omn’s guide to bumbershoot 2013

OMN may have taken Bumbershoot off last year, but we're heading back up north this time to catch the 43rd edition of not just Seattle's but "the nation's largest arts festival, attracting over 100,000 people to Seattle Center every Labor Day weekend," as the fest officially says.

Featuring comedy, dance, film, theater and more alongside rock stars and notable talent from our own backyard, this year's music and arts festival takes place from Saturday afternoon on August 31st until almost midnight on Labor Day, Monday, September 2nd, all in the shadow of The Emerald City's iconic landmark—the Space Needle.

With a family-friendly atmosphere, the Bumbershoot lineup usually skews a little older (especially in the world of multi-day music festivals), but nevertheless overlaps enough to rival Portland's MFNW, which follows immediately on its heels this year (kicking off on September 3rd after, yet again, adding an additional day), and always draws a diverse crowd.

Something notable about this year's fest is the scheduling of some pretty big names in midday time slots—catch mainstage performers like Kendrick Lamar at 4pm on Saturday, fun. a half hour earlier on Sunday, and MGMT also at 3:30pm on Monday.

Now, your head might spin if you look at the hundreds of activities all at once. So to avoid sensory overload, we've done you a favor and sifted through the musical offerings (and then some) each day to tell you what's piqued our interest—we hope it'll galvanize yours as well.

Saturday, August 31st

Although Portland's rockabilly daughter (and her men) are up against some tough competition on Saturday night, we couldn't be more proud to see Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside closing out the Plaza Stage from 9:30-10:30pm. (Starfucker did the same a few years back with an amazing and well-received set and we're sure Sallie can match that.) Full of feminine bravado, the front woman has really found her own brash, confident self on the group's second album, Untamed Beast. And much like the record's title suggests, Sallie Ford swiftly spits the following on the punk rock-tinged "Rockability":

They’re telling me I’m like the rockabilly queen
Won’t you tell me who the hell is she
I just want rockability
Won’t you listen to me
I’m not part of any scene
I can’t wait to see the day
When all the genres melt away
So sick of being in the box

Exuding sexuality alongside endearing gawkiness, Sallie is just being herself—and in the process becoming a rock 'n' roll badass. Just take a look at the NSFW album art if you need any further proof. (It's—pardon the pun—totally tits in the enlarged LP format, so buy a copy!) 9:30pm @ Plaza Stage

Speaking of kicking ass, check out Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside's video for "Party Kids":

!!! (pronounced Chk Chk Chk) is guaranteed to be a jammy, funky, disco dance party—every time. Currently supporting their fifth studio album, THR!!!ER, peep their vid for "One Girl/One Boy" to understand how easy it is for them to get engines revved up. 6:15pm @ Fisher Green


Charles Bradley and His Extraordinaries will move you. Which direction? Most likely to tears. Or heartbreak. And then some suave sashaying of your hips. He induced all of the aforementioned the last time he played Bumbershoot, and since then, the 65-year-old soul and R&B singer has released a second album, Victim of Love. Just as genuine as his debut, this man has no shortage of life experience upon which to draw. 8pm @ Mural Amphitheatre

Plus, he's such an amazing, interesting, passionate character that a documentary on him, Charles Bradley: Soul of America, will be screened at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland on Wednesday, August 28th:

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Get the rest of our Bumbershoot picks on OMN.

sasquatch 2012 lineup announced featuring pdxers the shins, sallie ford, starfucker, blitzen trapper, umo, blind pilot...

Plus Portlanders M. Ward, Wild Flag, Portlandia The Tour, Greylag, and The Helio Sequence.

Headliners include Jack White, Beck, Bon Iver, Pretty Lights, Tenacious D, Beirut, Girl Talk, The Roots, Feist, Metric, The Head & the Heart, Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai and so, so many more.

And some other selections that are personally exciting are Spiritualized, Little Dragon, SBTRKT, Felix Cartal, Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires, Com Truise, and Seattle groups Pickwick and Hey Marseilles.

