Music & Nightlife

[March 5th, 2003] FAREWELL
Last Call at Henry Ford's
When a classic haunt called it quits, the longtime faithful shed a tear.

Alas, Henry Ford's is no more.

The beloved restaurant and piano lounge out Southwest Barbur Boulevard way, in all its effortless, '60s-hip, time-trapped glory (and its crying need for repair), will soon be demolished to make way for townhouses. Locals who adored the place gathered around the piano and mingled in the lounge for the last hurrah two weekends ago. Resident showman Lyle Chaffee crooned old-timey favorites, from Sinatra to Elvis, stationed behind his trusty Yamaha keyboard.

Nancy French and her gang--a group of about 10 men and women in the retiree set--were among the devotees who made the pilgrimage in the final days. French and friends have been meeting up at Henry Ford's every Thursday night for the past several years. Part of the allure is singer Jan McCracken ("We're her groupies," says French), a Henry Ford's hostess who also crooned with Chaffee 20 years ago at the Manila Express Restaurant and Pub in Tigard. Frances "Frankie" Spence, a spirited woman in her 80s, sporting a phenomenal gold-sequined top on Friday night, also knew Lyle from the Manila Express days. "The girls" brought her to Hank Ford's for her 80th birthday a few years ago, and she's been coming back ever since. She leaves her enviable piano bar seat to take to the dance floor when Lyle launches into one of her favorites.

French and the rest of the regulars are on the lookout for a new hangout, but they know it's going to be tough to find a performer in Lyle Chaffee's league. And part of the Henry Ford's draw was the convenience: Several of them live nearby. The prospect of driving 20 minutes to some other piano bar is not especially appealing. So what are they going to do on Thursday nights in the meantime?

"We'll have to stay home and watch CSI," French says.

Of course, there is the possibility that Chaffee, with his tattered songbooks and slick silver keyboard (which, regular Margi Goewey admits, took some getting used to when it replaced his former organ-and-keyboard setup), will grace another establishment with his magic, luring fans old and new. For now, he's looking forward to some time off. He hasn't really had a break in nearly seven years of multiple weekly performances, unless you count the time he got banged up in a roofing accident and had to take a month off. As for future plans to perform regularly, he says he hasn't decided anything yet. The only gigs he has booked in the immediate future include a handful of retirement-home stints in the Portland area.

There is talk of Henry Ford's general manager Brian Ford opening a new restaurant and lounge in Northwest Portland. But, as a longtime Ford family friend who's been frequenting the place for more than 20 years lamented in the plush ladies' room on Saturday night, "There will never be another Henry Ford's." It's true. (Liz Brown)

MUSIC
HISS and VINEGAR

FOREIGN DIGNITARIES SPEAK

The Music Desk is barraged by publicists seeking ink. Most we ignore. Some we have beaten severely by friends in debt collection. Sometimes, though, an interview is too good to pass up, even if it doesn't come with a ready "news hook."

Thus, we talked this week to Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello, the New York Gypsy punk raiding party, and Mike Skinner, better known as limey hip-hop sensation The Streets. Gogol Bordello blasted minds at Dante's in October and is coming to Berbati's...at the end of March. The Streets, hotly touted for the stripped beats and coy slang on Original Pirate Material, tours the West Coast at about the same time...but has no Portland date scheduled.

So, for no particular immediate reason, a report:

The best part of the chat with The Streets actually happened when Skinner was talking to someone else, his beautifully abrasive Birmingham accent clearly audible over his publicist's pleadings for time. "R Kelly is a guy who shags girls a little too much on the nubile side, right?" quoth The Streets. "It's a bit of a borderline case. He doesn't deserve to be demonized."

Re-spect to anyone with the stones to stick up for R Kelly. When Skinner finally got on the phone, though, H&V wanted to know more about the American response to Original Pirate Material, essentially a slice of aimless, boozy, druggy English blue-collarhood. "I thought you knew I'se from Wisconsin," The Streets says. "It's a put-on accent, see?

"No, actually, I never in my wildest dreams thought it would go so well. I guess I wanted to sum up as honestly as I could what I've seen--had a bit of a complex about it, in fact. I think if I succeeded, people get that no matter where they're from. And I think for Americans there's a sense of mystery there, and that helps."

Hutz, a human pogo stick who says more in 15 minutes than most people spit out in 15 hours, is between recovering from Gogol Bordello's first cross-country venture and preparing for the next. Though his rapacious band has toured Europe, it hadn't ventured far beyond its New York base in the States until last fall.

"Looking at the footage," says the Ukrainian-born, mustachioed madman in his inimitable dialect, "I think America actually seems more exotic. I mean, it did not always seem so at the time, because we were surrounded by Interstate. But now you see desert of Arizona, and San Francisco really stood up strong.

"And New Orleans, when we were there, it was kind of a saver. A real kind of unpredictability zone. I mean, we are playing, and suddenly people are there with these huge puppets. You know those political puppets? Suddenly there are like 20 of them out there. Who brought them? Why? I don't know. I counted four used condoms on the floor of our hotel, just on the way to the room."

Does the anarcho-Gypsy rocker have any dark desires for his second lap around the States? Well, yes.

"I wish American audience would be more like in Eastern Europe," he says. "There, if I am going up to a girl and making the 'shush' sign, like putting my finger to her lips, she is immediately sucking on my finger. They do not imitate this crowd-surfing bullshit, they have their own thing. There, the night never ends until you pass out. Here, even if it was a great show, half an hour later the bouncer is telling everyone to get the fuck out, and that is the signal to go to bed."

Talk funny? Email hiss@wweek.com.