We've got issues.
Canadian songwriter and visual artist Chad VanGaalen has built a comprehensive little universe with his work, over which he rules supreme, whether through his spacey indie-folk songs or his R. Crumb-esque surrealist comic book-style illustrations. Continue reading
According to Aristotle, comedy is harder to pull off than tragedy, and farce is the most challenging genre of all. How to get the audience to emotionally engage with all of the goofy plot twists, the ridiculous sight gags and the improbable situations? How to, in the immortal words of film star Donald O’Connor, “Make ’em laugh?” Well, if the lofty goal is a good old-fashioned giggle, then Cottage Theatre’s Moon Over Buffalo doesn’t disappoint. Continue reading
“A lot of people around age 13 are trying to find themselves,” says Jenny Bryant, performing this weekend in 13 at Actor’s Cabaret of Eugene. Castmate Angel McNabb adds, “The play relates to middle school, because kids are always trying to find a group where they fit in.” With music and lyrics by the Tony award-winning American playwright Jason Robert Brown, book by Dan Elish and Robert Horn and direction and choreography by Lanny Mitchell, 13 features a cast of young people from around the region, ranging in age from 10 to 16. Continue reading
Esteban Camacho weaves through the skateboard jungle that is the new WJ Skatepark + Urban Plaza, finding some smooth invisible path while I stumble after him, jumping out of the way of teens on wheels. It’s clear the artist is a seasoned veteran of the site. We sit on a bench carved into a ramp, skateboarders whirring around us. Hands leathery with green paint, Camacho points up at the murals developing on two pillars buttressing I-105. Continue reading
James Franco is a fascinating character. With his chiseled good looks and bedroom eyes, he is genetically perched for sex-symbol status, and certainly Hollywood yearns to dip him in those spangled shallows. But Franco, as part of Seth Rogen and Jason Segel’s Freaks and Geeks mob, resists the most earnest superfluities of celebrity; his artistic talent is tempered by self-deprecation and suspicion, which keeps him on his toes — witness the masochistic pleasure he takes in ripping his reputation in This is the End. Continue reading
New bands play lots of strange places: bedrooms, basements and bars (empty or, preferably, full). On June 12, Seattle’s fledgling post-punk quartet Gibraltar plays Eugene’s Tiny Tavern, a venue that is, well … pretty tiny. But it’s immediately apparent from their latest record, The New Century, that Gibraltar (featuring current and former members of Afghan Whigs, Visqueen, Exohxo and Spanish for 100) have arena-sized ambitions. Continue reading
For her latest project, The Bird in My Chest, singer-songwriter Gabrielle Louise wanted to do something different. “I had my heart set on releasing a book of short stories and poems alongside a collection of music,” Louise says. “So I took everything I had composed in the same time frame — songs, poems and short stories — and I published a booklet to accompany the CD.” Continue reading
If EW’s annual Best of Eugene contest included the category “Most likely to perform at Austin City Limits,” local singer-songwriters Tyler Fortier and Beth Wood would surely tie for first. Wood, a native Texan, says she’d jump at the opportunity to play the famous Austin, Texas-based music festival; Fortier admits he might prefer to appear online in an installment of NPR’s intimate Tiny Desk Concerts. Continue reading
Excerpt from phone interview with King Buzzo of the Melvins: Me: Hello, may I speak with Buzz Osborne, please? Buzz: That’s me. Me: Hey, this is Rick Levin from the Eugene Weekly. Buzz: Never heard of it. And that, folks, is punk rock in a nutshell. Continue reading
Claire, Jason, Warren and Deb are just four ordinary New Yorkers, but their lives intersect in the most extraordinary ways as they search with classic longing for love and fulfillment in a very modern setting. Ordinary Days is a contemporary musical by up-and-coming American composer Adam Gwon. According to Charles Isherwood of The New York Times, “Mr. Gwon writes crisp, fluid and often funny lyrics that reflect the racing minds of the four New Yorkers on a nervous search for their immediate futures.” Continue reading