The 11th annual, 2012 Sasquatch! Music Festival takes place over Memorial Day weekend, Friday, May 25th through Monday, May 28th, at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA.

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Get the complete lineup on OMN.

farewell, the woods

Sadly, it's official. The Woods is no more.

Riding my bike by there today was bittersweet, just like the last song of Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside's set on Saturday night. Seeing a hodgepodge of chairs and couches sitting behind the locked, black iron gates made me fantasize that a resurrection was still possible.

But the facts are that the property is owned by Claybourne Commons, LLC, which was looking to raise the rent while the owners of The Woods, Ritchie Young, Vivien Lyon, and Yoni Shpak, would've liked a rent decrease. This effectively pushed the music venue out as Claybourne Commons currently hopes to redevelop the land, pushing the former funeral home, built in 1928, back half a block with plans to use the new real estate on SE Milwaukie for storefronts.

After two-and-half years of Bingo and Bourbon, Baby Ketten Karaoke, soul night with DJ Cooky Parker, and intimate concerts--one of my most memorable was an evening with The Robinsons and Y La Bamba--it was all destined to end on Saturday, January 7th.

But not without a free show. And a great, local line up to boot: Brothers Young, AgesandAges, and Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside.

A line stretched around the block all night long, and the place was packed well-past the supposed 300 person capacity. Familiar faces from the PDX music scene abounded with the likes of Lewi Longmire, Jim Brunberg of Mississippi Studios, the boys of Lone Madrone, music video director Alicia J. Rose, all of the brothers Young (how many are there anyways?), Dennise Kowalczyk of KZME, and the brothers from Rose City Live (who have a great gallery of photos up) all wandering around throughout the night.

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Read the rest on OMN.

honest, ‘dirty radio’ from sallie ford + the sound outside

“Dirty Radio is honest.”

It’s about “always being comfortable” and always “being true to yourself,” says Sallie Ford.

“When I turn on the radio, it all sounds the same. It ah-all sounds the same,” belts Sallie Ford in her distinctive, beguiling bawl on the first track from the band’s debut full-length. With a purposefully placed stutter, her words come in soulful exhalations and end in muffled grunts.

“What have these people done to music? They just don’t care anymore. They just don’t care anymore.”

Those lyrics, from “I Swear” (above), and the rest of Dirty Radio epitomize the honesty that can be felt through the music of Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside–a sound that may be utterly foreign to that dirty mainstream radio but is quite familiar here in Portland.

The band of Portland transplants has something honest to say, and after more than a year in the works, the record on which they say it is finally available. Dirty Radio was released via Partisan Records on May 24th and Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside, which features Ford Tennis on drums, Tyler Tornfelt on upright bass and Jeffrey Munger on guitar, will celebrate with two shows at the Doug Fir Lounge on Friday, June 3rd and Saturday, June 4th with handpicked openers sharing the stage.

“Radio sometimes has a reputation of not including swear words and chopping up songs,” continues Sallie Ford. It also, like popular culture, has a reputation for being fickle.

Yet something about Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside is timeless. It may be their unclassifiability, the gospel and soul divas present in Sallie’s uncommon vocals, or her throwback backing boys who conjure up classic folk, Americana, blues and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll rhythms.

The fluctuations in Sallie’s vocals create an energy, a palpable spontaneity, that comes from her style of songwriting. “The way I write lyrics,” begins Sallie before changing her train of thought. ”I used to sort of write them down but these days I don’t even do that. It’s a rhythmic thing and sometimes they end up forming themselves.”

Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside’s debut album has been a long time coming, but if you’ve been paying attention over the last year, much of it has already been revealed live or reworked from their five-track, 2009 Not An Animal EP.

Gaining subtle crispness in production, the band worked with Mike Coykendall (“We had originally wanted to work with him [on the entire album] but he had a real busy schedule”) and Adam Selzer at Type Foundry Studio. Recording with Mike in February of 2010 and Adam in March of the same year, the band has spent more than a year not just trying to get all the pieces together but putting everything in the right places–not to mention spending the appropriate amount of time simply “feeling overwhelmed with the business side of things,” including shopping the record around and putting together a management team.

