Scoop: Typhoon Wants an Intern

1. BAND AID: Typhoon wants you...to help sell its stuff! The increasingly popular Portland indie-pop ensemble is searching for an “intern.” The job description sounds like what would have been called a “merch person” in the pre-Internet days, but the band says the gig involves more than just sitting at the back of a club hawking 7-inches and baby tees. Duties will include running the group’s Web store while it’s on the road, mailing packages and organizing “the mess that is our merch office,” writes singer-guitarist Dave Hall in an email to Scoop. Sounds like the band is trying to trick someone into doing unpaid grunt work by framing it as a career opportunity—something we at Willamette Week would never do—but Hall insists the experience will be mutually beneficial. “I feel that we have been given a really unique opportunity with the amount of support we have gotten in Portland,” he writes, “and how we are beginning to get at least a little attention in other parts of the country…that has awarded us some perspective I feel could be beneficial to someone who is interested in being an independent artist.” Interested parties may apply at shipping.wearetyphoon@gmail.com.

1. IT’S PRETTY CORNY: Not yet sick of Portlandia? The whole “put on a bird on it” thing sometimes makes us want to uproot and move to some town no one will ever want to make a television show about. If you feel differently, you’ll be thrilled with this year’s cornfield maze at the Sauvie Island Pumpkin Patch. Now you can actually walk inside the 2-year-old meme. The maze—make that MAiZE—is designed to resemble Raymond Kaskey’s Portlandia sculpture placing a bird atop a pumpkin. It’s supposedly a celebration of Portland’s “cleverness,” though it seems more representative of the city’s inability to just let certain things go.

1. TRAVELS WITH STELLA BEAN: Portland drummer/songwriter/teacher/painter/jill-of-all-trades Rachel Blumberg, a lifelong resident of Portland and one of the most recognizable faces in the city’s music scene, has left the Rose City to live in Providence, R.I. Though best known as an early Decemberist, Blumberg’s musical talents (she has played with Bright Eyes, Norfolk & Western, M. Ward, etc.) and visual art have helped enrich and define the Portland arts scene. She had considered moving to Los Angeles, Chicago or Barcelona in recent months, but a reunion and subsequent romance with musician Jeffrey Underhill (formerly of the band Honeybunch) led her to his hometown of Providence. “I still feel like this will always be my home, and I don’t intend to break from the community,” she says of Portland. “But I’m also really excited to move to such a beautiful, weird, small place.” Blumberg’s dog, Stella Bean, will accompany her on the car trip. In classic Blumberg fashion, she has at least two musical projects lined up in Providence.

WWeek 2015