Eugene Weekly

I noticed a Kickstarter campaign the other day; someone is transcribing the flow of popular rappers into traditional music notation and wants help funding a book about it. I hear you can study “turntablism” at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Does this mean rap is dead — or that it’s finally part of the establishment? Neither, if San Francisco-based indie rap icon Andre Nickatina has anything to say about it. Continue reading →

When Jeff Austin roams around the state of Oregon, he feels as if he were in a strange movie. But it’s not just the scenery that keeps Austin and the rest of Yonder Mountain String Band coming back to this fine state; it’s the people. “Eugene is very near and dear to our hearts; it’s always been good to us,” says Austin, who plays mandolin and provides silvery vocals for Yonder. “We’re like old cowboys. We don’t forget that stuff.” Continue reading →

Obvious jokes about a certain Simple Minds song aside, who could forget about Molly Ringwald? She’s the redheaded queen of teen flicks who headlined features like Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles in the 1980s, but these days she’s settled into a different artistic milieu: music. That’s right, the actress has traded in her angst for a set of jazz standards, and she’s actually quite the chanteuse. Continue reading →

Today’s electronic generation is lowering the music production learning curve so rapidly that many producers can’t even legally get into venues where their music is played. Take Disclosure, the UK-born-and-bred house duo consisting of brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, who are only 21 and 18 respectively.  Continue reading →

If you want to make Jeffry-Wynne Prince smile, call him Jeffry-Wynne. Not Jeff or Jeffry or Wynne or Prince, although that might make him smile for a different reason. The hyphenated first name (it’s Welsh) of The Kimberly Trip guitarist throws some people for a loop.  Continue reading →

No, we’re not talking about Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, OutKast, R.E.M. or other musicians from the Southeastern US, but rather Zedashe, an ensemble from the former Soviet republic, which performs at the UO’s Beall Hall April 19. The group of singers and instrumentalists (using bagpipes, accordion, percussion and more) has spent years finding and reviving music that was suppressed or otherwise gone with the wind during the decades of Soviet domination. Continue reading →

Musicians have been touring for years — it’s just part of the profession. Incidentally, touring musicians have had us up, out of our houses and walking to various venues for most of our lives. But mellow-shimmer genius Will Johnson found a way to turn this practice on its head. He’s embarked on a Western States Living Room Tour, which is exactly what it sounds like. The moody-voiced Missouri crooner is literally playing in people’s living rooms up and down the West Coast, and he’s making a stop in Eugene this week to play at an undisclosed location. Continue reading →

Rare is the band that can say they are still recording half a century after they began, but that is the case for the pioneers of ska music, The Skatalites. Formed in Jamaica in 1964, the band’s music has influenced the likes of The Police, No Doubt and Sublime, and early on they backed notable bands like Toots and the Maytals and Prince Buster and “The Wailing Wailers,” featuring Bob Marley. Continue reading →

The ’90s are back. Tribute nights to the decade of the Gap are popping up everywhere; Matchbox 20 is touring with the Goo Goo Dolls, and Boston-based Little War Twins kick off their album Marvelous Mischief with “One Bottle”— recalling the coiled-up intensity of fellow Bostonians and ’90s icons The Pixies before settling into a Ani DiFranco-esque easygoing folk-swing backbeat, but unfortunately falling a little short of both. Continue reading →