Local Previews and News

[December 21st, 2005]

^BLOTTER

'TIS THE SEASON OF CHANGE IN PORTLAND MUSIC

Swords guitarist Jeff Gardner has left the band. Gardner, the one with the Dennis the Menace smile, recently moved to L.A. to work for Cartoon Network 's Adult Swim , rendering the ever-morphing Swords a five-piece. That's not necessarily a bad thing, considering that the band is looking to strip away much of the orchestration on its next album, aiming to sound more like "Dischord meets Swervedriver," according to Arena Rock 's Greg Glover , the man who will be releasing that album * Adam Gnade has taken the reins as the Portland Mercury's music editor, replacing Zac Pennington at the 40,000-circ. weekly. Pennington says he recently turned 25 and had a "quarter-life freakout" that led him to leave the paper. We expect that by now he is holed up in a studio practicing poor hygiene and writing his opus * Ohmega Watts is busy working on a remix of a bunch of Giant Panda tracks, and, get this, Mel Torme . That's right, Ohmega Watts is doing the Velvet Fog * The faintly beating heart of synth-popsters We Are Telephone is looking for a transplant. The latest word is the band is seeking both a bassist and guitarist. Will they make us eat our words about last September's MusicfestNW being their last gig? We certainly hope so.

Reporting is hard work. Could you just send your Portland music news to mbaumgarten@wweek.com?

^DJ Chill at Ash Street

The man behind Cool Nutz and Siren's Echo spins Casey Jarman.

[HIP HOP] "You'd have to be a real asshole not to love me," DJ Chill says before taking a sip of Coke, the back to his second glass of Hennessey. "Seriously."

An hour earlier, Chill (which he prefers greatly over his birth name, Rico Duran) walked into the City Sports Bar and Restaurant and exchanged head-nods or half-hugs with nearly everyone in the sparsely populated, warehouse-sized club. He has already politely interrupted our interview twice to chat with friends who notice him as they walk in for his new Wednesday-night DJ gig. People, it seems, do love Chill.

Tonight he's starting late, throwing on one of his premixed CDs for the duration of our interview. A repetitive, big-beat rap anthem blares from the PA. "I don't even listen to this shit," he says. "It's the cut, and it's cool when I'm drunk at the club, but when I'm in the crib I'm listenin' to old-school R&B." Chill says that while he knows about life in the 'hood, he can't always relate to songs about gettin' yours and bein' hard. He never sold dope, he tells me. "I just tried to sell myself, cause I'm dope."

Chill is hard to miss. He stands about 6-foor-1, though his long arms (tattooed lengthwise with "chillest" and "illest" on his right and left, respectively) and his shaggy straightened hair make him look considerably taller. His neck cranes downward lazily, a result of being unintentionally shot in the side of the face at the age of 26 on the streets of North Portland. "The 'hood was different then," he says.

When he is behind the tables, Chill sways smoothly from side to side, his crooked neck awkwardly trapping the headphones to his ear. He avoids slow fades from track to track, using big, confident scratches instead. His mixing looks effortless because, to him, it is. He taught himself to scratch at 14 on the single table on his home stereo, using the volume knob instead of a cross-fader. In 1993, he co-founded the now-legendary jazz/soul/funk/rap fusion pioneers Five Fingers of Funk, which featured a full band in support of head emcee Pete Miser. The group's success saw Chill spinning records from coast to coast.

These days, 34-year-old Chill keeps most of his vinyl in a storage unit. When he backs Siren's Echo or Portland's marquee emcee, Cool Nutz, he spins CDs on digital turntables. He has the voice of an old-school radio disc jockey, changing his tempo and timbre to grab a disengaged audience and draw its attention to the rappers on stage. Most nights, though, he lets his fingers do the talking.

But right now, Chill is bumming smokes from some of his friends at the next table, who don't seem to mind. He's introducing me to everyone as if we've been friends since high school. As I leave the club, I tell Chill I'll call him if I need any more info. "Fuck that," he says. "Just call me anyway."

You would have to be a real asshole not to love DJ Chill. CASEY JARMAN.

