Music

Listening to the music of Trevor Powers, more widely known as Youth Lagoon, is not so much a psychedelic experience as it is an exploration of Powers’ psyche. His sophomore release, 2013’s Wondrous Bughouse, is a mind-bending collection of rock and pop that blends a host of dissonant sounds together into a beautiful cacophony of noise that mirrors the storm going on inside Powers’ head. It is quite the trip.

Jason Cowsill was never pressured into music, despite his family’s storied musical history. A descendent of America’s family band, The Cowsills, he spent a lot of time bouncing around recording studios. But the moment he picked up his first guitar, there was no turning back. 

Portland’s The Quick & Easy Boys are bringing the party back to Eugene in celebration of their new record Make It Easy. The Boys’ bread and butter is an infamously high energy live show — so EW asked bassist Sean Badders what putting out a new recording means to a band in the age of the internet. 

On May 14, just days after The Bad Plus shook The Shedd, another youngish ensemble that’s reinventing jazz for a new era, Refuge Trio, plays the University of Oregon’s Beall Concert Hall — where the trio’s pianist, former UO piano prof Gary Versace, once dazzled Eugeneans a decade ago.

When Grammy-nominated bluegrass act The Infamous Stringdusters were looking for a producer for their new record they naturally picked ... a hip-hop veteran? You read right, but don’t worry longtime fans — the Stringdusters aren’t rollin’ in Escalades or rappin’ about their bling’d out grills, though I wouldn’t put it past the iconoclastic group to try.

It’s been six months since Seattle hip-hop outfit Macklemore and Ryan Lewis played their sold-out show at the McDonald (pictured above) and they’re already back, headlining at Matthew Knight Arena on May 4. Is the thrifty (“Thrift Shop”) duo aware of the campus controversy this booking ignited after the ASUO originally allocated over 100G to Mallard Madness (a student-run concert series) to nab the show?

Spirit Family Reunion is part of a long line of musicians based in New York City while playing the music of rural America. Like Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan and The Holy Modal Rounders before them, Spirit Family Reunion brings youthful energy and enthusiasm to antiquated sounds; screeching fiddle, unschooled harmonies, quavering mandolin and chugga-luggin’ freight train rhythms blend with the production value of a band busking on a Brooklyn sidewalk. 

There are many instruments out there, each with its own timbre, tuning and technique of play. You’ve probably seen or heard some of the weirder ones — dulcimer, tanpura, whamola, etc. — but the Frankenstein creation That 1 Guy brings to the stage will knock your socks off. It’s affectionately known as the “magic pipe,” and it ain’t hard to see why. Bashing at the thing with drumsticks makes a percussive drone, which Mike Silverman, the “1 Guy” in this project, uses to great effect in his fuller, more bass-heavy, freak-metal sound.

What’s in a name? A lot, if your last name is Guthrie. There are few surnames so loaded with expectation, history and respect, and few people as deserving of that respect as Arlo Guthrie. 

Born in 1947, the eldest son of Woody and Marjorie Guthrie, Arlo seemingly had little choice but to enter the world of folk music, singing for the downtrodden. Arlo Guthrie first performed at age 13, and has had his lifetime to find his own path along music’s folky backroads. 

Listening to Threads, the latest album from Minneapolis-based indie rock band Now, Now, you might be surprised to learn that the band was hesitant about working with a producer on this record.

“We were freaked out about the idea of anyone just coming in and changing things we didn’t want to change, or telling us that we couldn’t do something,” admits lead singer and guitarist Cacie Dalager. “We didn’t know what to expect.”

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. “It influences what I do. They stick with you.” In fact, Raymond attended Evergreen State College in Olympia and deemed her concentration “Music, Mountains and Mythology.” 

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.”