading →

Just as the arrival of shorter, cooler days signal autumn, the arrival of some big names, at least in the little world of classical music, tells us that the 2014-15 classical music season is underway. The Sept. 28 Eugene Symphony concert featuring the legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman playing Beethoven’s majestic Violin Concerto offers a chance to see one of the last of the really big-name classical soloists (there’s Yo Yo Ma and not many others left) who can fill up a venue as cavernous as the Hult Center on reputation alone.  Continue reading →