Music

Hey! Quiet Life wants your used vegetable oil.

No, unfortunately, it's not for on-stage wrestling matches. The Portland-based quintet is running its tour petroleum free, relying solely on used veggie oil to run the van. The band is currently on tour with Dr. Dog, and will spend most of the next month on the East Coast. 

Quiet Life's use of veggie oil over regular diesel reduces its emissions of greenhouse gasses by 75%. And considering that the majority of the oil it uses is simply wasted in dumpsters, Quiet Life is certainly doing its part to help the planet. The band made a video about it:

To donate used veggie oil to the Quiet Life tour, contact the band at quietlifeband [at] gmail [dot] com, or head to quietlifeband.com.

Music

Almost everything is bigger in California.

We pulled into Santa Barbara to play the Mercury Lounge.  Think Regal Beagle of Three's Company fame. That's Orlando, I know, but this was it in shoebox form: a hamster coffin decorated like Jack Tripper's pickup bar.  KCSB, one of the best college radio stations ever, broadcasted the show live (first time in school history) using the finest equipment and audio engineering techniques college radio has to offer: two mics at the back of the room.  So really, they broadcast the audience live.  It was awesome nonetheless.  Special thanks to Ted Coe who set the whole thing up.  We love you guys.

 

Many a weird-German-beer later, I slipped out for some hard licks at the liquor store next door.  Bathroom sipping is not a crime.  Janet, Chrissy and Mr. Roper helped us up onto the VW Van–sized stage where somehow I managed to whack poor bass–playing Perry in the head repeatedly with a plastic whirly tube we use for sound effect on some songs.  Whack! Whack whack! … Whack — whack!

On the patio outside, after the show, an older "gentleman" was creeping around trying to bet people he had "the biggest cock in the club. I betcha $20!".  You couldn't make this stuff up.

The next day we walked down to the University of California Santa Barbara campus -- a square mile of 45,000 college students.  It might as well have been a third world country gone wrong.  Never let your daughters into student housing down there.  Burning couches on the sidewalks, trash and beer cans everywhere, everyone in pajama bottoms.  Yuck.

After two hours in this alternate universe of debauchery, we drove north to Visalia to play The Cellar Door.  It's a small-town-booty-shakin' club five nights a week, and wine bar/live–music venue on Fridays.  At about 7 o'clock we were sound checking when two little Asian ladies trotted their giant fake breasts in the door followed, of course, by two jocko-types.  They were all wham-drunk and began hollering, "Party.  Let's PARTY!  We wanna fuckin' dance."  Gyrating in a silicone wobble, one pointed to Perry's upright bass and shouted, "You can't party with a giant violin!".

We played that night with Athens, Georgia natives Futurebirds, who are incredibly badass.  An amazing, amazing band.  The bass player looked like a fictional character; think fluffy-headed muppet with a huge mustache and deep Southern accent.  He all but ignored the gorgeous girl hitting on him, and instead spent all his time chatting to me about wasted touring incidents.  Man, talk to the girl -- the girl! Nope, just stories about illicit chemical balancing acts and anonymous romantic golden showers.

We left with a parting gift of 82oz Coronas from the bartender, and faded off into the night to sleep on a hospitable fan's floor.  Little did we know we were staying next to a Navy basic-training base, and were woken up with the sun to the Drill Sargent hollering and a, "YES SIR! Stomp stomp stomp … YES SIR!!!"  We've been walking in lockstep ever since, chanting: "Twenty bucks is on the line, says your cock is bigger than mine". 

 

- Ritchie Young


Extra: Ritchie's drawing of what tour looks like:

 

Music

This is the first entry in Nurses' tour diary. We are super-stoked to have them, no matter how brief they may be. -Ed.

I met these dudes in Dolores Park while we were in San Francisco. We saw them using sticks to sword fight (Aikido) and I hung out while they did sticky hands and later got a martial arts lesson in some secret Chinese art. The white guy in the Nike hat was the master– he was hitting me pretty hard in the kidney after I took this. Seriously.

