Oregon Music News

July 30, 2015 Thanks for coming back to the coffeeshop, or…thanks for being here if it’s your first time. As usual this week’s Coffeeshop Conversation is coming to you from a coffeeshop, World Cup Coffee and Tea at Northwest 18th & Glisan. With me today is Luz Elena Mendoza, the mystic goddess who leads Y La Bamba. They’ve been off the scene for two and a half years, but she is in the process of reviving, re-forming the group and we’ll find out all about it. She is at the tail end of a Kickstarter Campaign to raise money to complete the production of the new album Oljos Del Sol. She's trying out some of the new songs on the road as she prepares to record. She has a lot to say and when she says it, you tend to hang on every word.

July 23, 2015 You have found another Oregon Music News Coffeeshop Conversation. Lucky you. From World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan of course. With me today is one of the two faces of Jimmy Mak’s. Jimmy Makarounis might think he is because he owns the place, but the two folks who people have grown to know and love over the years are mangers Lisa Brandon-Boyle and our guest in the coffeeshop John-David Stubenberg, known to all far and wide as JD. He’s been at Jimmy Mak’s since the old days, before the new club was built in 2006 and he’s been there almost every night since…and man does he have stories!

July 9, 2015 Welcome back Coffeeshop Conversationalists. We’re back after a week off baking in the Oregon Music News booth at the Waterfront Blues Festival. As usual, we are coming to you from World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan in Portland. With me today is composer and bassist Damian Erskine, possibly the most versatile bass player in a city of truly great bass player. He’s a Jazz artist, he plays in a funk band, he plays with rock star Gino Vannelli…I could go on. He has a signature sound that when you hear it, you know it’s got to be Damian and no other.

June 25, 2015 Lisa Mann is our guest this time around at World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan in Portland. She's pretty much fresh off of winning the Blues Music Award for Best Bass Player (kind of the Blues version of the Oscars) is bass player/vocalist Lisa Mann. As you may know she is married to Allen Markell, who is also a bass player…we’ll get to that and a lot of other things.

June 18, 2015 Lloyd Jones is with me at World Cup Coffee and Tea (NW 18th & Glisan) this week. As I’m sure you know, Lloyd has been a huge part of the Blues and Soul scene in Oregon for longer than he cares to remember. And he’s got stories about everyone. He’s on his way to Europe for a tour, but before he goes, he came in to talk to us.

Here's the latest Coffeeshop Conversation from World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan in Portland Oregon. With me today is Amy Maxwell, co-owner with her husband saxophonist Patrick Lamb of Ticket Tomato, with. She is also Patrick’s manager. The story of how Tickets Oregon got started and became Ticket Tomato is a good one, so is how they manage to combine a successful music career with a ticket business.

June 4, 2015 Hello fans of Coffeeshop Conversations, Oregon Music News, coffee in general and specifically World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan where we do these things every week. This week with me in the coffeeshop is entertainment attorney Peter Vaughan Shaver whom, you should know is also OMN’s attorney and has been for six years. He’s a very interesting cat and we’re going to talk about all kinds of stuff.

May 28, 2015 Welcome to the coffeeshop…World Cup coffee and tea at NW 18th and Glisan, to be exact for this week’s Oregon Music News Coffeeshop Conversation. This week it’s the spectacular Kris Deelane, singer, composer and guitarist. You’ve known her as a rocker and she still is with her band Sharp Little Things, but now she also has a soul band, Kris Deelane and the Hurt. You probably remember her with Adam and Kris (with Adam East). Her guest recording credits include work with The Decemberists, Jerry Joseph and The Jackmormons and Michael Dean Damron/ I Can Lick any SOB in the House and Lewi Longmire. We’ll find out all about that.

May 21, 2015 In the shop today is a pianist, a composer, an engineer, and a producer…all in one person…his name is Ramsey Embick. Over the years, I’ve had some very interesting conversations with Ramsey, you never know where they’re going to go. I might guess at what we’ll talk about but it would be only a guess. We like that. Let’s talk with Ramsey Embick.

April 30, 2015 With me today is Ron Blessinger, the Musical Director of the internationally known Third Angle New Music Ensemble. I first met him a long time ago when I wrote and produced a TV story on their production of several compositions by Steve Reich, which included a visit FROM Steve Reich to work with them. It was an experience neither one of us will ever forget. Ron and I, that is. Ron talks about TA's landmark concert on Friday, May 1, 7:30 at the Alberta Rose Theatre as the ensemble teams up with The New Yorker’s Alex Ross, author of the bestselling 20th-century music history The Rest is Noise. Ross will read the story of the West Coast avant-garde, complemented by Third Angle’s performance of works by Harry Partch, Henry Cowell, Lou Harrison, and 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams. Ron is also a long-time violinist with the Oregon Symphony. He had fought traffic to get to World Cup.

