7.05.2006 | Wed

Documentary Film: "Lay Down Tracks"

7:30p, $6, FREE FOR MEMBERS

Run-time: 60 min
16mm, color, 2006

This 16mm experimental documentary closely follows five American
workers who have based their lives around traveling. The film journeys through the shifting surroundings of a retired carnival worker, girl- trucker, railroad executive, chimney sweep/surfer, and a nun/riverboat pilot. While they discuss their work and the worlds they traverse, the camera takes in both what is fleeting and familiar. Interweaving these personal narratives from the fringes of transient work culture, Lay Down Tracks considers the tenuous relationship between aspirations and economic necessity within this alternate American Dream.

(Official selection: New York Underground Film Festival, Portland Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Rural Route Film Festival, Re: Generation, Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series)

7.06.2006 | Thurs

Matt Costa with Elvis Perkins

9p, $7, 18+

California songwriter Matt Costa received some recording help from No Doubt guitarist Tom Dumont several years ago, putting him on a trajectory of writing and touring which led to a supporting spot on Jack Johnson’s 2005 summer tour. His stop in Portland comes in the midst of a run that lands him at at least 5 major festivals, where he’ll use his guitar to channel the likes of The Carter Family, Mississipi John Hurt, some John Steinbeck characters, and the California coast. With him is Elvis Perkins, a new SPACE favorite.  Elvis Perkins’ songs are transportive, taking the listener to another time, another place, aiming where all worthwhile art must:  a vision of the singular experience of the artist - in this case, one marked as much by tragedy as by good fortune.  In the tradition of Young, Cohen, Dylan and Lennon, Perkins issues songs that are at once personal and universal, combining poetry and melody in a sound unmistakably his own.  

7.07.2006 | Fri

First Friday Art Walk featuring
The Blue Room

The Blue Room provides Portland with visually compelling, image-based storytelling. This free bi-monthly publication fosters community by exploring, in depth, a diverse array of subjects from the Casco Bay Region. The Blue Room strives to enhance both our photographic medium and Portland’s vibrant artistic and cultural landscape. This introduction to the paper at SPACE features short readings, music, and displays of photographs and copy from the paper. IN THE FRONT WINDOW, check out “Living Mobile,” a new installation by artists Lydia Paiste and Sarah Andrews.

7.09.2006 | Sun

Lewis & Clarke, Strand of Oaks, Cerf Volantes

8p, $5, 18+

Lewis & Clarke emerged from rural Pennsylvania in the early 2000s as the slowcore side project of songwriter Lou Rogai. Rogai had already made a name for himself on the East Coast as a solo act, releasing the well-received Empty Throne EP on Quicklife Juncture in 2000. Lewis & Clarke’s strummed lo-fi intimacy has drawn comparisons to such artists as Codeine and Elliott Smith. Strand of Oaks’ Timothy Showalter Takes cues from luminaries such as Skip Spence and a young Neil Young, extending his musical gesture while searching to find modesty in the midst of confusion.  His songs personify a midwestern grandfather’s advice, smack with hard truth and poignant severity. Cerf-Volantes is a studied practice in restraint. Crafting minimalist songs with little more than guitar and a stunning brother-sister vocal team, the duo delivers unassuming, sweet love songs with pinches of cynicism and lonliness.

7.13.2006 | Thurs

Sixth Annual Media That Matters Film Festival

7:30p, $6, FREE FOR MEMBERS

The Media That Matters Film Festival is the premiere showcase for short films on the most important topics of the day. Local and global, online and in communities around the world, Media That Matters engages diverse audiences and inspires them to take action.

From gay rights to global warming, the jury-selected collection represents the work of a diverse group of independent filmmakers, many of whom are under 21. The films are equally diverse in style and content, with documentaries, music videos, animations, experimental work and everything else in between. What all the films have in common is that they spark debate and action in 8 minutes or less.

7.15.2006 | Sat

Grupo Esperanza CD Release Latin Dance Party

9p, $7, 18+

This 10-piece Afro-Cubano jazz ensemble has been sparking dance parties wherever they play, combining Carribbean rhythms with expansive original compositions, featuring full horn and percussion sections. Tonight marks the release of their newest CD, Bread and Butter - their first studio album.

7.17.2006 | Mon

Icy Demons

9p, $6, 18+

Icy Demons is connected. With direct links to Need New Body, Man Man, Michael Colombia, and Elephant 6’s Bablicon, the collection of talent gathered is truly arresting. The sound combines crashing horns, falsetto vocals, eccentric percussion, jazz and electronica, pop and French dance music . . . all adding up to a dense collection of styles that are in themselves difficult to verbalize. Did we mention Zappa, Miles-era fusion, or Sergio Mendes? 