We also ate our weight in burritos, and San Diego was a dance party. Right now we're at the border getting sniffed by a drug dog in AZ and it's 1000 degrees.

Love,

John Bowers

Music

Leaving our beach day respite in Santa Cruz was difficult, but we managed to pull ourselves away, rested and rejuvenated.  As we drifted downstream on Highway 101, everyone retreated into themselves; reading, listening to music, watching documentaries.  We could practically feel the heat emanating off of Ritchie's "I-don't-need-sunscreen" lobster-red sunburn from the backseat.  The farther inland we got, the more the heat swelled around us, pulling at our joints and arresting our unaccustomed Oregonian lungs.  Passing jokes turned into tour themes revisited again and again; any harmless comment was liable to become a recurring tour joke, and a quick pit stop off the freeway became the birthplace of the "Rest-stop Ritchie" alter-ego—a theoretical homeless man living at rest stops that gives public service "do's and don't's" announcements to other bums.

 

The call came once we hit the coast again -- the house concert we were supposed to play in Long Beach that night was cancelled (adaptation is a necessary Darwinian trait of touring musicians).  After a quick scramble to find somewhere to stay in Los Angeles, we received a generous invite from Perry's friend Sabrina–there would be plenty of space, and even a trampoline!

"Plenty of space" turned out to be a severe understatement —as we followed the iPhone's blue dot into the winding and clogged streets of LA, the houses became bigger, the gates taller, finally landing us—dusty and bedraggled—outside of a Spanish-style mansion in the heart of Los Feliz.  Not only was there a trampoline, but it was actually IN the living room.  High arched ceilings greeted us as we descended the curved, tiled and turquoise-banistered staircase to the main floor.  Doors with breezy linens were flung open to a palm-lined pool and perfectly manicured lawn.  Immediate trampolining ensued.

A production schedule on the wall revealed that the hospitable Sabrina was staying in this house with her brother Akiva Goldsman (the award-winning writer of A Beautiful Mind), and directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.  They were nearing the wrap of filming Paranormal Activity 3, and the house had the pristine, unlived-in feel of those who work too much to break in their surroundings.

After a late night taco run and too many Tecates and cigarettes, we ran rampant around the house, playing Whitney Houston on repeat at top volume; indulging in antics like children left to their own, unsupervised devices.  We call it "visit rich".

The next morning was whiled away drinking strong coffee at Intelligentsia (and included several celebrity sightings), then we made our way to The Satellite—formerly The Spaceland—to load in our gear.  It was a special show for us, because we were opening for our friend Van's band Waters (previously of Port O'Brien) and the rawkus and extremely southern Futurebirds.  One of the best parts about touring is meeting up with long-lost friends in remote corners of the world to play together, and meeting new bands!  We had a lot of fun playing our set, and could really feel that the band was starting to settle into itself, to get comfortable.  You can rehearse and rehearse, but there's nothing like a tour to really bring everything together and make it feel cohesive and tight.


Next up... Santa Barbara and Visalia, California!


-Brooke Parrott

Food & Drink

When Korean food cart Kim Jong Grillin' was destroyed by a fire in April this year, just hours after winning the judge's choice award at WW's 2011 Eat Mobile Festival, owner and cook Han Ly Hwang promised it would "rise like a phoenix from these ashes." 

And it looks like it will: Han recently announced that he will be opening a new brick and mortar restaurant called Bhap Sang PDX ("Food Table Portland"), one block from where the Kim Jong Grillin' cart was located at Southeast 49th and Division. 

"When the cart burnt down, I'll be honest, it was fucking heartbreaking. It's been a crazy year for me," says Han Ly Hwang. "[A restaurant] was my last destination anyways. I wanted to know about the cart to be able to do brick and mortar. It's a great way to test out your food. A nice, simple, small investment before you jump into something that will bring a lot of debt if it doesn't work."

Han plans to serve the same lunch menu as the cart, in addition to a new dinner menu full of traditional Korean dishes with a twist. Eventually, he wants to add a late night service and "a Korean drinking environment".

