Even though he’s won eight state championships and coached some of the most talented and successful players in the world in his nearly 25-year career, Rainier Beach high school boys basketball coach Mike Bethea approaches each season like it’s his very first.
Read MoreJohn Popper can sing the complicated jazz tune “Whiplash” practically in his sleep. The song, featured prominently in the Oscar-winning movie of the same name, is burned into Popper’s brain because of the same man who inspired the devilish bandleader in the film: Anthony Biancosino. “Dr. B,” as he was affectionately known, was an award-winning high school band teacher at Princeton High School in Princeton, N.J. (where Popper and Whiplash director Damien Chazelle both attended, decades apart). And while he wasn’t nearly the authoritarian as he’s exaggerated to be in the 2014 movie, Dr. B did help Popper — the frontman and harmonica player for the Grammy-winning band Blues Traveler — flourish as a musician.
Read MoreThere are many ways front people try to connect with their audience. For some, it could be a sunny song about tequila and the beach. For others, maybe a short skirt lures listeners. But for Shaina Shepherd, lead singer of the Seattle-based band BEARAXE, the connection is rooted in stories of resilience.
Read MoreFor Kevin Murphy, everything changed the week he and his then-Seattle-based rock band the Moondoggies released their album, Adios I’m A Ghost, in mid-August 2013. But not because the LP took off in any meteoric way. Rather, that’s the week the singer/songwriter met his now-girlfriend and began a new life.
Read MoreFor their new album, “I’ll Be Your Girl,” released in March, the members of Portland-based rock band The Decemberists set out to challenge themselves. The group hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with its 2011 LP “The King Is Dead” and has built a following for creative sounds and lyrics. But fresh tactics, says frontman Colin Meloy, had to be taken to keep making invigorating music.
Read MoreThirty years ago, while Matt Vaughan was attending Seattle University, he established the monument to local music that is West Seattle’s Easy Street Records. In the interim decades since, Vaughan has watched the neighborhood around him change dramatically and watched friends, like members of Alice in Chains, rocket to stardom and then tragically fall. Vaughan was there when Sir Mix-A-Lot first began hustling his debut, Swass; there when Macklemore sold his first CD; and he’ll be there when the next sensations—Thunderpussy, Car Seat Headrest—rise to the top of the charts. No one has followed Emerald City music quite like Vaughan; in a way he is the eye of the local scene’s storm.
Read MoreMs. Briq House—a burlesque performer, sex work advocate, professional cuddler, stripper, educator, and entertainer—wants you to see the light. Raised by her grandparents as a Southern Baptist Christian, House was an active member of the church as a youth. She worshiped. She spread the word. But, at twenty-five, she sought a divorce from her then-husband (with whom she remains in amicable contact), and that is when, “We saw people’s true colors,” she says.
Read MoreWhile visiting nashville, Tennessee, singer-songwriter Aloe Blacc found something he did not expect. Inside the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Blacc stood before a large mural depicting the origins of the museum’s central genre. The painting showed a cultural mashup of players with West African banjos, as well as fiddles and other harmonic and melodic elements that originated in Europe.
Read MoreMac DeMarco, the Canadian-born, laid-back minstrel of mellow rock ’n’ roll, says he is “addicted” to the excitement of creation. For the chain-smoking, whiskey drinking musician his main professional ambition is to keep making music — in large part, he says, so that he doesn’t have to experience any “withdrawals.”
Read MoreKrist Novoselic has begun the grind again. The 52-year-old former Nirvana bassist, who has since formed a couple of short-lived groups between joining the Foo Fighters and Paul McCartney on national stages, has launched a new Northwest-based band, Giants in the Trees, a mix of rock, pop, and folk music.
Read MoreAfter more than 30 years in the music business, singer-songwriter Mark Lanegan has learned a few things about himself as a creative individual. For someone who at times begrudgingly took on the role of lead singer for the bands he's fronted—most notably the Screaming Trees—Lanegan has grown leaps and bounds as a songwriter and, particularly, as a frontman. So much so that he still finds surprises in his line of work.
Read MoreDespite finding himself in the midst of writing a new record, slated for release early-to-mid 2018, Seattle-area soul singer, Allen Stone, can’t help but continue to tour. “I kind of live on the road,” says Stone, while on brief hiatus in Los Angeles. His highway ramblin’ will continue in the Seattle-area when the buttery-voiced singer performs Friday at Woodinville’s Chateau Ste. Michelle.
Read MoreIn an age when brief pops like retweets and viral videos reign supreme, Seattle rapper Raz Simone has chosen a more maintainable route—one where numbers aren't the driving force but the viability of making art is. Simone's is a trek that susses out the complete character and depth of his work in music, and his mission is one of personal and creative sustainability. "My career," he explains, "is going to be a longer battle. But it's going to be very worth it."
Read MoreSeattle’s Jason Koenig, who has carved out a tremendously successful career as a music video director — which includes the video for the new Macklemore single, “Glorious,” released this week — can hardly believe his good fortune.
Read MoreSeattle-based crooner Vince Mira’s new 12-song LP, “El Radio,” often feels more like an intersectional collage than a modern pop release.
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