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Read the rest on OMN.

best of 2010... now, what's next?

Since many of my most-prized local memories of 2010 (Y La Bamba, Pickathon, Tu Fawning, Billygoat, PCP, and more) are so well documented by a slew of OMN staffers with (dare I say?) impeccable taste, I give you 6 non-local shows that blew my mind in ’10:

1. Sufjan Stevens at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Friday, October 29th.

2. Jónsi (of Sigur Rós) at the Roseland Theater on Tuesday, April 13th.

3. Major Lazer and Big Freedia at the Roseland Theater during MFNW on Thursday, September 9th followed by Big Freedia live at Sassy’s (the strip club).

4. Janelle Monáe wowing a sold-out (for of Montreal) Roseland Theater on Thursday, October 28th.

5. Peter Hook & Friends at the Doug Fir Lounge playing Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures in its entirety on Thursday, December 9th.

6. The Flaming Lips at Eugene’s McDonald Theatre on Wednesday, September 29th.

Followed by epic festival coverage at PDX Pop Now!, MFNW, and Sasquatch. And since I just can’t resist… here are some locals who deserve love from the last year: Climber, Reporter, Soft Metals, Remix Artist Collective, The Angry Orts, The Ascetic Junkies, Strength, Pegasus Dream, Menomena, and Seattle’s Brent Amaker & The Rodeo and Hey Marseilles. I mourn the end of Explode Into Colors but look forward to more creative and bombastic incarnations. To anyone I’ve forgotten, I apologize but I hope to see plenty more of you in 2011.

But why look back when you should be looking forward? Here are the best, local musics that you’ve likely enjoyed this past year but I am anticipating even brighter futures (and fresh, alphabetically organized, full-length albums) in 2011:

1. AgesandAges’ debut album Alright You Restless due February 15th, 2011 (via Knitting Factory Records).

2. The Blow returns to the NW with new material and eventually a new album.

3. Deelay Ceelay took the last half of the year off to hit the studio and are now mixing things.

4. Red Fang’s Relaspe Records debut due in early 2011.

5. Sallie Ford & The Sound Outside have kept us waiting for a better part of the last year but their debut album is coming.

6. Starfucker’s second album (performed and recorded under the name Starfucker and no other name, abbreviation or derivative) out March-ish (via Polyvinyl).

7. Lastly, Vanimal has only a demo EP thus far but we’re excited to hear what’s next.

sallie ford preserves the sound outside

Who is Sallie Burgess Ford? Close your eyes and listen.

You might hear Ella and Etta. Robust and emotive. Billie and Dinah. Laden with road weariness, demanding and bewitching.

“I always liked belting,” announces Sallie Ford smiling a toothy grin.

Open your eyes and you see a petite package sent to Portland from Asheville wearing cat-eye glasses, adorned with silver flares and masking tape.

Shuffling to refill her coffee-stained paper cup, she spills her change across the counter trying to do three things at once. The barista chuckles and demands that she keep her coins.

Chortling back, Sallie insists that her pile of silver is a tip.

How do these two personas coexist within the same small frame?

“When you first start singing, you have a lot of decision in the way your voice sounds,” says the girl who was once christened Down South Sallie.

Now backed by her three boys, it’s Sallie Ford and The Sound Outside, and “It’s an outlet to be someone other than my actual personality.”

Sallie is still Sallie. She’ll always be Sallie. But on stage, her voice is her alternate persona. Emotion-wrought vocals cut and captivate, but only in three-minute spurts–between songs she’s back to Sallie, endearingly goofy, giggling and embarrassing her band with gushing confessions and blurted banter.

And embracing her like older brothers, Tennis, Tornfelt, and Munger can’t help but laugh along as the band grows up together–sometimes at their own pace but at other times very quickly, like last year when they played two sold-out gigs at the Crystal opening for The Avett Brothers...

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Hear Sallie's pipes while reading the rest on OMN.