Skip to main content
Longtime Los Angeles rock band X will headline an April 11 show at the Crystal Ballroom as a fundraiser for two local music-based nonprofit organizations. Author and musician Willy Vlautin’s band The Delines, in town on a break from a European tour, will open the show.
The concert fundraiser is the brainchild of Portland music scenester Marc Baker, whose four decades in the industry has included promoting concerts, managing bands, and hosting a KBOO radio show.
“Everything has just fallen together,” says Baker, who started planning the concert in the fall. “A promoter said it was a stupid idea. I took it personal for a day or two and then I thought, nah, I’m going to do it anyway.”
X was the first band Baker ever promoted, when he brought them to Oregon State University in 1981. The band has the distinction of still having the same four original members in its lineup—a real rarity for a 48-year run (as is the 48-year run itself). X bassist and vocalist John Doe and Vlautin are both fans of each other’s bands, Baker says, but the two have never played music together. Baker pitched the concert to both bands and the Crystal Ballroom and got enthusiastic responses all around.
“The sun and the moon and the seven planets all aligned and then the final piece was making it a fundraising event,” Baker says.
Baker chose the Oregon Music Hall of Fame, where he once served on the board, and the Jeremy Wilson Foundation, a musician health and services organization. He sees the concert as a way to “pay it forward” for all that the Portland music scene has given to him over the years.
KNRK is doing ticket giveaways and famed concert-poster artist Gary Houston is screen-printing an original commemorative poster for the show.
“I’m just really super grateful of the buy-in I’ve gotten from so many people and how the artists have been willing to find a way to make this work,” Baker says.
As The Delines tour Europe in support of their fifth record, Mr. Luck and Ms. Doom, Vlautin’s seventh novel, The Horse, is also on the ascent. The author is one of five finalists for the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a $50,000 award for a midcareer author of fiction; the winner will be announced in mid-April.
SEE IT: X and The Delines at the Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 503-384-2511, crystalballroompdx.com. 8 pm Friday, April 11. $54. 21+.