April 23, 2015 Welcome to another Oregon Music News Coffeeshop Conversation…the coffeeshop being World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan. With me today is Blues guitarist/singer Mary Flower, known for her Piedmont and her Delta Blues playing and her slide guitar and her singing. She's a multiple Blues Music and Muddy Awards winner. She’s always on the road, so it’s nice to get her in one place for an hour. I had run into her the previous night at Blackwell’s where she was sitting in for Lloyd Jones. She talks about that and her life and travels as an internationally recognized artist.

April 16, 2015 Tony Ozier is the King of Doo Doo Funk, the Monarch of the Dookie Jam, and is also known as Dookie Green. And he is one of the busiest music producers in Oregon -- about to unleash a new album of Funk-related material on us (due in May) called Speed of Sound, in addition to working on a new album from Janice Scroggins’ daughter, Arietta Ward, among others, and producing tunes on Farnell Newton’s new album. Listen to one below. I wrote the first story on the Dookie Jam in 2007…it’s still going strong every month. And here he is again!

April 9 2015 Welcome to World Cup coffee and tea at 18th and Glisan to be specific. Time for another Oregon Music News Coffeeshop Conversation. This time we’ve got someone you may know better as Miz Kitty of Miz Kitty’s Parlour, the long-running vaudeville show, these days at Alberta Rose Theatre. But you might know her by her real name, Lisa Marsicek, a fiddler and player of other stringed instruments…from the Flat Mountain Girls and other bands she’s been in. It started as a goofy little vaudeville show at the Back Gate Stage at Artichoke Music in 2002 starring Lisa Marsicek as Miz Kitty, a naughty lady in a flamboyant costume a dance hall queen would have worn in the 1875. After moving to Mississippi Pizza and then to Imbibe, she took the plunge and brought Miz Kitty's Parlor to the Mission Theater. At the time it seemed risky. Then she started selling out the place.

April 2, 2015 It’s another Oregon Music News Coffeeshop Conversation and, as always, it happens at World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan in Portland. I’ve got drummer Carlton Jackson with me, one of the most versatile drummers around…Soul, Funk, Blues, Jazz, Rock…you name it, he’s played it. He's a member of the Oregon Music Hall of Fame and co-leader of the Jackson-Mills Big Band. A native Portlander, a fellow KMHD DJ and one of my favorite people. He's played with Leroy Vinnegar and many many other of our best. He's one of our best!

March 26, 2015 This time it’s Dennise Kowalczyk, who you remember as being, pretty much, the face of the late great all-local music radio station KZME. You may remember her from her days at KBOO too. We'll find out what she's up to these days and a little about the demise of KZME. Also, we finally reveal to the world just exactly what the cupping room is here at world cup. It’s where we record these things and nobody who has come here has been able to figure out what the hell a cupping room is. Me neither. So I asked World Cup’s Cameran Heger…and he told us.

March 19, 2015 It's another Oregon Music News Coffeeshop Conversation coming to you, as always from World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Gliasan in Portand, Oregon. Today we’re with singer/songwriter/guitarist/actor/comedian Andrew Paul Woodworth, who also use to write for OMN when he was of a mind to. This will be the first official not safe for work edition of Coffeeshop Conversations…nothing gross, just two guys talking like normal people. Andrew was in the middle of a John Paul Jones story when I turned on the recorder….yes, the Led Zeppelin John Paul Jones.

March 12, 2015 You’ve heard the voice of Inessa on radio for a long time. She’s worked at a lot of stations, including a lot of years at KINK. Currently she’s music director at the Portland Radio Project. I’m an old radio guy, I’m also old and a radio guy. I’ve been looking forward to talking radio with one of the great radio voices in Oregon. As usual, we sat in the cupping room of World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th & Glisan.

March 5, 2015 Joining me today at World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan is a splendid fellow. He is a founding member of what he used to call a third world party band which you know as 3 Leg Torso. He may still call it by that name...it still is. His name is Courtney Von Drehle. I’ve known him and his 3 leg compatriot Bela Balogh since 1997 when I wrote the Oregonian piece on their first album and caused a ruckus at their CD release gig. We’ll talk about that.

February 26, 2015 Today's CC is with Rebecca Sanborn is a keyboardist and vocalist. She is a member of Portland’s beloved Indie/Jazz/Punk/Intellectual (I could go on a naming spree) band the Blue Cranes. She is also a member of Swansea, a trio which she started as a duo with her husband, percussionist Ji Tanzer, also the drummer in the Cranes. I had an absolutely rivetingly delightful hour talk we had which was wide-ranging: from her childhood, to the joys of being married to Tanzer and having him play in both bands (no irony, she means it), to Millennial behavior and a lot of other things.

February 19, 2015 With me in the coffeeshop today is guitarist, composer and educator Dan Balmer who has had a long and interesting career playing all kinds of Jazz and some Jazz the Jazz Police didn’t want you to think was Jazz. This week’s Coffeeshop Conversation, coming to you, as usual, from World Cup Coffee and Tea at NW 18th and Glisan in Portland. It went up on Thursday, February 19, 2015, the first day of the Portland Jazz Festival. He's always engaging and opinionated and fun to talk with.