Seattle-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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Young, hopeful musicians often enter the music scene with lofty goals of stardom and success. Rarely, however, do these dreams pan out. Seldom does the shift occur when, one day, an artist is playing a small bar and the next she’s on the biggest stage. But for Seattle rapper Taylar Elizza Beth (aka Taylar White) — who will celebrate the release of her new record, “Fresh Cut Flowers,” on Tuesday, June 13, at the Timbre Room — that shift may indeed be happening.
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If you’ve ever seen the Seattle-based singer-songwriter Celene Ramadan (aka Prom Queen) perform, you know the aesthetic pizzazz she showcases through the magic of color and cloth, in addition to her jangly retro rock ‘n roll. As Prom Queen, Ramadan dons a dark bouffant, dazzling dream-pop dresses and plays a pink guitar. She’s the mastermind behind Midnight Veil, an LP-length music video opus featuring genie lamps, doo-wop singers and milk shakes. Now Ramadan has a new creative persona: a big, white, joke-telling rabbit who she’s named Snax The Bunny.
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Galen Disston, lead singer for the soulful Seattle rock band Pickwick, trades in two creative escapes: his music, a lifelong ambition and an art form with infinite possibilities; and the intricate craft of watch building, an endeavor Disston–whose band’s new record, LoveJoys, is out June 10—began only recently.
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The genesis of Naomi Wachira’s newest album, Song of Lament, was a spiritual one— perhaps even divine. For the soulful, Kenyan-born singer, the songs for the new 11-track record, out now, came to her during a stint in Germany while she was at one of the lowest emotional points in her life.
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It’s been two years since AB InBev, aka Anheuser-Busch, bought Elysian Brewing. At the time, this news caused uproar. How could one of Seattle’s oldest and best-respected breweries SELL OUT? was the refrain among many craft-beer drinkers. The reverberations were felt far and wide. Many bars stopped carrying Elysian.
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There’s no shortage of music festivals in the Pacific Northwest—least of all in the Seattle area. With a population of just over 650,000, the city supports an unusually large number of festivals, from Bumbershoot to Capitol Hill Block Party, Doe Bay, Timber, and many others. This week the city will experience perhaps the most ambitious effort yet: Upstream Music Fest, the Paul Allen brainchild featuring 300 acts and panels on everything under the sun.
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Since his debut album in 2004, Shadows On The Sun, Brother Ali has represented a powerful voice in hip-hop. He’s reflective and eloquent. You can hear his heartbeat pound through his music. He’s the sort of person you’d want to ask for advice – not, say, if you wanted to buy a new car, but if you needed guidance on how to deal with a sick family member.
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Re-bar occupies a strange and lovely place in Seattle – both spatially and historically. The bar, located in the nebulous Denny Triangle, has provided a safe space for queer nightlife in the city for decades. It’s also where Nirvana staged its record release show for Nevermind (and where the band was famously kicked out of that same night). For many, Re-bar is the last remaining semblance of a Seattle quickly slipping through our collective fingertips. But the club’s owners remain hopeful they can keep the culture alive as apartment buildings are built, flanking and practically engulfing the favorite nightspot.
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Everywhere you look, there’s a tap handle ready to pour you a nice tall pint of IPA. The rise in popularity of craft beer is astounding, but also, in some ways, predictable. Beer is one of the oldest beverages in human history. It dates back to roughly 5,000 B.C. One could say it’s essentially in our DNA.
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With a composed, sweet, and measured voice, the woman behind the spastic, exaggerated femme persona known as Cherdonna Shinatra describes her upcoming projects. The tone of the conversation is markedly different compared to the character’s at-times cartoonish physicality, but the woman behind Cherdonna, Seattle’s Jody Kuehner, has no problem with the concept of dichotomy.
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There’s no shortage of weed-centric music. Everyone knows the funny “Because I Got High,” the cheeky “Smoke Two Joints,” the personifying “Last Dance With Mary Jane” and the anthemic “Hits From The Bong.” They’re all great, if blunt (pun intentional) chronic-friendly tunes. However, other songs—those that don’t necessarily put weed in the song title—implore you to take that first puff and spark your imagination with their musical subtleties. So in honor of today’s holiday, here are nine recordings to smoke to amidst your THC giggles, as you enjoy the celebration that is April the 20th.
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At age 41, Sera Cahoone says she’s now more secure in herself than ever. This confidence runs throughout the Seattle-based Americana singer-songwriter’s new record, “From Where I Started,” which is set to be released at a sold-out show Saturday, April 1, at The Tractor Tavern.
But confidence is a funny thing. It can be false or it can be rooted in the accepted eccentricities of our own unique, creative selves. For Cahoone, it’s the latter. While she says she can still feel “all over the place,” she’s also less “in her head” than she used to be, both as a person and as a songwriter.
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A little yellow house sits on a patch of land about 30 minutes outside Bellingham. A few dozen feet away, the frosty Nooksack River rushes by. Thick green splotches of moss run up and down tree trunks, and the air is free from cell service. Residing in that little yellow house are Dean and Dudley Evenson, founders of the wildly successful musical business Soundings of the Planet, whose elongated, pastorally soft melodies, such as “Mending Your Own Mind” and “Gentle Season,” you’ve likely heard on a massage table or in a yoga studio without knowing their origins.
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When Dave Matthews walks into a room, he does so smoothly and calmly. He’s not bothered by eyeballs – and if he was, he’d just as easily leave through the front door. Matthews, when he meets you, offers to buy you a coffee. Then he sits and begins to open up as you ask questions about politics, naturopathy and his upcoming tour with guitarist, Tim Reynolds.
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