The restaurant is currently slated to open late October or early November. Han says they're still building, and he's not taking any chances this time. "My whole kitchen is in a shipping container. I'm not risking any fires or robberies. I can just grab it and go," he says.

"I'm super thankful for having all of these opportunities. All I wanted to do was this. The response from the fans has been overwhelming," says Han. "It feels really good to be loved like that, to know that I'm good at it."

Arts & Books Sellwood's the Woods will host This! Fest, a new literature and music festival, this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 9-10, with readings from more than 26 prominent Portland writers and 18 musical performances. (Read more about the festival in this week's Headout.)

Jeremy Hadley, the festival's official organizer, says the idea was spawned by himself and three friends: Wilson Vediner (of local band Point Juncture, WA), Lisa Wells (author of Yeah. No. Totally.) and Michael Heald (local writer and owner of Perfect Day Publishing). WW sat down with all four to learn more.

WW: How did This! Fest come about? 

Jeremy Hadley: It was a really organic idea. It essentially happened because next week is a big deal in town because of Musicfest, and there are just a lot of people in town. [The Woods] is a little south of where Musicfest is happening and I had the idea that we needed to do something that weekend.


Wilson Vediner: Jeremy mentioned the idea to me right at the tail end of [taking classes at PSU with Emily Chenoweth and Tom Bisell] and talking to them a lot about writing. I mentioned the idea of "let's do a lit music thing," because all these people come to shows anyways.... It just made sense to bridge all these people together.... Michael published Lisa [Wells]'s book so we brought Michael in.


Micheal Heald: I'd known Wilson because he'd been my landlord and I got an email from PayPal saying Wilson Vediner has ordered a book from you and I looked at him and I was like, "thanks, man." He hadn't realized I was the publisher.


Vediner: He'd been publishing out of my old bedroom and I had no idea he was in there. I'd moved years ago.


Lisa Wells: It's a very Portland story.


Are the writers reading original work, or stuff they have already written?


Wells: Some people have already written their pieces and some people claim they are writing specific pieces for this event. What's exciting is that, for example, the poetry world tends to be discreet, and then there's fiction and then there's the small press publishing and people who are maybe involved with major labels like HarperCollins or something. It’s really cool to bring everyone together, especially because writers are often nerds and they admire rock 'n rollers or write about rock 'n rollers.


Heald: There are a number of great reading series in town, and a lot of new ones have popped up the last year or two, which is a sign that things are moving towards this.... The idea of creating a whole literary night that's not some hackneyed throwback to the Beats but something that feels relevant and fun, something that's social, exciting and also allows you to come into contact with writers.... Everyone knows the bands here, and I want to make an effort as someone who loves books to make sure that they're not only being presented in bookstores.


Wells: And why not here? Portland is such a literate town.


It's interesting that the writers are more prominent than the bands, because with all the big bands at Musicfest, you might as well bring all the good writers out to one spot.


Wells: That's kinda the direction we ended up going. The readings are going to be brief. We're asking people between 5 and 7 minutes, and we alerted them that they would be reading to a mixed audience who are also watching rock, so hopefully we can dispel a little bit of the feeling that readings are snorefests. I mean, I know a lot of writers who get bored at their own readings.


Vediner: We're really emphasizing the idea of this being a shorter thing, more about entertainment... come down, do your thing, you've got this time slot, do essentially a flash fiction piece, something short. I really like the idea and I can't emphasize more the idea of wanting to bring these different groups together.


Wells: One of the benefits touted by indie rockers who come to Portland is the idea that it's about relationships here. It's true for writers too. Where do you get community as a writer? It's usually a solitary endeavor.... Well, at writers conferences or some other sort of career focused—nevertheless fun, but career focused—events, often coming with a hefty fee to attend. So this removes all of that. It's exciting too, because you have people who are just emerging and you have people who are well into their careers, and there's no fee associated. It's pulling careerism out of the equation.

SEE IT: This! Fest will be held at the Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408, 5 pm, Friday Sept. 9, 3 pm, Saturday Sept. 10. Free.