Music Stories A track-by-track breakdown of Nick Jaina's new album, The Beanstalks that Brought Us Here Are Gone.   More

Music "Don't forget the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life yes, you're older now and you're a clever swine but they were the only ones who ever stood by you" -- Morrissey I'm going to talk about heroes and I'm going to talk about Tiger Woods, but I want you to know that at no point has Tiger Woods ever been my hero. In a very specific way he has been a role model, but I am not ta...   More

Music Back in October, local songwriter (and sometime LocalCut contributor) Nick Jaina took to Kickstarter to raise the funds for an album he recorded of his songs by local female artists like Laura Gibson, Jolie Holland, and Corrina Repp. After a month, Jaina raised enough money to release the album, but due to a funny incentive—anyone who donated over $100 received a CD of three cover songs of their...   More

Music Leonard Cohen takes one more lap. I saw Leonard Cohen two years ago in Baltimore, at what I thought would be my last opportunity. He played in an outside pavilion in a miserable cold rain, but onstage he radiated all the warmth of the center of the Earth. He took his hat off after every song and embraced the applause like a man who would never hear another clap again. What Leonard Cohen seems ...   More

Music Nick Jaina must have known he was already loved when he emerged on the Doug Fir stage to see a packed house, but that didn't stop him from bribing the audience. “They're as big as your head,” the songwriter said of the massive cookies he baked prior to the show and plopped next to the merch booth selling his new album, A Bird in the Opera House. Jaina wasn't the only one debuti...   More

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Music Sam Adams sure does love local music. Just a week after announcing that the city is replacing its old hold music with tunes from local bands, today PDX Pop Now!—Portland's premiere all-ages music festival—outlined its plans for a free concert outside city hall. PPN! is hosting the event on Thursday, July 22 with performances from the Nick Jaina Band, Atole, Kelli Schaefer, and the Andr...   More

Music Last Friday, we got a press email tipping us off to the fact that Nick Jaina—one of our favorite local songwriters—is set to debut a ballet, titled Satellites Become Us, with members of the New York City ballet on August 11. Um, hello! I was obviously excited but skeptical about the details—did he choreograph the dancers and write the music? Would there be vocals? Why is it takin...   More

Music Last week, I wrote an article for the paper about Portlanders using crowdfunding website Kickstarter to help finance a variety of weird and wonderful creative projects. Due to word limits—every journo's mortal enemy—I was only able to feature one music project: Blue Crane's tour by train idea, which I chose because it was recent, original and because they did such a good job of craftin...   More