DJ Chill performs Friday, Dec. 23, with Cool Nutz, Bosko and Maniac Loc for the Jus Family Records Christmas party at the Ash Street. 8 pm. Cover. 21+. You can also catch him Wednesday nights at The City.

^Argumentix Thursday, Dec. 22

James Squeaky weighs in on noise and why Portland is the place for it.

[NOISE] This past year, James Squeaky ditched rock 'n' roll for noise, leaving behind the moderate success of bands Sex With Girls and Alarmist, to focus on Argumentix, a project as far from pop as you could possibly get. His latest disc, The Hoarse Whisperer, is a loose series of chaos duets between Squeaky's voice and a table of sound manipulators. The album follows no musical rules, taking (often found) beats and melodies and uncovering myriad ways to destroy them. Last week, we finally decided to ask WW contributor Squeaky, a.k.a. James Reling, why. MICHAEL BYRNE.

How can someone with a pop foundation learn to appreciate this music?

By understanding it's creating atmosphere: a noise that's a soundtrack to whatever environment people find themselves in at the time. Most of the people that are making this kind of music, they've thought a lot about the ideas behind the sounds they're using.

What atmosphere are you creating?

It's a lot about catharsis and healing. The reason I started doing it was to deal with my mother's suicide. A lot of the music I create is me processing the emotions that go along with that in an artistic way. It's like you break something open to see what's inside of it, and then start putting the pieces together to build something else.

When you are breaking something open—making noise—is it safe to say you're not always following the positive responses, that you're following the mistakes?

I love mistakes! Most of the good music or art that I've created that I've been satisfied with—through all the bands that I've been in—it's amazing how much of the best material has come from mistakes.

What's the state of noise in Portland?

Overall, I think Portland is one of the strongest noise scenes in the country. People aren't necessarily as driven to create a viable business model out of their band here. Overall, people are just content to make beautiful music that people are not necessarily going to be that interested in except for a few of their friends. It's a place where people can just put out a CD-R of 100 copies of something and 100 people will want to hear it, but no one will necessarily be able to make a living off of it.

Argumentix plays with Silver Daggers, Abe Vigoda, Mikaela's Fiend at Food Hole. 8 pm. Cover. All ages.

^Fritz Richmond, 1939-2005

One of Portland's grand old-timers leaves the stage.

Last Saturday's memorial gathering for Fritz Richmond, legendary jug and washtub bass player with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, was full of smiles and warm memories. But one could only forget for so long the bitter cold outside, or the sadness of the loss itself. Most recent enthusiasts of old-time music, in Portland and beyond, don't realize the mighty debt they owe Richmond, a Portland resident from 1977 until he succumbed to cancer last month. A story was making the rounds at the Fulton Park Community Center Saturday about Richmond's trial-and-error process in fashioning his first washtub bass; initially, the tension on the string kept tearing holes in the tub, until he figured out how to use a washer to hold it in place. It reminded me how Richmond and his '60s compatriots in many cases had to reinvent the wheel, and not a moment too soon, as homegrown music's oral tradition had faded away only a generation or two before.

So thank goodness Richmond found that washer for us—and found, and shared, and sustained all those countless songs and stories. And yet, Richmond treated the music not like a museum piece (though one of Richmond's old basses, painted in psychedelic colors, resides today in the Smithsonian), but as a living, breathing thing capable of conveying here-and-now emotions and truths.

Richmond could transform a simple jug into some sort of cartoon tuba from space through sheer will (and lung) power, could summon actual notes, not merely supportive rhythm, from the most basic of tools. And his personality, humor and impeccable taste shone through every note, whether thumping merrily along to a traditional tune or stunning the audience of A Prairie Home Companion with a note-perfect "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the jug.

There simply wouldn't be an old-time music revival today if not for the one that preceded it. Fritz Richmond was among a handful of men and women who noticed back in the early '60s that the fire had died down almost to its embers, and rushed to stoke it back ablaze. Even in the digitized, synthesized, commercialized chill of this new century, we can still feel its warmth. JEFF ROSENBERG.