Music

Jessica Raymond has gathered several musical influences since she arrived in the PNW: Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, the North Cascades and the Olympic Mountains. “I’ve spent a lot of the past couple years in the mountains,” says Raymond, singer-songwriter and guitarist for The Blackberry Bushes, an alt-folk progressive bluegrass trio based in Seattle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mountain Song at Sea’s maiden cruise in February left the typically landlocked bluegrass stomping grounds far behind to bring together acts from across the nation like the Grammy-winning Steep Canyon Rangers and local favorites Betty and the Boy, who will be reunited again April 7 at WOW Hall.

It’s surprising someone hasn’t done it sooner. On April 16, Ghostface Killah is releasing Twelve Reasons to Die — a companion album to a comic book of the same name. 

Once upon a time there was fuzz, and it was accidental. Then there came distortion. Then there came cleanliness, godliness and indie-pop. And then, quite inexplicably, there was fuzz again.

Musical institutions too often destroy the very music they prize by refusing to look forward, relying instead on constant rehashing of the greatest hits of earlier decades and centuries. This month brings to town some progressive musicians who are keeping their traditions alive and growing.

Blissful blues. Sounds like an oxymoron, but that phrase hits at the essence of The California Honeydrops, who take the catharsis of singing the blues to a devil-may-care, happy-go-lucky level.

There’s a sweetness inherent in the name Bent Knee ... a marriage proposal on bent knee, an apology on bent knee, Prince Charming holding the glass slipper on bent knee. But all that sweetness goes out the window when Courtney Swain starts singing “I Don’t Love You Anymore.”

When EW caught up with The Horde & the Harem (THATH)’s Ryan Barber, he was in heaven. Well, at least music heaven for the hip-and-up-and-coming as well as the hip-established: South by Southwest.