7.19.2006 | Wed

The Coup with Kenmor and Dr. No

9p, $10, 18+

official band site:
http://www.thecoupmusic.net/

Bay Area hip-hop group The Coup is known for political activist views and dedication to social change. With song titles such as “5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO,” there’s no mistaking their political leanings; they don’t pull any punches, but they’re refreshingly intelligent with their message and their targets. In April they released “Pick A Bigger Weapon,” a funk-steeped rap album that’s their first in five years.

7.20.2006 | Thurs

Danielson with Phantom Buffalo

9p, $8, 18+

More than 10 years ago Daniel Smith invited his four brothers and sisters and some childhood friends to make a record (under the name Danielson Famile), creating a world  rich with musicality and merry-making. Fans have found Danielson to be as deeply rewarding in a literary-visual-musical way as canonical acts such as Sun Ra, Parliament and David Bowie. Their newest record, Ships, reunites old friends and family, as well as new friends such as Deerhoof, Sufjan Stevens, and Why?. For this new tour, Danielson will once again perform live in newly made-by-hand uniforms, still wearing their trademark “hearts-on-sleeves” and names on their chests. Opening the night are our old friends Phantom Buffalo, road-weary and wise from their transcontinental U.S. tour. 

7.21.2006 | Fri

Spoken Word / Poetry Workshop with Bamuthi

4-6p, free, but requires pre-registration

Marc Bamuthi Joseph will lead a two-hour spoken word/poetry workshop for teens ages 14-19,  incorporating theater games, gestural phrases and performance exercises. The workshop will help the artists extend their work beyond the parameters of the three minute slam format and look towards developing longer performed narratives in verse. Bamuthi is a National Poetry Slam champion, Broadway veteran, and featured artist on the past two seasons of Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry on HBO. He is also the artistic director of Youth Speaks, Inc. and has worked with thousands of high school aged youth throughout the U.S. and Europe.

7.21.2006 | Fri

Spoken World: An Evening with Marc Bamuthi Joseph

8p, $8, All ages

This evening of performance includes excerpts from critically acclaimed hip hop theater works “Word Becomes Flesh” and “Scourge,” as well as some developing ideas from a new piece called “The Breaks.” Having previously performed in Paris, Rotterdam, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and at Grand Performances in L.A., Marc Bamuthi Joseph is an agent for cultural change whose work throws down the challenge to reevaluate the relationship between spoken language, body language and the body politic.

7.24.2006 | Mon

Jack Rose and Glenn Jones with dilly dilly

9p, $7, 18+

Jack Rose is an ex-member of the legendary drone/noise/folk group Pelt. Since leaving Pelt, Rose has pursued the solo acoustic guitar genre as invented by John Fahey, drawing inspiration from early rural American musicians like Charley Patton, Skip James and Blind Blake. In addition to those influences he gleans inspiration from Robbie Basho, Ry Cooder, Zia M. Dagar, La Monte Young, Terry Riley. Glenn Jones is best known  as guitarist extraordinaire for Cul de Sac, in which he wrought an idiosyncratic blend of surf, Middle Eastern, Americana and acid guitar innovations. But he started out with acoustic guitar, and has returned in recent years with a collection of stylistically ambitious, utterly sublime acoustic steel-string compositions, proving that Jones is of a rare class of modern compositional avant-folk guitarists. Cerberus Shoal bassist and vocalist Erin Davidson plays as dilly dilly, a wonderfully tuned voice singing sincerely from the heart accompanied by herself on Ukulele. dilly dilly comes to you as a simply powerful entity with an instinctual ability to move and inspire through her songs.

7.27.2006 | Thurs

Silver Mt. Zion with Black Ox Orkestar

9p, $10, 18+

Silver Mt. Zion is a mostly instrumental Montreal chamber rock group of musicians, some of whom you’ll know from another Montreal experimental outfit called Godspeed You! Black Emperor, including GY!BE guitarist Efrim (who focuses more on piano in this band), violinist Sophie, and bassist Thierry. Other band connections include cello/percussion duo Esmerine, Constellation records, and Black Ox Orkestar. The second record by Montreal’s Black Ox Orkestar places the group at the forefront of a ‘new Jewish music’ that rejects contemporary fusion and musty nostalgia in equal measure. With backgrounds in folk, punk-rock and free jazz, the group’s four musicians distill Balkan, Central Asian, Arabic and Slavic sources into a coherent, impassioned sound that gives teeth to old Jewish songs.

7.28.2006 | Fri

Now It's Overhead

9p, $6, 18+

Hailing from Athens, Georgia, Now It’s Overhead presents a unique blend of psychedelic pop and indie rock, far from the darkwave and shoegazer tendencies you’d imagine from some of their reviews. One critic compares the band to fellow Athens band Neutral Milk Hotel, “without being quite as passionate. [Lead singer Andy] LeMaster’s vocals are more pensive; he probably doesn’t go hoarse after each show. [Their] space rock vibe shares Neutral Milk Hotel’s fuzzy openness. LeMaster’s crooning Southern twang hangs over all of this...” 9p, $6, 18+